Perm #: 9510728
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Memo
To: Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce
From: Thomas J. Donohue
cc: Donald Trump
Date: November 6, 2017
Re: Strategy for Tax Reform Bill
Call to Action
As of November 2nd, Donald Trump has unveiled a tax reform plan that will benefit businesses and the growth of the American economy. Our duty as an organization that supports and represents American businesses means it is in our best interest to get this tax bill approved as it will help our members prosper and improve their economic and civic well-being. The purpose of this memorandum is to provide you all with a strategic plan and a set of organizational skills that will result in a victory for the bill. I urge you to learn, value, and implement the guidelines that will be explained throughout.
Root of Power and Strategy
To further comprehend the strategic plan that I will advise, it is important to recognize the theory of power that our organization can achieve. Our organization has the ability to shape individual actors by allowing them to recognize their personal interests can be accomplished with others who share the same vision. In other words, people’s self-interest becomes a common interest (Ganz 2014). Therefore, power is a relationship that functions as an exchange of resources in pursuit of common interests; the idea of turning individual dependence into collective interdependence. However, resources only become “power” when they are also operating at all 3 levels.
Levels of Power
These 3 levels of power can be traced back to Gaventa (1980); he addresses:
· 1st face: Visible power can be analyzed by observing:
· Who wins/fails
· Who dominates in policymaking
· Those involved directly are people acting on recognized grievances in the system
· Power preys on the interest of the target.
· 2nd face: Hidden power
· Whoever sets the rules of the game gets to decide who can participate and who cannot.
· Those able to get the issue into the agenda of legislators wins
· 3rd face: Invisible power
· Mental assumptions or beliefs that essentially control the way people think
· Get embedded into our current institutions preventing certain issues from arising
Now that we understand power, we must find the means to manipulate and get through the faces described. We can overcome the challenge by coming up with a strategy—how we turn what we have (resources) into what we need (power) to ultimately get what we desire (interests/goals) (Ganz 2014).
Breaking up the Strategy
I will explain now how to think of the strategy through the 3 different faces:
1st Face: Who is my target that benefits?
· Middle-class working people
· Local businesses and people in rural areas
· Mechanisms?
· Increase participation—Votes
· Jobs
· Infrastructure
· Economic control
2nd Face: How do I get the issue into the agenda?
Individuals must consider the bill valuable by justifying bias of the current political system
· Mobilization of bias
· Mechanisms?
· Threat...
