Interest groups & Advocacy 

About: Interest groups & Advocacy is an academic journal published by Palgrave Macmillan. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Political communication & Public policy. It has an ISSN identifier of 2047-7414. Over the lifetime, 259 publications have been published receiving 2730 citations. The journal is also known as: Interest groups and advocacy.

Lobbying influence: Meaning, measurement and missing

Abstract: All too often, research on the influence of interest organizations in democratic politics produces null findings. What are we to make of these results? In part, the answer may lie in our conception of influence – what it is and what might constitute evidence for it. But even when more complete conceptions of influence are considered in better research designs, null results will still occur. They merit explanation. To address these issues, I will first try to provide a broader conception of influence and its many possible meanings by exploring the older theoretical literature on urban power from the 1950s and 1960s, considering along the way what the different interpretations might tell us about lobbying. And second, I will develop a catalog of null hypotheses and discuss how these bear on interpreting the many null findings in influence research. Finally, I discuss the implications of this analysis for the future of influence research.

Defining and classifying interest groups

Abstract: The interest group concept is defined in many different ways in the existing literature and a range of different classification schemes are employed. This complicates comparisons between different studies and their findings. One of the important tasks faced by interest group scholars engaged in large-N studies is therefore to define the concept of an interest group and to determine which classification scheme to use for different group types. After reviewing the existing literature, this article sets out to compare different approaches to defining and classifying interest groups with a sample of lobbying actors coded according to different coding schemes. We systematically assess the performance of different schemes by comparing how actor types in the different schemes differ with respect to a number of background characteristics. This is done in a two-stage approach where we first cluster actors according to a number of key background characteristics and second assess how the categories of the different interest group typologies relate to these clusters. We demonstrate that background characteristics do align to a certain extent with certain interest group types but also find important differences in the organizational attributes of specific interest group types. As expected, our comparison of coding schemes reveals a closer link between group attributes and group type in narrower classification schemes based on group organizational characteristics than those based on a behavioral definition of lobbying.

Why interest organizations do what they do: assessing the explanatory potential of ‘exchange’ approaches

Abstract: Important parts of the literature on strategies of interest organizations consider the political activities of interest organizations as serving to build and maintain exchange relationships between organizational representatives and constituents, policymakers and the news media. The incentive for organizational survival produces activities that links social and political domains. This review integrates various strands of existing thinking on interest groups under an ‘exchange’ perspective. It produces a view on interest organizations as being strategically strongly constrained through different demands made on the organization when engaging in relationships with supporters, policymakers and journalists. While challenging, research designs should account for the interrelated nature of these relationships rather than treating organizations as a strategically autonomous actors.

Lobbying and transparency: A comparative analysis of regulatory reform

Abstract: As citizens grow increasingly wary of whose interests are being represented in the public policy arena, especially in light of recent sensational scandals showing a cozy relationship between professional lobbyists and lawmakers, a crisis of confidence is engulfing many democratic societies across the European and North American continents. Public perceptions of undue influence peddling, in which special interest groups exercise too much sway over government for self-serving purposes, have led to growing demands for the regulation of lobbyists and transparency of the policymaking process. The United States and Canada have been struggling for decades to refine their systems of lobbyist regulation. Of all the shortcomings of the North American model of lobbyist regulation – and there are many – transparency is not, for the most part, one of them. Many European countries have also been experimenting with systems of lobbyist regulation. Until recently, however, the European national experiments have produced very different results among themselves and in comparison with the North American counterparts. Surprisingly, some of the earliest efforts to regulate lobbying occurred among new democratic countries in Eastern Europe rather than the more advanced industrial democracies of Western Europe. This observation stands in stark contrast to the North American experience, where lobbyist regulation emerged as an effort to manage a highly developed class of professional lobbyists within the strictures of long-standing democratic principles. The authors find that the answer to this anomaly lies in the fact that early European lobbyist regulations focused not on transparency as a means to regain public confidence in government, but on providing business interests with access to lawmakers as a means to bolster fledgling economies. This focus on access is quickly giving way to demands for transparency as many European governments, racked by scandal, are striving to salvage the public's trust. Propelled largely by example from a reluctant European Parliament and Commission, which are themselves attempting to convince Europe that a regional government is in its own interest, several European countries are beginning to make a transition from weak systems of lobbyist regulation, which emphasize business access, to strong systems of lobbyist regulation, which emphasize public transparency. In order to discern ‘best’ practices for achieving transparency through lobbying regulation, the authors first chart the regulatory systems of the United States and Canada. That is followed by an analysis of all of the European lobbying regimes. The oft-expressed objection to this new trend toward transparency in Europe – that professional lobbyists view such regulations as overly burdensome – is undercut by research on European and American lobbyists’ attitudes toward regulation, which are generally quite favorable. Like everyone else, lobbyists realize that they have an image problem and that the best way to address that problem is by operating in the broad daylight of public transparency. Finally, the authors offer recommendations on how to enhance transparency in policymaking, drawing from detailed comparisons of the North American and European models of lobbyist regulation.

Revolving door lobbyists and interest representation

Abstract: Although experience inside the halls of power afford lobbyists valuable political, policy and procedural skills that can improve the deliberative process, it also gives them privileged access to former employers that others do not have. Washington’s revolving door evokes legitimate ethical concerns, such as when former legislators resign their seats to take lucrative jobs representing the very industries they regulate. However, social scientists know surprisingly little about the revolving door beyond such sensational, albeit important, cases. To shed more light on the broader phenomenon, we systematically explore the revolving door on a large scale to answer a simple question: Do revolving door lobbyists represent different interests than conventional lobbyists? If, as revolving door proponents imply, these lobbyists work on behalf of organized interests solely for their specialized subject-matter expertise, then we would expect them to represent clienteles that are no different than conventional lobbyists. Alternatively, if they represent a wider variety of economic interests than conventional lobbyists then we assume they are hired more for their ability to get a foot in the door than to serve as policy expert adjuncts to government. Using evidence from original data on the professional biographies of roughly 1600 registered lobbyists – which we link to data from almost 50 000 quarterly Lobbying Disclosure Act reports – we expose a significant transparency loophole in the law. Because lobbyists are not required to continuously disclose their ‘covered official’ status – the statutory definition of revolving door – periodic lobbying disclosure reports effectively hide the revolving door from public scrutiny. Instead, we rely on our more comprehensive information on lobbyists’ connections to previous employers to more accurately measure the size and scope of Washington’s revolving door, and to investigate how these connections affect which interests they represent. We find that revolving door lobbyists have worked mostly in Congress, tend to work as contract lobbyists rather than in-house government-relations staff and are more likely to specialize in lobbying for appropriations earmarks. Then, after controlling for a variety of lobbying specializations, we show that former members of Congress are no more likely than other lobbyists to attract a more economically diverse set of clients than their conventional-lobbyist counterparts. However, congressional staffers who had worked their way up the organizational ladder on Capitol Hill do. We infer that well-connected congressional staffers who spin through the revolving door sell access to key decision makers in Congress, not their industry- or issue-specific technical or substantive expertise. Simply, the revolving door problem is not limited to a handful of headline-catching former legislators, is much bigger than the existing lobbying disclosure regime reveals and – most importantly – significantly distorts the representation of interests before government. The practical implications are clear: lobbying transparency rules, cooling-off periods and other restrictions are insufficient disincentives. Interest group demand for access is simply too strong. We advocate enhancing lobbying transparency by expanding the statutory definitions of lobbying activities, requiring lobbyists to disclose more details about government employment and shifting some of the disclosure burden to democratically accountable government officials themselves.