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The Scale of Interest Organization in Democratic Politics pp 141–160Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Tracking Interest Group Populations in the US and the UK

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Part of the Interest Groups, Advocacy and Democracy Series book series (IGAD)

Abstract

Using the entries in the US-based Encyclopedia of Associations and the UK Directory of British Associations,1 this chapter reviews the growth and development of the associational universe in two political systems. The cases have been coded according to two separate national typologies, but to aid comparison the UK data have been recoded to use the US system, which in turn uses categories from those in the Policy Agendas Project (www.policyagendas.org; www.policyagendas.org.uk). The chapter attempts to get a handle on the broad scale of the national associational populations in the UK and the US. The associational data are seen as a proxy for the respective national interest group systems. Beyond that, the projects have tried to map how the overall numbers are responding sector by sector to conflicting pressures of expansion and reduction. Overall the exercises sought to test the widespread assumptions that the interest group systems in each country were dense and complex – and becoming increasingly so on both counts. However, the chapter identifies two slightly different conventional wisdoms. One is about group-level explosion and the second is about variation by subcategory of the whole.

Keywords

  • Interest Group
  • Public Affair
  • Trade Association
  • American Political Science Review
  • British Association

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Authors
  1. Grant Jordan
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  2. Frank R. Baumgartner
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  3. John D. McCarthy
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  4. Shaun Bevan
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  5. Jamie Greenan
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark

    Darren Halpin

  2. Emeritus Professor, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Aberdeen, UK

    Grant Jordan

Copyright information

© 2012 Grant Jordan, Frank R. Baumgartnerm John D. McCarthy, Shaun Bevan, and Jamie Greenan

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Cite this chapter

Jordan, G., Baumgartner, F.R., McCarthy, J.D., Bevan, S., Greenan, J. (2012). Tracking Interest Group Populations in the US and the UK. In: Halpin, D., Jordan, G. (eds) The Scale of Interest Organization in Democratic Politics. Interest Groups, Advocacy and Democracy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230359239_7

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