Interests in the Policy Process

by Jordana Bradburn

While reading the chapter on interests I really picked up on the idea of subjective and objective interests. I think that when our interests are subjective we become really passionate about the topic at hand because we are directly affected. Whether we are correct or not in believing our interests truly do affect us. I found this to be a really important chapter because this is what connects the average Joe to the political world. No matter who you are, you have interests that are subjective to you. Even as a teenager you find policies that affect you and you take a stand on them. I feel that sometimes though it is almost danger for the general public to have so many subjective interests. Even though we feel that certain policies affect us directly we aren’t always one hundred percent aware of the true history of these particular policies as well as how they actually do affect us.

Making interests in the polis I think is important as well. With National Healthcare we see that the story or politics behind the issue can be the same, but the interests of different groups show through differently. Take doctors, they hear that prices will have ceilings and be regulated, this is something that they don’t want to happen so they take an active stance to make sure that this doesn’t happen. National Healthcare isn’t in the best interests of the doctors. However, when people who are of lower class hear that prices on health services will be regulated they take an active stance to try and make this happen.

The chapter also made me think on how people make interest subjective to them. Stone’s reading said subjective interests are those that people BELIEVE to affect them. We formulate opinions on different things not always based on how it actual affects us but how we believe it to affect us because when asked your stance on a policy people expect you to come back with something more than “Oh it doesn’t affect me, I don’t have an opinion.” Topics such as abortion and capital punishment aren’t exactly issues that directly affect us all but, I’m sure anyone you talk to takes a stance on those topics as if it is an actual subjective interest in their life. I strongly believe that when the general public becomes overwhelmed with topics they believe to affect them they let the ones that actually do pass them by. People seem to be more interested in huge national issues that may never have any reach to them instead of those little things about your city that appear on our voting ballots. I know for my personal self that I educate myself more on the things that I feel I should know more about because that’s what society calls for then being
educated in the ones I really need to be even though they are smaller and may only pertain to the people that live in the same city or state.