Within political institutions insulated from money in politics and domestic electoral considerations, to what extent are non-state actors able to influence regulations? Many international organizations (IOs) are composed only of state members, but their regulations have far-reaching consequences for non-state actors. This paper sheds new light on the influence of non-state actors, particularly firms, on regulations, with a focus on the case of OECD tax evasion regulations. I argue that firms and industry associations work to build positive reputations with bureaucrats through broad-based and high-quality written public comments to further their policy preferences. I present evidence that bureaucrats make decisions in line with these expectations through quantitative analysis of a new dataset of 3,349 OECD public comments, natural language processing methods, and thirty-three in-depth interviews. The results indicate that stakeholder engagement may be a double-edged sword: while intended to democratize access to the policy-making process, even these fora are susceptible to strategic firm behavior. However, while well-resourced firms and associations are at an advantage in having their voice heard in the creation of regulations, smaller firms that invest substantially in the process can have an outsized influence. International taxation also represents a substantively important case of non-state actor influence given the successful co-ordination of 147 countries on new tax regulations.

This research note investigates how the involvement of firms in American politics has developed over the past two decades. The central question is whether individual firms have become more active lobbyists compared to business associations in the US Congress over this period. Different subdisciplines in political science have various expectations regarding the evolution of firm lobbying. We test which perspective is most accurate. To evaluate the hypotheses, we use a novel dataset comprising approximately 180,000 instances of lobbying activity by different types of interest organizations across a wide range of sectors and issues. In our analyses, we trace both the relative activity of firms versus business associations and their centrality in lobbying networks. While most theoretical models in the literature suggest a rise of firm lobbying activity, our results highlight a strikingly stable pattern of firm lobbying activity and centrality within the US political system over the past two decades.

Once a focus of political science, interest group studies lost prominence before a resurgence over the past 25 years. Today, scholars around the globe are paying more attention to interest groups, and studies of interest group politics in the American states are leading the way due to uniquely transparent disclosure regulations for lobbyists and institutional variation across state governments. This review charts the theoretical and methodological contributions that fueled this evolution and highlights lessons to be gleaned from contemporary American state scholarship. Findings include how structural power is a source of leverage for lobbyists, how interest groups venue shop within a state government from the legislature to bureaucracy and even elected agencies, and how sometimes the enactment of legislation is only the beginning of group influence.

This study examines interest groups’ agenda‐setting influence, a question extensively theorised but lacking empirical investigation. Specifically, it explores whether business groups are more effective than citizen groups in pushing their ‘dream’ issues on the policy agenda while keeping their ‘nightmare’ issues off. Empirically, I rely on a content analysis of 818 media articles, 37 interviews with public officials and 148 interviews with interest representatives, all involved in 56 EU policy issues. The findings demonstrate that citizen groups are more influential in the agenda‐setting stage when compared to their business counterparts, particularly when they garner media visibility. These results bear important implications for democratic governance, offering new insights into the political influence wielded by interest groups.

Central theories of public policy imply that lobbying is demand‐driven, meaning highly responsive to the levels of access that political gatekeepers offer to interest organizations. Others stress drivers at the supply side, especially the severity of disturbances which affect an organization's constituency. We test these central arguments explaining lobbying activities in a comparative survey experiment conducted in 10 polities in Europe. Our treatments vary the severity of two types of external threats faced by interest organizations: (1) barriers that restrict their access to decision‐makers and (2) disturbances that compromise an organization's interests. We operationalize these threats at the demand and supply side of lobbying based on an (at that point) hypothetical second wave of COVID‐19. Our findings show that while severe access barriers trigger a flight response, whereby groups suspend their lobbying activities and divert to protest actions, higher disturbances mobilize groups into a fight mode, in which organizations spend more lobbying resources and intensify different outside lobbying activities. Our study serves novel causal evidence on the important dynamic relationship between policy disturbances, political access and lobbying strategies.

This paper evaluates whether lobbying influence is open to the highest bidder or boosted by congruence with popular opinion. Common wisdom holds that well‐endowed organizations prevail in lobbying battles. This perception contrasts with recent observations, which point to the decisive role of public opinion. This paper unites these seemingly contrasting stances by arguing that both economic resources and congruence with public opinion are paramount for lobbying influence. What matters, we argue, is the interplay between the two. Lobby groups that already enjoy substantial economic capacities are expected to benefit most from congruence with public opinion. We test our expectations in the context of European Union policy making. We draw from a sample of 41 policy issues for which public opinion polls were conducted, an extensive content analysis of 2,085 news articles and 183 lobbyists’ survey responses. We demonstrate that interest groups with more economic resources are generally more influential, but only if their policy positions are congruent with a public majority.

Research on nonprofit lobbying conceives of strategy in various ways. This article presents a more comprehensive view encompassing four components: lobbying motivation (lobbying for organizational or self-interest as well as for societal benefit), concentration (lobbying in a narrow versus wide range of policy domains), type (lobbying policymakers directly or indirectly), and target (lobbying different levels of government). Based on the analysis of the population of nonprofit organizations that registered to lobby in the State of North Carolina in 2010 (N = 402), findings demonstrate the complexity and distinctiveness of nonprofit lobbying strategies: Most nonprofits register to lobby for organizational and societal benefit, in multiple policy domains, directly and indirectly, and at several levels of government. The article discusses the findings and their implications and suggests a research agenda on nonprofit lobbying strategy that would incorporate the roots of these strategic choices.

Scholars have used varying terminology for describing non-state entities seeking to influence public policy or work with the EU’s institutions. This paper argues that the use of this terminology is not and should not be random, as different ‘frames’ come with different normative visions about the role(s) of these entities in EU democracy. A novel bibliometric analysis of 780 academic publications between 1992 and 2020 reveals that three frames stand out: The interest group frame, the NGO frame, as well as the civil society organisation frame; a number of publications also use multiple frames. This article reveals the specific democratic visions contained in these frames, including a pluralist view for interest groups; a governance view for NGOs as ‘third sector’ organisations, and participatory and deliberative democracy contributions for civil society organisations. The use of these frames has dynamically changed over time, with ‘interest groups’ on the rise. The results demonstrate the shifting focus of studies on non-state actors in the EU and consolidation within the sub-field; the original visions of European policy-makers emerging from the 2001 White Paper on governance may only partially come true.

This article provides an empirical test of an informational model of lobbying. The model predicts when lobbyists provide useful information to policy makers and when policy makers follow lobbyists' advice. The predictions are assessed against data on the policy positions and lobbying activities of firms and other organised groups in the context of 28 policy proposals advanced by United Kingdom governments between 2001 and 2007. The results suggest that the interactions between policy makers and lobbyists are driven mainly by the expected policy costs for policy makers, providing lobbyists with strong incentives to provide correct advice to policy makers. There is little support for the expectation that lobbyists can successfully persuade policy makers to take a course of action that is beneficial to the lobbyist at the expense of wider constituencies.

This article discusses the potential of case study and process-tracing methods for studying lobbying and framing in the European Union (EU). It argues that case studies and process tracing allow us to explore different sets of questions than large-N and quantitative approaches and to shed light on the mechanisms that contribute to policy change. Through these methods it is possible to study long-term processes and under-researched areas, to analyse the social construction of frames and to single out the conditions that lead to successful framing. In order to show the advantages of case studies and process tracing, illustrative examples drawn from the case study of EU foreign policy towards the Israeli–Palestinian conflict are provided.

Social Network Analysis (SNA) conceptualizes a policy-making process as a network of actors. It can assess if an interest group (IGs) occupies a leading central position within this policy network, if it belongs to various ad hoc coalitions or if it plays a brokering role between different stakeholders. Such network variables are crucial to capture how IGs mobilize and gain access to policymakers, and to explain their goal achievements and potential policy influence as well. This article reviews recent studies applying the methodological tools of SNA. It then proposes an innovative research design to investigate how IGs seek to influence the course of a policy-making process across many institutional venues.

Focusing on the3million—a major organisation that was formed after the 2016 Brexit Referendum to represent EU citizens in the UK, this article explores the role of online communication in supporting civic actors’ lobbying and mobilisation strategies at local, national and international levels. Apart from multi-scalar dimensions of these civic organisations’ work and of the way EU citizens themselves engage, we identify different strategies of impact. These are inter-linked and performed in a nonlinear fashion and include: emotionalising; politicising; channelling; contesting. These findings elaborate on the way multinational diaspora formation and mobilisation in the 21st century should be conceptualised, and their importance for stakeholder empowerment. We argue that contextual factors—both in terms of the socio-political capital of the people engaged in mobilisation and the features and dynamics of opportunity structures in a particular country and historical moment—are important in understanding why civic actors emerge, how they mobilise and the way their status and focus of their work transforms over time. The article significantly contributes to research studying the use of digital communications and especially e-newsletters and e-mails by non-state actors for mobilising and lobbying purposes.