Agencies, legislative committees, and interest groups form self-reinforcing alliances that resist outside control.
American political science's term for the sugar, defence and agriculture triangles. Heclo's issue networks are the 1978 correction: the arrangements are looser and more crowded than the metaphor allows.
In practice
- An agency, a committee and a trade body agree a technical standard that no minister can dislodge and no outsider can enter.
- A local authority, a contractor and a residents' committee maintain an arrangement that survives three changes of council control.
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- Law & Politics
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- Competing accounts of how power works