System Of Interest Representation Research Articles

Think Tanks: New Organizational Actors in a Changing Swedish Civil Society

Policy institutes, or “think tanks”, are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in our societies. In this article, we conceptualize think tanks explicitly as a civil society phenomenon, linking the proliferation of this relatively new type of actor to the transformation of civil society structures and of systems of interest representation. Using the case of Sweden as an illustration, we argue that the recent decades’ rise of think tanks in institutional settings outside of the USA can only be understood if we take into account the particular features and institutional policy access opportunities of the domestic civil society in each national case, and that think tanks should be analytically understood as the allies of, rather than competitors to, the older, established forces in civil society.

Investigating the robustness of lobbying laws: Evidence from the Austrian case

The robustness of a lobbying law is defined as the capacity of the regulation to increase transparency and accountability. Differences in the robustness of lobbying laws are common among regulated political systems. The aim of this work is to explain this variation. The analysis develops a set of hypotheses based on political agenda-setting effects, systems of interest representation and partisanship, aimed at explaining the robustness of lobbying laws. The arguments are tested performing a within-case analysis of the Austrian lobbying regulation passed in 2012. The results of the case study suggest that the differences in the robustness can be explained by the presence of salient lobbying scandals, which encourage the government to formulate stricter rules for consultancies and corporate lobbyists. Conversely, the corporatist tradition explains the introduction of less strict rules for other interest groups, in particular for social partners.

Labor Politics in a Weak Institutional Environment Structural Power and Strategic Alliances of Healthcare and Education Employees in East Central Europe

This paper explores the sources of labour’s bargaining power in a weak institutional environment, by focusing on the answers that public sector employees gave to crisis-induced austerity and the atrophy of collective bargaining in East Central Europe. As a result of ever tighter budgetary constraints, governments introduced wage and employment cuts in the public sector unilaterally, sidestepping bargaining institutions all over Europe. In East Central Europe, the degradation of public sector collective bargaining is the latest step in labour’s institutional decline since the start of the transition to a market economy. Nevertheless, the paper argues that even under extremely unfavourable institutional conditions, public sector employees could mobilize resources to fend off some of the austerity pressures. These non-institutional sources of labour power include the structural position of different employee groups and their coalition building capacities. To assess how these factors affect bargaining power and eventually bargaining outcomes, the paper features a cross-industry comparison between public healthcare and education in the East Central European region. The paper argues that the level of analysis has to be shifted from the encompassing public sector to specific industries within the public sector: healthcare and education. Despite similar bargaining institutions in the two industries - central or local governments as the main bargaining partner and relatively high levels of bargaining coverage rates - healthcare employees managed to weather austerity pressures relatively well compared to teachers. Using Beverly Silver’s theoretical framework, the paper claims that healthcare workers enjoy higher levels of structural power than teachers because of the labour shortage characteristic of the healthcare industry. This power has been manifested through the recent bargaining successes that doctors and nurses achieved all over the region by capitalizing on the issue of mass emigration. This happened even in Hungary, which features a comparatively very weak system of interest representation. On the other hand, we see mostly examples of failures in the education sector, but the exceptional success of the 2012 Estonian teachers strike proves that the structural weakness of the education workforce can be counterbalanced by apt coalitional strategies. Estonian teachers gained wide-spread support from the general public, from unions in other industries and from Scandinavian trade union partners, while they managed to avoid direct alliances with political parties. Although the paper focuses on East Central Europe, its findings are relevant from a broader European perspective, as bargaining institutions are on the decline in most “old” EU-member states’ as well, bringing non-institutional sources of labour’s power to the fore.

The moving stages of public affairs in the Netherlands

The Dutch system of interest representation in which lobbying and public affairs take place is dense, but has long given privileged access to traditional types of stakeholders. Changes in politics and society however put this semi-open system under pressure, and this is the context in which public affairs practitioners must operate and create and use windows of opportunity. In the past 15 years, views from within the field on competencies and skills for further professionalization point to the importance of knowledge about content and process, but recognition of the need for a systematic approach to such knowledge construction came more recently. This contribution presents three key components of a body of knowledge on which a learning program for the professionalization of public affairs can be based. It contains the outward look from a strategic perspective, the conditions for building and maintaining social and political capital, and an internal view on the organization as the home basis of the public affairs practitioner, where external and internal accountability must be brought in balance. A university-based program on public affairs must be interdisciplinary, with a core of systematic knowledge development, methods and tools for use and reflection on the normative front at which practitioners operate. Program development also connects closely to questions of accreditation and licensing – the formalization of professionalization through which quality control and public acceptance must be improved. Program development and formal status definition for public affairs not only are connected, they also must, in the coming years, be addressed together in a structured scholarly-professional engagement.

The new National Development Plan (2011) and the need to create jobs through agriculture: Is the South African olive industry ready for the challenge?

This paper provides a scan of the South Africa commercial olive industry between 2008 and 2012 and argues the case for greater industry cohesion in this small agricultural sector. The National Planning Commission’s National Development Plan (NDP, 2011) has identified the olive industry as one of the country’s many small-scale, labour- intensive agricultural sectors with strong growth potential, and which must be supported to enable it to create new jobs. This paper argues that increased government support, linked to the new National Development Plan (2011), will be needed to enable the olive sector to contribute to national development objectives and create jobs. The olive producer association, SA Olive, functions as a cartel of private sector producers, without significant plans for the rapid up-scaling of the industry. While the number of commercial growers has steadily increased, black growers are under-represented, as are black entrepreneurs involved in processing and distributing olive oil and table olives. The article notes the absence of co-operative decision-making between the olive industry and government on issues of shared concern, and considers the concept of ‘corporatism’ as a potential system of interest representation for the olive industry. Corporatism would allow greater trust between government and the commercial olive sectors to be fostered. The paper discusses the example of Australia, where collaboration between business and government has contributed greatly to promoting the olive industry.Key words: Arid areas, Karoo, National Development Plan, SA Olive, development crops, commercial olive industry

The limits of democratizing interest representation: ASEAN’s regional corporatism and normative challenges

This article addresses the problem of interest representation in regional organizations. Departing from a theory-guided four-dimensional typology, the study explores how the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) responded to normative challenges of its system of interest representation. The findings suggest that ASEAN has skilfully countered external democracy promotion and domestic pressures for democratizing regional governance through variable strategies including rejection, isomorphic adaptation and localization. The multiple strategies employed by the grouping have largely kept intact its ‘cognitive prior’ which rests on a blending of imported European and older local organicist ideas. Given the resilience of this cognitive prior, the prospects for a wholesale liberal-pluralist transformation of ASEAN’s system of interest representation appear dim.

Representativeness: A Tool to Structure Interest Intermediation in the European Union?

AbstractThis article analyzes how the concept of ‘representativeness/representativity’ has been used by the European Union institutions to structure interest intermediation. It examines how the concept emerged and has been defined, and identifies its scope of application. ‘Representativeness’ is mostly used to refer to organizational features of the interest groups (organizational representativeness), but is occasionally used in relation to representative aspects of the overall system of interest representation (system representativeness). The focus is primarily on aspects of ‘descriptive representativeness’– in particular, territorial and thematic representativeness – rather than on ‘procedural representativeness’ that guarantees authorization and accountability. Originally applied to the social partners only, the White Paper on European Governance proposed to extend the use of representativeness to the wider category of civil society organizations. It will be shown that the application of the concept to these organizations proves more problematic than it does to the social partners. The European Transparency Initiative subsequently abandons representativeness, but it is argued that it contains the seeds for its re‐emergence.

Weakness as Precondition of Smooth Integration? Representation Strategies of Functional Interest Groups from New Member States at the EU Level

Based on an empirical study of business associations, trade unions and value-based NGOs from new EU member states this contribution argues that interest groups from the new Central and East European member states could smoothly be integrated into the EU system of interest representation with the help of European umbrella organisations. European umbrella organisations offer immediate access to the EU level, provide a role model of engagement at the EU level and also increase information flows from the EU level to national interest groups and with that into national debates and national policy-making processes. Accordingly, theories of horizontal integration should not only look at the limited impact of interest groups on the implementation of the EU acquis communautaire, but also at the effects the smooth integration of new interest groups at the EU level has on the Europeanization of new and prospective member states.

Welfare State Developments in the Russian Federation: Oil‐led Social Policy and ‘The Russian Miracle’

Abstract This article investigates the main welfare state developments of the Russian Federation that have occurred since the fall of communism. It argues that the contemporary welfare expansion strictly depends on high oil and gas prices, and that this oil‐led social policy makes the future of the ‘Russian miracle’ highly volatile. The main conclusion is that the Russian welfare state will be able to function properly and to ensure social integration and solidarity only under conditions of sustained oil‐led growth. The article also identifies a variety of different, but equally important, endogenous, as well as exogenous, factors that have influenced the social policy developments in the Russian Federation since 1989. These correspond to the existence of few veto points present in the political arena, the lack of a well‐structured system of interest representation, the presence of informality in the welfare state organization, but also to the presence of national economic vulnerabilities and/or strengths in the now open global economy, as well as to non‐contingent decisions taken in strategic sectors of the state, such as those related to the energy or defence sectors.

Business responses to environmental and social protection policies: toward a framework for analysis

This conceptual paper seeks to advance neo-institutional work that has tradi- tionally portrayed environmental and social protection policies as constraints followed by businesses. Drawing from the policy sciences literature, we propose that in the United States, businesses tend to show increasing resistance as the protective policy process moves from initiation to selection and growing cooperation thereafter. Most importantly, we also contribute to the neo-institutional theory literature by positing that this inverted U-shaped policy process-business response relationship proposed for the U.S. context may be moderated by variations in the level of democracy, system of interest representation, regulatory approach, and national income.

The Role of Pressure Groups in British Legislative Politics, 1945-1989

This paper examines the relationship between pressure groups and British executive- legislative institutions during a period of increased government interventionism following the Second World War. In spite of a phase of tripartite institutions and practices, during 1961- 1979, the British system of interest representation remained largely pluralistic. Yet it stayed functionally dierent from its US counterpart. I oer an alternative explanation for the markedly dissimilar impacts of special interest groups in the UK parliamentary system and the US presidential system. A simple game theoretic model facilitates a comparative analysis of the political incentives faced by pressure groups in the two systems. I establish that con- centration of proposal power in the executive branch of government together with institutions that foster voting cohesion in the ruling coalition have made the parliamentary UK legislature less responsive to demands for protection from special interests; in a competitive, pluralist, system of interest representation, where organization is costly, fewer interests will organize into pressure groups. These predictions are consistent with survey data from several sources.

‘Enlargement Waves’ and Interest Group Participation in the EU Policy-Making System: Establishing a Framework of Analysis

How does enlargement affect the EU system of interest group intermediation? We introduce an analytical framework to conceptualise the impact of enlargement. ‘Enlargement waves’ do not only result in a ‘top-down’ process of Europeanisation of national interest intermediation systems, but also have a ‘bottom-up’ effect. This comprises uploading national organisational features and a broader scope of activities onto the EU system of interest representation. The enlargement impact can be seen on the structural properties (organisational features and resources) and the agenda content (scope of associational agenda, policy direction, inter-group balance) of EU-wide interest associations (‘Eurogroups’). The magnitude and scope of impact are conditioned by two groups of parameters linked with the source and target of the impact. The first group refers to the particular features of each ‘enlargement wave’ (e.g. which and how many countries are involved, national system of interest intermediation) and the second to Eurogroup attributes (e.g. willingness to broaden membership base, organisational and decision-making structures).

Business Responses to Environmental and Social Protection Policies: Towards a Framework for Analysis

This conceptual paper seeks to advance neo-institutional work that has traditionally portrayed environmental and social protection policies as constraints followed by businesses. Drawing from the policy sciences literature, we propose that in the United States businesses tend to show increasing resistance as the protective policy process moves from initiation to selection and growing cooperation thereafter. Most importantly, we also contribute to the neo-institutional theory literature by positing that this inverted U-shaped policy process-business response relationship proposed for the U.S. context may be moderated by variations in the: level of democracy, system of interest representation, regulatory approach, and national income.

Corporatism and the Agricultural Reform in China: A Comparison with Hong Kong

Corporatism and Agricultural Reform China Reforming the agricultural sector began immediately after Deng Xiaoping assumed leadership of China 1979. A massive de-collectivization programme the early 1980s freed peasants to engage independent household farming through the so-called family joint-working contracting (jiating lianchan chengbaozhi). Under this arable land owned by the state was distributed or contracted out to every peasant household which could support itself and earn extra income from farming. This system worked well the beginning. Agricultural production increased drastically comparison with the collectivization period from 1949. By 1990, China had changed from a food-deficient country to a food-surplus one. However, the hard fact was that peasant income did not, by and large, increase with the rise production. State planners found that as society adapted from central planning to a market economy under Deng's reform programme, the small producers and farming households could not cope with the ever-changing conditions of the big market. Chinese peasants lagged far behind terms of economies of scale, usage of technology, marketing methods and integration of production processes as found modern agricultural sectors elsewhere. The peasants also fell prey to the big businesses and enterprises that dominated the market. As a consequence, both the transaction and production costs for their produce were high, causing their final income to not amount to much. Therefore, some peasants believed it would be to their advantage to join hands and form associations and co-operatives to help organize their agricultural production, and thereby increase economies of scale. The local officials also applauded this idea, seeing it as one means to promote the integration of agriculture (nongye chanyehua), i.e., to integrate the family joint-working contracting system, which the Chinese authorities vowed would remain unchanged, with modern agricultural practices. Corporatist organizations had formed various industrial sectors soon after the launch of the economic reforms 1978. (1) However, it was not until the mid-1990s that agricultural associations and co-operatives were established. According to statistics released by the Ministry of Agriculture, there were over 1.4 million peasant co-operative organizations by 2003. The number of peasant households joining these organizations accounted for about four per cent of the total number of peasants nationwide. In Beijing, the percentage of agricultural produce sold through the specialist co-operative associations continues to increase. In 2003, 80 per cent of the milk came from the cooperatives, as well as 46 per cent of the vegetables and 40 per cent of the fruit. Assuming identical conditions and scales of farming, the income of the peasants the crop growing sector who joined the associations was 35 per cent higher than those who did not join. In the animal husbandry sector, the income was 40 per cent higher. There is an increasingly strong call, voiced from within and without the Government for the enactment of a Co-operatives Law to guide formation of the co-ops. (2) In corporatist parlance, these organizations are variants of corporatism operating at the meso-or sectoral level. Philippe C. Schmitter, defines the corporatism concept, or more correctly, state-or authoritarian-corporatism, as a system of interest representation in which the constituent units are organized into a limited number of singular, compulsory, non-competitive, hierarchically ordered and functionally differentiated categories, recognized or licensed (if not created) by the state and granted a deliberate representational monopoly within their respective categories exchange for observing certain controls on their selection of leaders and articulation of demands and supports. …

Environmental policy and neo‐corporatism in France

In France, neo‐corporatism has characterised and shaped core components of environmental policy. The argument is made that environmental policy‐making has suffered from implementation deficits, partly because of a lack of resources, technical responses and administrative capacity, but also because of socio‐economic obstacles embedded within long‐standing systems of interest representation. Through case studies of nature protection and the hunt lobby, industrial pollution control, and water management, the meso‐corporatist model is used to elucidate early patterns of interaction between public administration and socio‐economic actors, identify the recent problems associated with exiting from these societal arrangements, and help assess some of the environmental consequences.

Transformation, EU Membership and Labour Relations in Central Eastern Europe: Poland — Czech Republic — Hungary — Slovenia

The article starts by emphasising the differences between the Central and East European countries in terms of their labour relations traditions, providing a brief characterisation for four CEECs, with Slovenia identified as the country in which the participatory tradition is strongest. Subsequent sections identify similarities and differences in terms of collective labour law and labour relations at enterprise and supra-enterprise level. At enterprise level the article provides examples of co-operative relations between trade unions and works councils (Slovenia), a dual system of interest representation imposed by government without trade union support (Hungary), political duplication of representation structures (Poland), and the tendency to retain former representation structures (Czech Republic). Similar differences emerge with respect to tripartism, which remains underdeveloped in all countries, again with the exception of Slovenia. The relative weakness of the social partners, and in particular their fragmentation, are shown to be a problem for the candidate countries on their path towards EU accession. Here the European social partners, in particular the ETUC and UNICE, and also European works councils in firms with subsidiaries in eastern Europe should do more to promote social dialogue in the CEECs.

Fisheries management in post-communist Poland: prospects of user-participation

The dismantling of communism in Poland has left the two key sectors in fisheries, state and co-operative, broken. At the same time the private sector is flourishing. Also the system of interest representation, for instance relating to fisheries management, is radically changed. This has led to dis-organization and dis-integration at all levels as compared to the previous situation, and there exists a void for collective action that somehow needs to be filled. New legislation is underway that will encourage user-involvement in fisheries management. In the process, an interest for the revival of some traditional institutions at the local level (the so called maszoperias) has been spurred. In this paper we summarize the present situation within Polish fisheries and describe some of the new legislation that is on the drawing board pertaining to fisheries management. We also depict the history of the maszoperias, how they worked in practice, and the potentials they may offer for the future.

Productivity, Organisational Change and the Management of Employee Relations

One of the most pressing issues facing the Australian economy is the need to raise productivity. There is a widespread belief that productivity improvements can only be achieved through a fundamental reform in the area of industrial relations. Changes are thought to be necessary both in the organisation and structure of work and in the way in which employees are trained, remunerated and motivated. Moreover, it is argued that these changes cannot be separated from the need to overhaul our system of interest representation and dispute resolution. The activities of trade unions and the operations of arbitration tribunals are often viewed as impediments to management efforts to lift the competitive performance of their organisations. The purpose of this article is to evaluate these arguments and examine the institutional responses to the need to improve productivity in Australia.

Lawyers and the Structure of Influence in Washington

Despite the widespread perception that lawyers exercise considerable influence over national policy making in the United States, their participation in the process has previously received little systematic empirical analysis. Based on a variety of evidence gathered in interviews with more than eight hundred Washington representatives, including data on their work, careers, contacts with government agencies, networks of acquaintance, and relationships with clients, we argue that lawyers are not as prevalent, active, or influential in national policy making as the popular image suggests. Rather, the findings indicate that lawyers occupy a relatively specialized niche in the system of interest representation, one that allows them to command substantial economic rewards and to maintain a measure of independence and autonomy in their work, but that limits their influence in policy formation.

Corporatism and Pluralism: A Critique of Schmitter's Typology

The purpose of this Note is two-fold. First, it shows that Schmitter implicitly includes in his definitions of systems of interest intermediation faulty statements concerning the causal link from institutional forms to power relations between the state and interest groups. Second, it argues that in order to avoid such errors, and benefit in other ways, students of systems of interest representation should remove implicit statements about power from their definitions and explicitly state their hypotheses connecting institutional forms and power relations involving the two actors of those systems.