Interest groups and policymaking: Evidence from Chile, 2006–2014

Abstract

This article focuses on two research questions: Which interest groups (IGs) participate in the Chilean legislative process? How successful are the different types of IGs in getting what they want from legislative decisions? On the basis of the main findings of academic research on IGs, we identified three hypotheses about their participation and success in the decision making process. In order to test them, we created a database consisting of 571 bills that had passed through the Chilean parliament between 2006 and 2014, which contains information regarding the content and type of bills and the IGs that participated in the discussion of those bills. We found that Chilean business IGs are the most active of any type of IG. Second, as expected, in the Chilean case the participation of business interest groups is more intense in legislative bills dealing with economic issues. In this context, we found that their participation diminished and/or fell into line with that of other group types when the issue areas under scrutiny were not economic. Third, our preference attainment study on 30 law-making processes shows, contrary to our expectation, that the policy success of business IGs is lower than that achieved by other groups.