Annotated Bibliography

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  • Overman, E. Sam1, and Don F.2 Simanton. "Iron Triangles and Issue Networks of Information Policy." Public Administration Review 46, no. 6 (November 2, 1986): 584-589. Legal Source, EBSCOhost (accessed October 26, 2016)

Iron triangles are comprised of people in face to face communication and generally have a set form of hierarchy while issue networks are free forming and come bend move and flow from issue to issue attempting to fix whatever issue is at hand. They differ from iron triangles in the sense that they are generally comprised of online forums and groups of people though social media groups like facebook ect.

  • Thatcher, M. "Issue Networks: Iron Triangles, Subgovernments, and Policy Communities." International Encyclopedia Of Social & Behavioral Sciences (January 1, 2001): 7940-7942. ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost (accessed October 26, 2016).

Article is about how iron triangles, issue networks and policy communities were the original way that policy making was involved in. Certain groups pushing for certain issues or problems coming to light and once they come to light how they become combined into policy networks which is the amalgamation of all of the above into which policies come into practice.

  • Gais, Thomas L., Mark A. Peterson, and Jack L. Walker. "Interest Groups, Iron Triangles and Representative Institutions in American National Government." British Journal of Political Science 14, no. 2 (1984): 161-85. http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.txstate.edu/stable/193930.

Summarizes that the US government has become to entangled with the Iron triangles and already gets in the way of the leadership attempting to run smoothly and now that issue networks are out it’s just another way for people to get in the way of the government officials and officers. This leads to the general public not included in the issue networks to simply complain that the government is not running as efficiently as it could be, according to Hugh Heclo

  • McKay, Amy. "Interest Groups' Lobbying Decisions: Expand the Scope of Conflict, or Maintain Cozy Subgovernments?." Conference Papers -- Midwestern Political Science Association (2006 Annual Meeting 2006): 1-26. Political Science Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed October 26, 2016)

This article talks about how it is the job of lobbyists to attempt to lobby on behalf of a certain group within that iron triangle, while it is the job of a citizen coalition to bring the issue up first to congress through various means before it could potentially garner the interest of a lobbyist.

  • Gruber, Judith E. Controlling bureaucracies : dilemmas in democratic governance. n.p.: Berkeley : University of California Press, c1987., 1987. Texas State - Alkek Library's Catalog, EBSCOhost (accessed October 26, 2016)

This article does not necessarily directly mention issue networks but it goes around the fact talking about how citizens should be involved in government and making sure that there interests and issues should be heard, therefore directly relating to Issue networks.

Article Evaluation

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In our article there is a large amount of credible cites and resources missing. There are quotes from various people and from different resources that are quoted off but not cited at all. In order for this to even be considered credible there needs to be much more usage of citations. Although the few citations in the article seem to me to be credible sources and sources I would go back to if I had any more questions about what was said in the article. I do not personally think that everything in the article is relevant to the article because this article is about issue networks and what they are but over half of the article has to do with Iron Triangles, even though Iron Triangles and Issue networks may have a common overlap I do not believe that half of an article titled Issue Network should have a large portion of it consist of an entirely different entity. This article does not seem to have too much of a bias towards any single side or issue, although one could argue that in the bottom half there may be a tinge of bias in how issue networks and iron triangles are always directly opposing each other. I feel that in some instances these two entities may have the same goals in mind and not always be opposing. Most of the sources do not seem to contain much of a bias because many of them are indeed published works that have been reviewed and published, however the first source listed on the source list Issue.net has not been in service since I believe the date was 2009. This may not cause a bias but any citations quoted from this page are irrelevant and may contain plagiarism because there is no actual cite to base the claims off of. Many of the sources that are cited in this article are from the early 2000s so this may need some more updated information and some updated sources. Also this article has not been updated very frequently so this may mean that some of the information in this could either be out of date or the research behind issue networks could have changed direction and led a different path than what is stated in this article.