How Do Political Parties Influence Policy Making?

Policy making is a difficult and very tedious job, and when a policy gets created not everyone is going to agree with the policy. The question then becomes, how one can influence policy or what factors, that are used to shape policy or show their support or opposition to policy. There are many options at one disposal, which can help with this situation, when it refers to policymaking. The readings indicate that factors such as symbols, numbers, and among others, are vital in influencing policy. Each of these factors has their own unique way of creating, influencing, or changing policy, and each are important to the policy makers in how policies are decided. The first way one can influence or change a policy is with symbols. Symbols are important …show more content…
For example, in the United States, there are two political parties that are in charge of policymaking, them being the Democrats and the other being the Republicans. These two parties are associated with two symbols that people recognize, that being the symbol of the Donkey for the Democrats, and the symbol of the elephant for the Republicans. The symbols are used to distinguish between the two parties, and are especially useful symbols during election years. The symbols can be used by the media to easier show which side of the political spectrum people side with, and can show support with bumper stickers, political buttons, pieces of clothing, and etc. These two symbols are an example of how a simple symbol can be used to show support for a person chosen …show more content…
According to the readings numbers are important because, one way to define a policy problem is to measure it (Stone, 2012). This idea seems to say that in order to find out if there is really a problem with a certain policy, we should first measure to see how ineffective, it is with the community with a poll, or to see how many people this specific policy is affecting. An example of how numbers can be useful in policy making could be with the number of people that die every year from tobacco related illness. The policymakers can use this number to say that the current policy on tobacco products is too soft, and that a new policy needs to be put in place in order to get tobacco products out of the hands of people or a new policy that can reduce the number of deaths each year. Also they can use this number to maybe regulate health care laws. They can see how many people that have died every year, due to tobacco products, and see how many of them had insurance or not. By using this number a new policy could be put in place to get these people get better coverage, sort of like when we saw the creation of the Affordable Care