Success Of Interest Groups Research Articles

Lobbying Across Policy Stages: Different Tales of Interest Group Success

AbstractThis article examines interest groups' lobbying success across the agenda‐setting and policy formulation stages of the European Union's policy process. On the basis of its exclusive right of initiative, the European Commission plays a pivotal role in both stages. I argue that interest groups relying mostly on pressure politics are more likely to achieve agenda‐setting success because the Commission primarily seeks to assess the level of political support when setting its policy priorities. Conversely, organisations focusing predominantly on expertise‐based lobbying are anticipated to be more likely to secure policy success as the Commission mainly requires expert knowledge when designing its policy proposals. An illustrative case study of the Commission's proposal on deforestation‐free products demonstrates the plausibility of the theoretical argument. Overall, this research shows that distinct policy stages provide interest groups with unique opportunities for attaining lobbying success.

Business Groups and Advocacy Success: Insights from a Multi-venue Approach

This study applies a multi-venue approach to assess whether business groups are more likely to realize their policy preferences than citizen groups. Conceptually, it measures the advocacy success of interest groups that are involved in the various institutional venues visited during entire policy-making processes (i.e., executive, legislative, judicial and direct democracy). Empirically, it compares interest group advocacy across three different policy issues (i.e., railway infrastructure, stem cell research and promotion of renewable energy) in both pluralist California and neo-corporatist Switzerland. The findings show that, when controlling for the political system, policy issues and advocacy strategies (i.e., single- or multi-venue), business groups display higher levels of advocacy success than citizen groups.

Regulating the audit market in the European Union: who dominates, who loses?

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the role of interest groups in the regulation of the European audit market, clarifying patterns of business influence in European Union policy-making. Building on recent innovations in measuring policy preferences, the conditions are analyzed under which interest groups were most successful in attaining their preferences during the policy-making process. Existing methods for measuring interest group influence are refined by disaggregating the unit of analysis from the level of a unitary policy dimension to distinct issues featured in a single legislation and by differentiating between large firms and SMEs rather than assuming homogenous business interests. The results indicate that issue dynamics are central factors in determining interest group success: while larger coalitions seem to be more advantageous to large firms compared to SMEs and public authorities, high issue salience decreases the success of large business.

Studying interest groups: methodological challenges and tools

Research on interest groups has evolved from a focus on small-N studies to larger-N studies in the past 15 years. While both European and American research has become more sophisticated and aware of methodological aspects, there is yet no specialized literature on methods regarding how to study interest groups. Only few studies discuss the methodological implications of interest group studies, as well as the transferability of methods employed in other areas of political science to this research area. The contributions in this symposium focus on major problems and topics in interest group research and elaborate methods to deal with them: (1) the identification of the relevant interest group population, (2) the analysis of interest group strategies such as access, (3) the identification of interest groups positions and frames, and (4) the measurement of interest group success and influence. The introduction outlines these research problems and describes how the contributions to this symposium address them. The aim of the symposium is to increase awareness of the intricacies of these research problems, outline suitable practices to handle them, and stimulate debate on these methodological aspects.

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.

The promises of quantitative text analysis in interest group research: A reply to Bunea and Ibenskas

Quantitative text analysis constitutes a promising new method that allows for measuring the policy positions and the lobbying success of interest groups by analyzing their submissions to legislative consultations ( Klüver, 2009 ). The use of quantitative text analysis allowed me to present a novel and unique research design which was the largest in scope at the time and resulted in important new insights regarding the determinants of lobbying success ( Klüver, 2009 , 2011 , 2013 ). In their recent article, Bunea and Ibenskas (2015) however question the usefulness of quantitative text analysis for studying interest groups and discuss several issues which in their view constitute important disadvantages of the technique. In this article I carefully discuss each of their arguments and show that none of their objections actually prevents scholars from successfully using quantitative text analysis to study interest groups in the European Union and beyond.

Interest Group Success in the European Union

Business lobbying is widespread in the European Union (EU). But because not all lobbying is successful, the following question arises: When does business win and when does it lose in the context of legislative policy making in the EU? We argue that business actors are, overall, less successful than citizen groups in the European policy process. However, they can protect their interests if interest group conflict is low or the role of the European Parliament is restricted. A new data set on the positions of more than 1,000 non-state actors with respect to 70 legislative acts proposed by the European Commission between 2008 and 2010 allows us to evaluate this argument. Empirical support for our expectations is highly robust. Our findings have implications for the literature on legislative decision-making in the EU and for research on non-state actors in international organizations.

The Impact of Interest Groups in US-Iranian Relations

This research seeks to analyze the impact of interest groups in US foreign policy within US-Iranian relations and answer the question why some interest groups are more successful than others. The answer allows the investigation of policy decisions and of US strategy in regard to Iran as a whole. Coming from the liberalist approach of Moravcsik and Risse this study focuses on domestic structures and internal groups as the origins of US foreign policy. It thereby contributes to recent studies analyzing the lobbying success of interest groups.

Measuring lobbying success spatially

The measurement of the political success of organized interests continues to be among the thornier tasks faced by political scientists. The methodological challenges include determining the preferences of key actors and the extent to which these are satisfied by the policy outcome. We examine how interest group success has been measured in the literature and develop an alternative, spatial approach to measuring lobbying success. We present and compare different spatial measures of success using simulations and new data from the INTEREURO project. We demonstrate that the choice of measurement has implications for the findings generated by studies of interest group success. Assessments of success differ according to whether or not they consider a reversion point. However, different modes of incorporating the reversion point lead to largely similar findings.

Before the Roll Call: Interest Group Lobbying and Public Policy Outcomes in House Committees

This research examines the relationship between interest group activities and the public policy decisions of congressional committees. Unlike the conventional approach, which estimates the relationship between interest group resources and legislators' roll-call votes, the technique used here treats as the dependent variable interest group success at getting what they want from committees on their individual policy preferences. This approach has the unusual advantage of allowing systematic investigation of deci sions made behind the scenes which never come to a formal vote. It also facilitates estimation of the relationship between policy outcomes and lob bying directed at committee staff as well as members, and allows evalua tion of the effect of contextual variables, especially conflict. A model of interest group success on dozens of provisions of two complex bills was estimated. Although conflict among groups dampened interest group suc cess, lobbying committee staff was associated with group success. How ever, even under the decision-making condition expected to be most favorable to interest groups, virtually complete public invisibility, interest groups did not always get their way with congressional committees.

Interest Group Success in the Courts: Amicus Participation in the Supreme Court

Interest Group Success in the Courts: Amicus Participation in the Supreme Court

Interest Group Success in the Courts: Amicus Participation in the Supreme Court

Over the past two decades there has been a rapid increase in the number of amicus curiae briefs filed in the Supreme Court. Some cases studied suggest that these briefs may have a substantial effect on the Supreme Court's decisions, but no systematic studies have examined the efficacy of such briefs. The present study utilizes a precision matching strategy to determine if litigants supported by amici have a greater chance of success in the Supreme Court than comparable litigants in matched pairs who have no amicus support. The analysis uncovers no evidence that support from amici substantially increases the chance of success of the supported litigants.

Interest-Group and Party Influence Agents in the Legislative Process: A Comparative State Analysis

Rather than focusing on the development and internal dynamics of interests groups, the study reported here examines the involvement and success of interest groups in relation to party-oriented influence agents in the legislative public policy-making process. Party influence agents studied are the governor, legislative majority party leadership, and legislative minority party leadership. Data employed are interest group, gubernatorial, and party leadership positions on a random sample of bills considered by the legislatures of California, Iowa, and Texas, with the ultimate success of each agent based on the legislature's final disposition of measures in which agents were involved and held the same or conflicting positions. This study strongly suggests overall that the two influence agents within government--governor and legislative majority party leadership--can effectively offset the lobbying efforts of interest groups. Of these two-party agents, however, no consistent pattern appears across states as to their relative importance.

TRUST IN THE TECHNICAL INFORMATION PROVIDED BY INTEREST GROUPS: THE VIEWS OF LEGISLATORS, ACTIVISTS, EXPERTS, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC

ABSTRACTThe timely provision of information is crucial to the success of interest groups seeking to influence policymakers, the public and their own members. This paper examines the extent to which legislators, citizens, and policy area experts and activists trust the information provided by specific interests in the water resources managment area. It is shown that citizens and policy area activists are less trusting than are legislators and experts, and that they also discriminate more among information sources than either of those types of actors. On the individual level, multiple regression analysis is employed to investigate the extent to which partisanship, ideology, environmentalism and degree of informedness influence the level of trust accorded particular interest groups among citizens, legislators, activists, and experts.