Interest Group Coalitions Research Articles

Empires, Languages, and Scripts in the Perso-Indian World

AbstractSociolinguists study the valorization of specific languages as a ‘language ideology’. Contemporary nation-states frequently identify with and promote specific languages. Such linguistic nationalism is a language ideology, but not the only one. This article examines earlier millennia to uncover the dynamics by which imperial systems managed linguistic diversity and how and why they favored and disfavored particular languages and scripts. I analyze states and empires as coalitions of interest groups. I invoke the scribal masters of imperial chanceries and archives as one such group. I develop a heuristic framework (or “model”) to understand the interactions of language and power that unfolded across West and South Asia. I begin with a great empire, the Persian, that did not employ its founders’ ethnic speech but instead refined an older state language in governance. That choice entrenched an interest group that endured through a thousand years till displaced by Arab conquest after 660 CE. But a simpler ‘New Persian’ revived in the eastern Iranian lands. Turkish and Mongol conquest elites emerging from Inner Asia carried this language and its scribes into their growing domains in the Indian subcontinent. I then explain why the non-Persian Mughals in the 1550s selected Persian as their state language and rejected the constant pressure to use Urdu creole. Mughal rule left behind a tenacious Persian-writing elite that the early British empire employed. Finally, I explain the state processes behind the colonial-era decline of Persianate administration and the emergence of a new linguistic politics in colonial India.

From rhetoric to regulation: inferring lobbying influence on EU efforts to regulate text {CO}_2 emissions of cars using network analysis

This study shows how the automotive industry was able to influence the final legislation of the Community Strategy to reduce{CO}_{2}emissions from passenger cars and light-commercial vehicles, even though the European Commission’s introductory comments were supported by a competing interest group coalition: environmentalist NGOs. To operationalize and analyze the influence of lobbying on the EU policy formulation process, I utilize an approach not yet widely used in interest group research: discourse network analysis and inferential network analysis with exponential random graph models. This methodological combination allows me to parse the political debate within different phases of the EU policy process to gain insights into how automotive lobbyists were able to shape the final legislation in accordance with their interests and which political decision-makers empowered them to do so. Surprisingly, the party affiliation of Members of the European Parliament played only a subordinate role, whereas the origin of the MEPs was a significant predictor of whether they supported the proposals of environmentalist NGOs or the automotive industry. The latter’s proposals were adopted in the European Commission’s proposal and subsequently in the final regulation. Since the method can be easily applied to case studies from different policy areas, it provides a promising framework for the analysis of EU lobbying in general. Moreover, the network approach is easily extendable, allowing future research to integrate different strands of EU lobbying research that go beyond influence analysis.

Coping with a crisis: business interest group coalitions in the wake of the financial crisis

The global financial crisis resulted in a re-examination of the business sector as a whole and its lobbying activity. Nevertheless, research has not analysed the impact that the global financial crisis had on the coalitions within the business interest group community. This article describes in detail how coalitions within the business interest group community have emerged in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. I focus my attention on the Swiss case because of the importance of its financial sector as well as its neo-corporatist system. The empirical approach consists of a process tracing on three policy areas: financial regulation, tax policy and corporate governance, which is elaborated through an extensive document analysis and 28 in-depth interviews. The advocacy coalition framework is used to analyse business interest groups’ beliefs. The findings suggest that different beliefs materialise, especially in the field of financial regulation and partially in tax policy.

The Influential Mechanisms of Power Actor Groups on Policy Mix Adoption: Lessons Learned from Feed-In Tariffs in the Renewable Energy Transition in Iran and Germany

The Energy transition is fiercely competitive. The incumbents of fossil-based energy are in conflict with the advocate coalitions of transition in energy policy changes. Such changes do not occur as sudden punctuation via an external shock, but rather incrementally and over time, by incorporating power insights such as lobbies, coalitions, and campaigns. This article provides a framework grounded in theoretical power theories and draws additional insights from policy mix studies. It investigates how focusing events and feedback loops shape the coalition of interest groups in policymaking through implementations of power mechanisms. Our framework is tested through two different power stories of energy transition in Iran and Germany. Our findings reveal that the centrally planned economy of Iran leaves society with a negligible or passive role in the energy transition. The passive role of society in the energy transition is mainly caused by subsidizing energy. In addition, the financial and economic crisis resulting from other macro-economic challenges, such as sanctions, may exacerbate the minor involvement of civil society in the slow expansion of renewables in Iran. By contrast, as a robust economy with a corporatist tradition, Germany has made a strong advocacy coalition of energy transition that resulted in political incentives for substantial renewable energy deployment. Regarding the theoretical question of the power dynamics in divergent countries’ energy transitions, the proposed framework based on the interest group coalitions and power mechanism offers an understanding of the social character of energy transitions.

When do political parties listen to interest groups?

This paper examines when parties listen to interest groups and adopt their input. Interest group information can help parties bolster their positions, and by taking their input into account, parties show that they are responsive to the groups’ interests which can increase their appeal to their constituents. Listening to interest groups can, however, also repel voters who disagree with the groups’ positions. This paper argues that party and issue-level characteristics affect whether the benefits of listening to interest groups exceed the costs. Examining more than 25,000 party-interest group observations on 88 Norwegian policy proposals and using a text reuse approach to measure interest group influence, the findings indicate that public salience, party issue emphasis, interest group coalitions, and government status affect parties’ propensity to listen. This implies that interest groups can be a pertinent source of information for parties under certain circumstances which affects the link between voters and parties.

Diverse Lobbying Coalitions and Influence in Notice‐and‐Comment Rulemaking

Many studies have identified a line of influence between interest group lobbying and the federal bureaucracy’s implementation of public policy. These works, however, have often focused on the influence of individual groups rather than coalitional efforts, which compose the majority of lobbying. Assessing this activity is critical to understanding the role of public participants in administrative policymaking. I test the influence of diverse coalitions of interest groups on bureaucratic policy outputs by analyzing a new dataset of organizations’ co‐signed public comments across nearly 350 federal agency rules proposed between 2005 and 2015. I find that agencies favor recommendations from organizationally diverse coalitions, and not coalitions that are bipartisan or dominated by business interests. Further, I find that coalition influence is heightened when lobbying in coalitions that are larger in size and more well‐resourced, and when policy salience is low. I conclude that diverse lobbying coalitions help bureaucrats to shape the direction and content of regulatory law. This conclusion further establishes the role of organizational participants in bureaucratic policymaking and contributes to the debate over democratic legitimacy in the administrative state.

Can \u2018Sufficiency\u2019 reconcile social and environmental goals? A Q-methodological analysis of German housing policy

In housing policy, social and environmental targets often appear to be in conflict. This article examines to which degree the rising sustainability strategy ‘sufficiency’ has the potential to overcome this alleged trade-off between social and environmental goals in Germany. The positions of relevant stakeholders from social, environmental, and housing interest groups in Germany on housing policy are analysed by use of Q-methodology. Four distinct positions towards sufficiency-oriented housing policy are identified. The results show under which conditions sufficiency is a promising strategy to reconcile declared social and environmental targets in German housing policy. If pursued by a coalition of housing organizations and environmental interest groups, sufficiency has the potential of becoming a major paradigm in housing policy in Germany and beyond.

Sustainable natural resource governance under interest group competition in policy-making.

Non-state actors play an increasingly important role in environmental policy. Lobbying by interest groups has been associated with policy stagnation and environmental degradation as well as with sustainable governance. However, little is known about how competition between economic and environmental interests influences the ability of governance systems to avoid undesirable outcomes. We investigate how competing interest group behaviour affects sustainable resource management by tracing the policy change process in a case study of the European Union fisheries policy and analysing its dynamics with an agent-based model. We find that formation of interest group coalitions in response to a perceived crisis can delay or prevent collapses, even when the competing interests have unequal resources. We attribute such outcomes to the emergence and timing of a 'tug of war' mechanism between competing interest group coalitions. We argue that attempts to improve sustainable resource management must account for feedbacks from environmental change to behaviours of political actors.

Identities, interest group coalitions, and intergroup relations

ABSTRACT Interest groups are well known for lobbying and providing information to citizens. However, no extant scholarship explores how the actions of interest groups affect intergroup relations, even though these organizations represent a variety of social identities. I argue that the decisions of interest group leaders to work together or reject collaboration send signals to everyday members of the identity groups they represent about their relations to other groups. In a survey experiment with a nationally representative sample of African-Americans, I vary whether respondents receive information about a successful coalition or a rejected coalition between African-American interest groups and organizations representing another identity. I find that when African-American interest groups successfully form a coalition with a high-solidarity outgroup (e.g., Hispanics), individuals develop greater feelings of closeness with the outgroup and express greater support for policies that benefit that group. However, when leaders of the outgroup organizations reject the coalition, it creates a backlash effect of lower closeness and weaker policy support. This backlash effect does not occur for low-solidarity outgroups (e.g., atheists). These findings suggest that interest groups are an understudied source of elite influence on identity-based perceptions, which can either promote or obstruct harmonious intergroup relationships.

Mixed feedback dynamics and the USA renewable fuel standard: the roles of policy design and administrative agency

Using the case of the USA Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), this paper contributes to theorizing regarding the factors that affect feedback dynamics of a disruptive technology. Focusing on design elements of the RFS and governance features related to its implementation, it demonstrates the resulting feedback effects on first-generation conventional biofuels and second-generation advanced biofuels. In terms of policy design, the analyses highlight the significance of the calibration of policy instruments and the incorporation of multiple policy goals into a single policy instrument. In terms of implementation procedures, the analyses affirm the significance to feedback dynamics of the regulatory capacity and discretionary authority of administrative agents as well as the influence of interest group coalitions in rulemaking. In the case of second-generation advanced biofuels, the case study also reveals the limits of policy-induced feedback in the presence of regulatory uncertainty and unfavorable financial conditions.

State Politics And The UnevenFate Of Medicaid Expansion.

Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), state governments play a central role in deciding whether millions of low-income Americans have access to Medicaid. During the early years of ACA implementation, conservative opposition stalled the expansion of eligibility for Medicaid in many Republican-controlled states, even in the face of strong fiscal incentives. Can any forces overcome this partisan divide? In this article we consider the role of several key mechanisms that have affected Medicaid expansion over the past decade, including electoral competition, ballot-box initiatives, interest-group coalitions, and entrepreneurial administrators. While each mechanism has helped place Medicaid expansion on the agenda, they have done so unevenly. In Republican-controlled states where electoral competition is weak and ballot initiatives are unavailable, Medicaid expansion remains unlikely. Even when expansion is successful at the ballot box, however, state legislatures and governors have been able to delay or reverse voter-led initiatives. Moreover, the highly salient and partisan nature of Medicaid expansion has made it difficult for interest-group coalitions and progressive administrators to play a leading role in policy change. The future of Medicaid expansion, as well as other significant portions of the ACA, will continue to depend on the character of representative democracy in the states.

Party crashers: Interest groups as a latent threat to party networks in congressional primaries

Recent research asserts that coalitions of party leaders, interest groups, and activists will cooperate to support the nomination of mutually acceptable candidates in primary elections. In this article, I utilize an original data set containing FEC contributions and expenditures data for 1648 candidates who ran in open seat primary elections for the US House from 2006 to 2016 to measure the extent and effects of coordination among interest groups and party organizations. I find that Democratic-aligned interest groups and party leaders coordinate more often and with a more positive substantive effect than their Republican counterparts. Moreover, I provide evidence that, with the advent of super PACs in the second half of the 2010 primary cycle, a small number of interest groups can act as a latent threat to broader coalitions that unite behind a candidate using independent expenditures to outspend the broader coalitions. This increased resource parity has tangible representational consequences.

Interest group coalitions: how the intensity of cooperation affects the choice of lobbying strategies

How does the intensity of cooperating in lobbying coalitions affect the choice of lobbying strategies of interest groups? This question is analysed in this paper using data from 1117 Swiss and German interest organisations. We find, on the one hand, that the intensity of coalition building affects both directly targeting politicians (insider lobbying) but also indirect efforts of exerting influence via the media and citizens (outsider lobbying). In other words, the more intensely lobby groups cooperate, the more they make use of both insider and outsider lobbying tactics. However, we also find that the increase in these two types of lobbying efforts is not equal when cooperation intensifies. Due to the specific advantages of pooling expertise, insider lobbying benefits disproportionately when groups work more closely together.

United in fear: Interest group coalition formation as a weapon of the weak?

Although many interest groups work together perpetually, most academic studies agree that coalition formation does not lead to more influence. In this article, we try to explain these puzzling findings. While former research generally tends to frame the decision of forming an interest group coalition as a strength, in this paper, we argue that coalition building should be considered as a ‘weapon of the weak’. Interest groups fearing that they are insufficiently influential, and whose very existence as an organisation is at risk, are more likely to coalesce. This theoretical framework is tested on a sample of around 3000 interest groups in six European countries – Belgium, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Sweden – and the European Union. Empirical findings clearly demonstrate that perceived fears – oriented towards both organisational survival and policy influence – have an effect on how likely it is that an interest group will decide to build a coalition.

Labour Management Relations as a Framework for Industrial Sustainability

Work is necessary for the survival of individual employees and labour management relations aim at achieving the collective interests of employers and employees to promote productivity and industrial sustainability. The early Knights of Labour sought to protect the interest of labour as a means of enhancing industrial growth and survival because labour is the major determinant of productivity. In many countries today including Kenya, South-Africa, Norway, Nigeria among others, employees in small and medium enterprises, including most private tertiary institutions are not unionized thereby giving such employees the freedom to use the organizations as a stepping stone for better employment opportunities and at the detriment of industrial growth and sustainability. Since organizations are typically coalitions of interest groups, negotiation between labour and management must always receive great attention as one of the modern methods of achieving industrial harmony. Often negotiation is characterized by divergent views and the role of labour management relations becomes to promote collaboration. 200 participants took part in the study conducted through the survey research design to explain the relationship between labour management relations and industrial sustainability. Analysis through descriptive and correlation methods showed a strong positive relationship between the variables of interest. The study was not exhaustive, and further study should examine the relationship between leadership and performance. It was suggested that the accommodation principle should always be used to achieve industrial harmony and sustainability.

Strange Bedfellows: Interest Group Coalitions, Diverse Partners, and Influence in American Social Policy. By Robin Phinney. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. 196. $99.99 (cloth).

Strange Bedfellows: Interest Group Coalitions, Diverse Partners, and Influence in American Social Policy. By Robin Phinney. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. 196. $99.99 (cloth).

Navigating between ‘friends’ and ‘foes’: the coalition building and networking of Italian interest groups

This paper focuses on the reasons that Italian interest groups decide to lobby together with like-minded groups (‘friends’), or engage in networking activity with groups that have conflicting interests (‘foes’), in order to influence public policy. How often do Italian interest groups recur to these lobbying strategies? What favours the construction of a coalition of more or less different interest groups lobbying on a particular issue? What, on the contrary, influences the decision to lobby individually? In order to answer these questions, original data coming from a national survey conducted on 1277 Italian interest groups are provided. Empirical results are interesting: from a descriptive point of view, business groups are more likely to engage in joint lobbying than other group types, whereas the same holds true for unions with respect to networking with rival organizations. From an explanatory point of view, groups that perceive themselves to be threatened by rivals’ influence in policymaking, or by environmental challenges, are more likely to work in coalitions and to engage in networking: resources do not matter in ‘absolute’ and ‘objective’ terms, but in ‘relative’ and ‘subjective’ ones.

Intergovernmental policy makes transnational politics? The unusually transnational politics of TTIP

When the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations were underway, its politics were distinctively transnational. Numerous alliances between European and American industry associations advocated an ambitious agreement to mitigate the effects of conflicting rules. Some civic interest groups also closely cooperated to shape the agreement, while a broad, loose transatlantic coalition of civic interest groups opposed it. The extent of transnationalism in TTIP was greater than what had come before in the transatlantic relationship and what is evident in contemporaneous analogous trade negotiations. This article argues that while the salience of a trade negotiation affects whether societal actors mobilize, it is not sufficient to prompt transnational cooperation. Rather transnational cooperation stems primarily from what the actors are seeking to achieve and whether they have a motive and opportunity to work together. By clarifying the conditions under which transnational cooperation is more likely, this article informs the emerging literature on the new politics of trade. By making the case that the motives to mobilize and cooperate require distinct analysis, it contributes to the literature on transnationalism.

Role analysis using the ego-ERGM: A look at environmental interest group coalitions

Interest groups coordinate to achieve political goals. However, these groups are heterogeneous, and the division of labor within these coalitions varies. We explore the presence of distinct roles in coalitions of environmental interest groups, and analyse which factors predict if an organization takes on a particular role. To model these latent dynamics, we introduce the ego-ERGM. We find that a group's budget, member size, staff size, and degree centrality are influential in distinguishing between three role assignments. These results provide insight into the roles adopted in carrying out coalition tasks. This approach shows promise for understanding a host of networks.

Tracing a pathway to success: How competing interest groups influenced the 2013 EU Common Fisheries Policy reform

Adaptation of environmental policies to often unexpected crises is an important function of sustainable governance arrangements. However the relationship between environmental change and policy is complicated. Much research has focused on understanding institutional dynamics or the role of specific participants in the policy process. This paper draws attention to interest groups and the mechanism through which they influence policy change. Existing research offers conflicting evidence in regards to the different ways in which interest groups may affect change. This paper provides an in-depth study of the 2013 European Union Common Fisheries Policy reform − a policy change characterized by active interest group participation. It traces the activity of interest group coalitions to understand how they achieved influence under a changing policy context. The study involves interviews with interest group representatives, policy experts and decision-makers, document analysis of interest group statements and EU legislative documents. Findings identify the important role of coalition-building and informational lobbying for environmental interest group success in exploiting favorable sociopolitical conditions and influencing reform outcomes. An insight on interest group influence and its conditions contributes to our understanding of the complex dynamics of the environmental policy process as well as its implications for policy adaptation to environmental change.