Interest Groups and the Bureaucracy are in a constant battle for my least favorite material to teach in my intro US course. They are just not as sexy as elections and the media or even the judiciary, and every time I get to this part of the course, I want to throw everything out the window and rebuild the course from the ground up just for the chance to add some excitement.
For now, however, I try to alleviate this particular instinct with simulations. Here’s one on interest groups that I’ve found effective for starting off the class and getting students to understand the role and strategies of interest groups without having to lecture.
This sim comes to us courtesy of WW Norton, who do not require use of their textbook to use the resources on their site. The Interactive Politics Simulation: Interest Groups puts students in the role of either an environmental group or a drug company and gives them a budget of $200k to spend on various strategies for influencing an evenly matched legislature to vote in your favor. You can hire a lobbyist, donate to committee chairs, party leadership, or friends or enemies of your cause; alternatives include preparing a supreme court brief, recruiting members, or having a press conference. Some strategies work in either case–hiring a lobbyist is always a good idea–while others work only for one group or the other, such as a press conference, which only helps the environmental group.
I usually do this at the start of the lesson, but have with success used it in the middle or end of the lesson, depending on when it makes sense to talk about interest group tactics. I let the class pick a role as a group, and then divide them into small groups to discuss how they would spend the money (5 minutes). Proposals are put on the board and discussion ensues as to the merits of different strategies (5 minutes). Once we decide on an overall class strategy, I enter in their choices and we discuss how they did (5 minutes). Then we debrief, and they take notes on the different strategies interest groups use to affect policy (5 minutes). Mission accomplished, sans lecture!
The students seem to like it. The last time I used this, one student passionately argued against a press conference for the drug company, but was outvoted by students who thought that spending the most money possible was a good idea. His exultation when they lost votes was fun to watch, and it led to a neat discussion about quality v. quantity.
Are there other ideas out there for making bureaucracy and/or interest groups more exciting?