Abstract
Do interest groups prefer to interact with party political supporters or opponents, and why do they do so? Recent research has provided different explanations and mixed findings for this question, highlighting the role of institutional contexts and differences between interests. Here, we focus on the effects of issue-level factors instead. We hypothesize that higher levels of conflict lead interest groups to lobby both supporters and opponents. Our argument emphasizes that the reason to do so lies in interest groups’ desire to gain or maintain prominence within a policy subsystem, rather than in persuasion attempts. Analyzing quantitative and qualitative data on the lobbying targets for 80 Dutch interest groups on more than 300 issues, we find support for our theoretical claims. When the level of conflict is high, prominence often trumps persuasion. These findings suggest that interest groups, by contacting many different parties, can contribute to policy making in positive ways.
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Notes
Additionally, the power of US policymakers has been identified as another factor shaping lobbying patterns in Congress (Hojnacki and Kimball 1998, 1999; Kingdon 1989; Wright 1990). Legislators’ power, however, is considered an additional—rather than a moderating or mediating—factor that leaves the initial relationship between positional alignment and lobbying activity intact.
Naturally, there are other characteristics that issues differ on, such as the distinction between distributive, redistributive, and regulatory issues (Lowi 1964) or their technical complexity (e.g., Dür 2008; Dür and De Bièvre 2007; Klüver 2013). However, we think that these distinctions are of secondary importance when explaining interest group decisions on whom to lobby, as their impact on the exchange relationship between groups and parties is unclear. For example, providing legislative subsidy is relevant irrespective of the type and complexity of an issue.
We find that this measure is correlated with a number alternative specifications of party polarization; more specifically, these are measurements based on linking our issues to party manifesto data following Klüver (2018), or on the (partial) information on party positions as provided by our interview respondents. However, we consider our measurement the most valid one, given that these alternative operationalizations bring a number of additional conceptual and empirical challenges, for instance, related to the dimensionality of the policy conflict.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the stimulating research environment provided by the Agendas and Interest Groups project. In particular we would like to thank Amy McKay, Beth Leech, Patrick Bernhagen, and Adam Chalmers for their inspiring discussions throughout the project. Great research assistance for this article was provided by Max Joosten, Anne Poolman, Vincenzo Gomes, and Robin Verheij.
Funding
Funding was provided by Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Open Research Area Grant No. 464-15-148).
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Statsch, P., Berkhout, J. Lobbying and policy conflict: explaining interest groups’ promiscuous relationships to political parties. Int Groups Adv 9, 1–20 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41309-019-00072-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41309-019-00072-x