Three Dimensions Of Power In The United States

In the 21st century, Americans are experiencing an institutional crisis where the establishments created by the Constitution are failing to do their job. The institutions set in place by our founding fathers has never protected the rights of all Americans. However, it is only recently that the institutional failures seem to have drawn the attention of Americans; in the past two decades, there has been an increase in consciousness and frustration by the American people. A statement this drastic must be supported by an abundance of evidence collected over multiple decades. Such evidence is seen in recent polling which displays some of the lowest rates of confidence in the American government.[1] This distrust can be traced back to how the government

One of the most important institutions is the media and its ability to influence the public agenda. According to research done by Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder, the public’s interpretation on what constitutes a problem is heavily influenced by the media.[3] Unfortunately, for the vast majority of Americans, the issues debated by the media only constitute one of the three dimensions in which social conditions have the ability to become a problem. The other two dimensions are made up by what Peter Bachrach, Morton Baratz, and John Gaventa have labeled as the faces/dimensions of power. [4] Bachrach and Bratz stated that power is often used to prevent a social condition from becoming an issue in need of redress they named this phenomenon the second face of power. In situations such as this, a battle emerges between powerful elites and social movements over the existence of a social problem. When a social movement gains government attention, the problem is placed in the first dimension of power because it has been acknowledged as a problem in need of a redress. However, the manipulation of control over a problem limits the possibility that a social condition will emerge in the first dimension of power. The power of political and economic elites contributes to the formation of non-decisions. Unfavorable social conditions for thousands of people have been concealed for decades. The public is often

Through Robert Entman’s framing theory, it is clear how the spin of information aids or hinders the social condition from receiving redress. [8] Entman is a political scientist who has created multiple outlets to analyze the virtues of the framing theory. The Cascading Activation Model describes the distribution of power starting with the White House, followed by elites, then the media, then media frames, and finally the public. At each level, the information is subjected to framing, which changes the angle of the information. As a result, once the information reaches the public, it has been constructed to elicit a reaction. Ideally, that is how the Cascading Activation Model functions. However, the media and public are not as passive as the model assumes. In order for this model to work, certain circumstances must occur. An example of this is an increase in nationalism, which creates a rally-around-the-flag-effect. When this occurs, the media and the public are more likely to conform to the message sent down by the White House. The rally-around-the-flag-effect creates a cultural congruent citizenship that is reluctant to oppose the White