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Interest group strategies and policy involvement: Does the context matter? Evidence from Southern Europe

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Abstract

This study examines interest groups’ involvement in the policymaking process by asking the following questions: Which political and non-political actors do interest groups target? What are the attitudinal and behavioral components of their strategy? We focus on new Southern European democracies that have been understudied in terms of interest group politics. Based on an original cross-national survey administered in Greece, Portugal and Spain, with responses from approximately 600 interest groups, this study argues that the attitudinal and behavioral dimensions are partially distinct components that need to be distinguished. The findings show that although groups mainly target governmental actors to defend their interests, parties are still considered important intermediaries to influence public policies. Moreover, organizational resources are the most significant explanatory factors that shape the relations between organized interests and policymakers, while cross-country differences do not seem to be of great relevance.

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Notes

  1. It is important to clarify the meaning of the terms political and non-political actors used herein. The first group includes the institutional actors that play a key role in the parliamentary or governmental arena, while the second encompasses civil servants and actors belonging to civil society. This distinction is therefore different from the insider versus outsider categorization.

  2. New Southern European democracies refer to those polities that established a democratic regime during the third wave of democratization, in the mid-1970s. Therefore, they include Greece, Portugal and Spain. This allows us to distinguish these late democratizers vis-à-vis Italy, which experienced a completely different trajectory.

  3. In the case of media, we only rely on the attitudinal dimension, as the survey does not include a similar item for the frequency of contacts developed by interest groups.

  4. See also the projects EUROLOB II (http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/projekte/eurolob/homepage.html) and INTERURO (http://www.intereuro.eu/public/).

  5. For the purpose of defining our sample, we follow Rasmussen and Lindeboom’s (2013, p. 264) definition of interest groups: ‘an association of individuals or organizations, usually formally organized, that on the basis of one or more shared concerns, attempts to influence public policy.’

  6. Interest group members are older in Spain, and the groups have an average of 20 employees and 4 external consultants. In the whole sample, the membership fee corresponds to 53% of their revenues, public subsidies are roughly 22% and only 9% are associated to European funds. Descriptive statistics for the dependent and independent variables are included in “Appendix.”

  7. In particular, the variable of ‘traditional issue’ groups includes the following categories: energy, economics, transportation, social policies, agriculture, labor and health. The ‘new politics’ groups includes immigration, gender, environment, culture, consumer and citizens’ rights and human rights. The exact wording of the question is as follows: ‘In which areas is your organization involved?’ Respondents are then asked to specify whether the organizations are very involved or only somewhat involved. We only tap those responses related to a high level of involvement. Unfortunately, the surveys did not include a variable directly gauging the type of interest groups (e.g., business groups, trade unions, etc.) due to the need to protect anonymity.

  8. The factor analysis for the attitudinal component is displayed in “Appendix” (see Table 8).

  9. The results presented in this section are also consistent when we use two different indices built in line with the principal component analysis as the dependent variable. The full results are displayed in “Appendix.”

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), by a grant within the framework of the project ‘From Representation to Legitimacy: Political Parties and Interest Groups in Southern Europe’ (PTDC/IVC-CPO/1864/2014). João Loureiro also acknowledges FCT for supporting the research with an individual doctoral grant (SFRH/BD/147659/2019). The authors would like to thank the two anynomous reviewers for valuable comments on earlier versions of this article.

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  1. Department of Political Studies, Nova University of Lisbon, Av. de Berna, 26-C, 1069-061, Lisbon, Portugal

    Marco Lisi

  2. ISCTE-IUL, Av. das Forças Armadas, Lisbon, Portugal

    João Loureiro

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Appendix

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Table 7 Descriptive statistics (group resources).
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7,

Table 8 Components of importance of political actors in Southern Europe.
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8 and 9.

Table 9 Regression analysis by country
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Lisi, M., Loureiro, J. Interest group strategies and policy involvement: Does the context matter? Evidence from Southern Europe. Int Groups Adv 11, 109–135 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41309-021-00145-w

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