Issue Networks: Iron Triangles, Subgovernments, and Policy Communities

Abstract

As policy making has increasingly been recognized to involve interest groups, analytical frameworks have been developed of state-interest group relations. Initially, there were limited and simple categories, such as issue networks, iron triangles, and policy communities. However, more complex policy network ‘models’ have been created that offer typologies of state-interest group relations and then seek to explain the forms of such relations. Most recently, interorganizational approaches to policy networks have been established that draw on social network analysis to examine policy making in terms of exchange relations among interdependent actors. Network frameworks allow inclusion of public and private actors and represent a move away from seeing policy making as an activity confined to public actors arranged in a simple hierarchy of relations.