How do citizen interest groups influence policy in domains dominated by political and economic elites? Recent research suggests their success hinges on outsider strategies to pressure policymakers, such as mobilizing public opinion. In contrast, a feminist platform named Platform for Equal and Non-transferable Birth and Adoption Leave (PPiiNA) built insider alliances with female politicians across party lines to make paternity and maternity leave equal and non-transferable in Spain in 2019. This article explores this case in depth by tracing almost 20 years of policy evolution through parliamentary documents and interviews. Against employer opposition and the absence of trade unions, the case corroborates the relevance of women in politics by illustrating how descriptive representation can open insider channels of influence to feminist advocacy groups. Nonetheless, the approval of the reform ultimately depended on left-wing governing power, while policy formulation was dominated by political elites and employer groups, limiting the capacity of cross-partisan feminist alliances to shape final policy output.

Interest groups spend large amounts of money on public campaigns, but do these outside lobbying strategies change public opinion? Several recent studies investigate this question, but come to different conclusions. We integrate existing approaches into one factorial design and conduct a well-powered survey experiment across two countries. We randomize type of interest group support and message medium in support of two prominent climate policies. Our results suggest that interest group messages can have a short-term influence on public opinion. However, the effects are not different from policy messages without interest groups, are not larger for messages from interest group coalitions, and are only effective for subsidies, but not for increases in taxation. In addition, we investigate the mechanism linking outside lobbying and public opinion and find that outside lobbying signals higher support for policies among the public. Our results have implications for comparative studies of interest group strategies.

Do voters punish local politicians for raising taxes? In California, proposed tax increases must be approved via local ballot measures. Using a regression discontinuity design that exploits the narrow passage of local tax initiatives, we find that incumbents do not generally suffer a penalty when cities raise taxes, with the notable exception of business taxes. We explore several mechanisms behind this result and uncover suggestive evidence that business interests may be particularly likely to mobilize following a tax increase. These results suggest that interest groups likely play an important role in determining whether new taxes generate voter backlash.

There is broad consensus that lobbyists with government experience are valuable to those who employ them, principally because they possess contacts in government and unique insights into the policy process. Yet the near exclusive focus on government experience as the defining feature of lobbyist careers, means the literature has neglected analysis of the mix of different (and important) experiences that actual lobbyists likely accumulate during their careers. We address these gaps through analysis of the career sequences of over 600 lobbyists operating across contract and in‐house roles in Australia. Using the tools of sequence and cluster analysis, we identify four broad types of careers among lobbyists. While half of all lobbyists have had roles with some direct political experience, we find that distinctions between types of lobbying careers are differentiated by experience in other fields such as journalism, public relations, associations and corporate life. Moreover, our multivariate analysis shows that different career types are more strongly associated with in‐house versus contract lobbying roles. We conclude that scholars should move beyond a focus on ‘revolving doors’ to more directly analyse the range of experiences that lobbyists leverage in their professional lives.

This article seeks to explain the use of inside and outside lobbying by organised interests at global diplomatic conferences. At first sight, the lobbying at these venues is puzzling as it does not seem to be a very fruitful way to acquire influence. The use of outside strategies especially is perplexing because most aspects of international negotiations fall outside of the purview of national constituencies. It is argued in this article, however, that the presence of outside lobbying is not so puzzling if lobbying is seen both as a way to attain influence and as a way to pursue organisational maintenance goals. Empirically, the article draws on interview data with 232 interest group representatives that participated at either the 2012 session of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Geneva, or the 2011 (Durban) and 2012 (Doha) United Nations Climate Conferences. The analysis demonstrates that organisational needs, and especially the competition actors face in obtaining resources, significantly affects the relative focus of organised interests on inside and outside lobbying.

Political parties and interest groups play a vital role in incorporating societal interests into democratic decision‐making. Therefore, explaining the nature and variation in the relationship between them will advance our understanding of democratic governance. Existing research has primarily drawn attention to how exchange of resources shapes these relationships largely neglecting the role of contextual conditions. Our contribution is to examine whether parties’ structured interactions with different categories of interest groups vary systematically with the pattern of party competition at the level of policy dimensions. First, we argue that higher party fragmentation in a policy space makes organisational ties to interest groups more likely, due to fears of voter loss and splinter groups. Second, we expect higher polarisation between parties on a policy dimension to make ties to relevant groups less likely due to increased electoral costs. We find support for both expectations when analysing new data on 116 party units in 13 mature democracies along nine different policy dimensions. Our findings underline the value of considering the strategic context in which parties and interest groups interact to understand their relationship. The study sheds new light on parties and interest groups as intermediaries in democracy and contributes to a new research agenda connecting interest group research with studies of parties’ policy positions and responsiveness.

We examine the existence and strength of organizational ties between parties and interest groups by innovating on classic resource exchange theory. First, we propose that the nature of interest groups’ policy orientation and their general organizational capacity primarily explain the presence of ties, that is, ties are less likely to materialize when groups lack ideological policy goals and have limited organizational capacity. Second, the size and types of resources on offer from both sides are what principally account for the strength of existing ties. We hypothesize that resources from both parties and interest groups are positively associated with institutionalized relationships, but also that resources are hierarchically ordered, that is, resources that are exclusive for the transaction are particularly important for ties at higher levels of institutionalization. Using data from a novel organizational survey of parties and interest groups in seven Western democracies, we find support for the hypotheses using an integrated design of analysis.

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.

While a multitude of studies have investigated the link between opinion and policy, we have little knowledge of how and when organised interests affect this linkage. We argue that the alignment of organised interests affects opinion–policy congruence by influencing the weight decision‐makers attach to citizen preferences. Moreover, we propose that alignment between majorities of groups and the public matters the most when status quo bias must be overcome for the public to obtain its preferred policy. We test our theoretical claims drawing on a comprehensive media content analysis of 160 policy issues in Germany and Denmark. Our results present a more sceptical picture of the ability of groups to suppress the opinion–policy linkage than the one frequently presented in the academic literature and public debate. We find that the capacity of groups to affect whether policy is congruent with the majority of the public is restricted to situations where the public supports a change in the status quo. In these cases, policy is less likely to end up reflecting public opinion if the majority of interest groups do not support the public position. In cases where the public is supportive of the policy status quo, the position of interest groups does not affect the likelihood that policy will eventually reflect the preferred position of the public. Our findings expand existing knowledge of organised interests in the study of policy representation and have important implications for understanding democratic governance.

Interest groups are often included as key actors in consultation processes, with the aim of making policy more effective, fair and representative. At the same time, their influence is frequently viewed with suspicion. This research note uses survey experiments in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States (N = 9,357) to explore how the ties citizens hold to different types of interest groups affect their perceived legitimacy of involving them in parliamentary hearings. We find that affective, behavioural and attitudinal ties shape how citizens evaluate the representation of groups, but that there are important differences between ties to different group types: ties to cause groups representing societal interests are more consequential than ties to business interests. These findings underline important heterogeneity in how different interest groups relate to their constituencies and have implications for accountability relationships between citizens and policymakers. The heightened sensitivity of citizens with ties to cause groups regarding their representation underscores the need to actively nurture and involve these groups in policy making.

While much progress has been made in empirically mapping and analysing a variety of interest group activities in the last decade, less attention has been devoted to conceptual work that clearly defines and distinguishes different forms of policy engagement. This article contributes to this endeavour by developing a theoretical framework that explicitly links currently available measures of the policy engagement of groups to the distinct concepts of group involvement, access and prominence. It argues that greater conceptual clarity will lead to better accumulation of knowledge in the sub‐field and a better understanding of the role of interest groups in political systems.

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.

Interest group networks are crucial for understanding European Union (EU) integration, policymaking and interest representation. Yet, comparative analysis of interest organisation networks across EU policy areas is limited. This study provides the first large‐scale investigation of interest group information networks across all EU policy domains. We argue that interest groups prioritise access to trustworthy and high‐quality information coming from partners with shared policy goals. Thus, interest organisations form network ties with other organisations if the latter are from the same country, represent the same type of interest, or are policy insiders. The effect of these three factors varies across policy domains depending on the extent to which the institutional setting assures equal and broad organisational access to decision‐making. Our empirical analysis operationalises information ties as Twitter‐follower relationships among 7,388 interest organisations. In the first step of the analysis, we use Exponential Random Graph Models to examine tie formation in the full network and across 40 policy domains. We find strong but variable effects of country and interest type homophily and policy insiderness on the creation of network ties. In the second step, we examine how the effect of these three variables on tie formation varies with policy domain characteristics. We find that shared interest type and policy insiderness are less relevant for tie formation in (re‐)distributive and especially regulatory policy domains characterised by more supranational decision‐making. Sharing an interest type and being a policy insider matters more for tie formation in foreign and interior policies where decision‐making is more intergovernmental. The effect of country homophily is less clearly related to policy type and decision‐making mode. Our findings emphasise the importance of institutional and policy context in shaping interest group networks in the EU.

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.

This paper examines how public support affects interest groups’ advocacy success across three distinct stages in the legislative process. We hypothesize that public support is vital for advocacy success when coalition agreements are negotiated, and it has a weaker effect when legislation is introduced in parliament by the governing majority but becomes stronger again when legislation is adopted. We assess these expectations for 55 Belgian policy issues. We combine evidence on legislative outcomes with public opinion data and a mapping of interest groups’ positions in the news. The results indicate that public support is key for advocacy success in the coalition agreement. However, the positive effect of public support weakens when legislation is introduced in parliament – the effect only materializes for initiatives by the opposition – and public support has no significant effect on advocacy success in adopted legislation. Instead, aligning with other groups and political parties becomes more consequential for advocacy success in later legislative stages. Still, on average, interest groups attaining their preferences in adopted legislation enjoy considerable public support. Our results thus underscore the relevance of distinguishing between legislative stages when analyzing interest groups’ advocacy success.

A prominent presence in the news media is important for interest groups. This article investigates the development in the diversity of interest group media attention over time. The analysis draws on a dataset of 19,000 group appearances in the Danish news media in the period 1984–2003. It demonstrates how diversity has risen continually over time, leading to a media agenda less dominated by labour and business and more by public interest groups and sectional groups. This development is related to the increasing political importance of the news media and the decline in group integration in public decision‐making processes. The article also shows how the development of group appearances is closely related to changes in media attention towards different policy areas.

In many European countries a regional or meso level of government has emerged, with significant policy responsibilities. It has been suggested that the representation of social and economic interests has not followed, so that policy communities remain state‐wide, giving ‘regions without regionalism’. This study of interest groups in six European states examines their adaptation to devolution, focusing on organisation, cognitive change and relationships. It finds there has been a regionalisation of interest representation, but it is uneven, depending on the strength of regional government, territorial identities and the interests of social actors. Business, trades unions, farmer organisations and environmental groups are all cross‐pressured on the regional question. The region is emerging in some cases as a site of interest intermediation. Territorial policy communities are emerging in some regions, but in most cases these supplement, rather than replace, state‐wide policy communities.

Interest group research has focused extensively on political access. While access does not guarantee influence, it is customarily seen as a crucial step towards gaining political influence. It is argued that groups with access are, all else equal, more likely to be influential than groups without access. Biased access may thus result in biased influence. On the basis of a review of this literature, the article shows how the concept of access rests on an intuitive understanding rather than an explicit definition. This hampers methodological discussions of measurement. We propose to define access as instances where a group has entered a political arena (parliament, administration, or media) passing a threshold controlled by relevant gatekeepers (politicians, civil servants, or journalists). On the basis of this discussion, we compare operationalisations based on our proposed definition with some of the major alternatives found in the literature.

This article systematically investigates interest group–party interactions in the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom based on cross‐national surveys with responses from 1,225 interest groups. The findings show that interest groups and parties still interact in the beginning of the twenty‐first century, but that the vast majority of their interaction involves a low degree of institutionalisation. Using fractional logit analysis, it is demonstrated that the strength of interest group–party linkage is primarily affected by systematic differences in state–society structures and organisational group characteristics. Moreover, differences are found in what conditions different types of interaction. Whereas historical legacies and partisan origin influence an interest group's structural party links, group resources make interactions of a less institutionalised, ad hoc nature more likely.