Brexit, interest groups and changes to the ‘logic of negotiation’: a research note

Abstract

Did the Brexit lead to a decline in interest group influence in British government? This research note reports on a survey of 268 public affairs professionals and examines whether the ‘bandwidth’ taken up by Brexit diminished the areas of domestic policy that groups might seek to influence and whether groups found it harder to engage with government in the 3 years up to 2020. The figures indicate that Brexit significantly displaced other domestic issues but that government did not ‘freeze out’ interest groups in the period. Moreover, the evidence points to a growing role for groups post-Brexit.