Towards energy policy corporatism in Central and Eastern Europe?

This paper contributes to our understanding of interest intermediation structures in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and, specifically, whether, which, how and to what extent organized interests are incorporated into policy-making processes. Unlike previous studies primarily focusing on patterns of economic coordination (Jahn 2016), we focus on energy policy-making in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. We address the extent to which these energy interest intermediation systems are gravitating towards a more corporatist policy-making paradigm and whether corporatist arrangements have been dismantled in view of the new wave of national conservatism in CEE. We offer a complex operationalization of corporatism based on concrete indicators and present the results of a survey of energy interest groups operating in the region. It covers questions regarding interest intermediation between the organized interests and the government, regulatory authorities as well as the degree of policy coordination and political exchange with the state and between rivalling organizations, enabling us to derive a “corporatism score” for each national institutional setting and discuss them in the light of Jahn’s (2016) corporatism rankings for the region. We show that—despite striking differences—at least rudimentary corporatist interest intermediation structures have emerged with some variations of pluralism and statism in all four countries.


Introduction
To what extent are organized interests given a voice in post-communist policy-making and how? This article focuses on the interactions between civil society organizations and the state in the energy sector. Have corporatist platforms emerged to promote social partnership between business and environmental groups, and between "clean" and "dirty" energy associations? Do rivalling interest groups consult regularly with the state and one another? Or is post-communist energy policy-making characterized by a pluralist "free-for-all" or, alternatively, a top-down, technocratic state-centred logic?
Energy is a highly relevant policy area in CEE and beyond due to the importance of secure, affordable and environmentally friendly energy. However, postcommunist countries generally share a legacy of environmental neglect and inefficient energy usage, as reflected in their cautious or opposing stance to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's Green Deal (European Commission 2019). While the transformation and European integration processes along with the bankruptcy of many energy-intensive industries indeed resulted in a reduction of usage, CEE is still characterized by dependence on domestic coal and Russian gas, high pollution levels and underdeveloped renewables sectors (Aalto et al. 2017;Binhack and Tichý 2012). Thus, most CEE countries find themselves in a difficult balance aiming to promote renewable, safe and diversified energy sources, while also preventing mass unemployment through rapid de-carbonization. Against this background, the support of major interest organizations may be a crucial prerequisite for facilitating energy transitions and implementing reforms. However, heavy dependence on import supply, worries over energy dependence and security, and the gargantuan task of modernizing relatively backward infrastructures may require heavy state steering of energy policy to the detriment of civic society interests.
Not least due to high employment in the sector (Frantál and Malý 2017), energy and its immediate ramifications for the environment and economic viability of CEE present a crucial case for examining the complexities of post-communist governance and advocacy patterns. Instead of looking at concrete policies, we focus on the structures and forms of energy interest intermediation in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia. We first introduce our theoretical framework derived from three ideal-types of state-interest group relations-corporatism, pluralism and statism-and discuss existing analyses of state-interest group relations in the region. We then briefly explore the growing literature on "energy corporatism" before deriving a series of indicators to better grasp this phenomenon in CEE. Based on a largescale standardized survey, we present our results in Sect. 4. 1 Drawing also on interviews and secondary literature, we conclude with an "energy corporatism score" for all countries in Sect. 5. Despite having used different metrics and survey-based data, we discuss our findings for energy in the light of Jahn's (2016) country rankings for economic corporatism.

State of the art
While scholars have made some headway in addressing corporatist interest intermediation in post-communist economic policy-making (Jahn 2016;Avdagic 2005;Olejnik 2020;Ost 2000), advocacy patterns in other areas remain largely underresearched. Corporatism is a standard analytical paradigm in political science, which grasps systematized negotiations between major social partners. Corporatist systems generally enable the institutionalized integration of privileged organized interests in policy-making and implementation (Christiansen et al. 2010). The term originally emerged from the idea that society should be organized by corporate groups and associations (e.g. agricultural, scientific, economic, etc.) to promote social harmony. After World War II, Western European Christian and social democrats, in particular, pushed for policies based on institutionalized tripartite (or bipartite 2 ) negotiations between the state and employers' and employees' associations. These emerging forms of "neo-corporatism" 3 (Schmitter and Streeck 1985) often resulted in the partial self-management of social spheres by social partners. Such systems strongly contrasted with pluralist systems traditionally characterized by diverse and competing interests which essentially engage against each other in an open battle for influence.
Targeted efforts to balance rivalling socio-economic interests increasingly attracted the interest of political scientists (Korpi 1985). Schmitter (1974), for example, defined corporatism as a system of interest representation for linking organized interests of civil society with state decision-makers. This coincides with other interpretations highlighting the consensus orientation of corporatist arrangements. For example, Woldendorp describes corporatism as "any form of cooperation between the state and socio-economic interest groups aimed at forging consensus over socioeconomic government policies" (1997,(49)(50). Accordingly, Müller-Jentsch (1999) emphasizes the idea of "conflict partnership", whereby the state facilitates compromises by intervening between rivalling organizations. Yet, seen critically, corporatist arrangements may also result in the marginalization of poorly organized or specialized social groups and issues. Schmitter (1989) later addressed this point himself. He highlights that representation monopolies for certain interest organizations are generally crucial ingredients of corporatism, which often go hand in hand with official recognition by the state and/or a semi-public status. Siaroff (1999) was one of the first to lay out concrete empirically measurable indicators of corporatism. Defining (economic) corporatism as the "[…] co-ordinated, co-operative, and systematic management of the national economy by the 2 Bipartite constellations with either the absence of the state or bilateral negotiations between the state and business or social welfare groups also have existed in some countries and policy areas (e.g. between Dutch social partners without the government in the 1980s; see Woldendorp and Delsen 2008). 3 Corporatism also referred to authoritarian state-industry pacts in Fascist Italy aimed at boosting industrial production (Gagliardi 2016). Thus, the term "neo-corporatism" became more common in the 1960s and 1970s in distinction from pre-existing non-democratic corporatist policy-making patterns. In line with mainstream political science literature (Jahn 2016;Siaroff 1999), we stick to the general term corporatism, while offering insights into country-specific "nuances" of energy-related corporatism in Sect. 5. state, centralised unions, and employers […], presumably to the relative benefit of all three actors" (Siaroff 1999, 177), he spells out 22 components of corporatism in economic policy. These span from strong unionization (with relatively few unions), institutionalized business and labour input into policy-making, their mutual recognition as social partners, to the prevalence of tripartite agreements and consensus-oriented policy-making. 4 However, Jahn (2016) points out that Siaroff (1999) somewhat convolutes the characteristics and/or outcomes of corporatism (e.g. small open economies, high social expenditures and successful economic performance). Jahn not only aimed to remedy these deficits, but also included-for the first timenumerous CEE countries in his "corporatism" ranking for the time period 1960 to 2010 5 : He spells out three components of corporatism: structure, i.e. peak organizations negotiating for their members; function, i.e. arrangements where governments intervene in wage bargaining, whereby unions are heavily involved in governmental decision-making; and scope, i.e. the coordination of wage bargaining and applicability of collective agreements to wider spheres of society. Based on these indicators, Poland and Hungary (along with slightly more corporatist Romania and Bulgaria) were ranked very low among 42 OECD countries, albeit somewhat higher than the USA, Canada and UK.

Previous work on post-communist interest intermediation
Aside from the special case of Slovenia (see Stanojević 2011), the collapse of communism generally heralded the at least partial collapse of trade unions and institutionalized policy coordination with them. Trade unions and other organized interests generally proved unable to mobilize public support. Interest groups, many of which were appendages of the communist party, were often viewed with mistrust, resulting in comparatively low associational membership and political participation (Kostelka 2014).
Nevertheless, in the aftermath of communism, reform-oriented governments aimed to promote social dialogue, appear more responsive to civil society and manage social divisions. Thus, multiple new platforms for tripartism and civil society engagement emerged in CEE (Ost 2000), a trend likely reinforced by the desire to conform to western European norms (Falkner 2000). However, Ost (2000) shows that such consultative institutions generally failed to fulfil their intended function and instead evolved into informal "pseudo-corporatist" meeting places. Organized labour unions were often affiliated with state-owned enterprises, many of which underwent privatization, while others proved unable to adapt to the new service economy. Thus, instead of functional Scandinavian or western European-style corporatism, CEE interest intermediation systems-at least in economic policy-making-were characterized by "illusorily corporatist" structures (ibid.), which often served to justify (neo-liberal) governmental policy, instead of effectively balancing rivalling interests of social partners.
Recently, Olejnik (2020) took Ost's argument a step further with regard to the current "illiberal" Polish and Hungarian governments (Sata and Karolewski 2020). He classifies them as "patronage corporatist" to the extent that they purportedly actively divide organized interests into allies required for reaching political objectives and hostile organizations lacking the "necessary moral authority to advocate for the interests of the citizenry" (Olejnik 2020, 184). Accordingly, governments tend to only engage in political consultations and exchange with social partners with coinciding interests, many of whom often receive government funding, while rivalling organizations are actively discredited and combatted (Olejnik 2020).

Energy policy corporatism
The above considerations are restricted to socio-economic policy and tell us little about interest representation elsewhere. Other policy areas such as healthcare (Haarmann et al. 2010), education (Dobbins 2014) or energy/environmental policy may also be characterized by corporatist structures. In a study of Finland and Sweden, for example, Hukkinen (1998) introduced the term "environmental corporatism" that refers to the systemic integration of conflicting socio-political interests in environmental policy-making institutions. In a more recent study of the same countries' energy policies, Gronow et al. (2019) argue that corporatist policy-making is characterized by inclusiveness, consensualism, tripartism and broad participation in decision-making. Thus, central to corporatist energy and climate policies is that power is not concentrated in the hands of the executive or state institutions (ibid. 2019). This roughly falls in line with Jänicke's (2007) understanding of "environmental corporatism" as being driven by dialogue and consensus between diverse actors and balancing diffuse and concentrated interests, i.e. business/producers and civic consumer/environmental groups. Partially interrelated with these debates is the term "energy democracy" introduced by Szulecki (2018), a mode of policy-making aiming to bring in well-informed organized stakeholders and ordinary citizens to cooperatively decide upon the development of energy policy in contrast to classical technocratic decision-making by governments.
Measurements of socio-economic corporatism such as those of Siaroff (1999) have also been used as independent variables to explain energy and environmental policy success (Fiorino 2011;Koch and Fritz 2014). For example, Jahn (1998) found that corporatist arrangements have strong positive implications for the environmental performance of a country. Szarka (2000) showed how corporatist intermediation proved useful to governments to accommodate pressures from special interests, while Christoff and Eckersley (2011) argue that corporatist structures enable the resolution of collective action problems among otherwise potentially irreconcilable interests and advocacy groups (2011). Hence corporatism may play into ecological modernization by bringing together diverse actors and promoting a common understanding of energy and environmental issues (see Zannakis 2009).
Against this background, we strive for several innovations in this article. First, we build on and apply various existing concepts of interest intermediation to develop concrete empirical indicators of "energy corporatism". Our second main ambition is to comparatively analyse a large-scale survey of energy-related organizations operating in four post-communist countries to gauge their level of energy corporatism. Third, we wish to contribute to the ongoing discussion on energy corporatism. Where do CEE countries stand in terms of stakeholder engagement (for general debates on civic organizations in CEE, see Howard 2003;Foa and Ekiert 2017) and does energy interest intermediation reflect general country-specific (corporatist or non-corporatist) intermediation patterns (Jahn 2016)? Or does energy policy constitute a special case of interest advocacy driven by a logic of its own?

Methodological approach
To develop an integrated framework, we first analytically distinguish corporatism from two contrasting concepts: pluralism and statism. Pluralism is characterized by the existence of diverse and competing interests operating in organizationally fragmented and less integrated interest intermediation systems (Christiansen et al. 2010). Instead of power being vested in "peak associations", heterogeneous organizations compete to effectively articulate their demands towards the state. Interests are brought to bear by unstable and fleeting alliances between advocacy groups. While pluralist systems may offer numerous avenues for interest group participation, there are generally few institutionalized consultation platforms to balance rivalling interests. Thus, interest groups usually operate outside the government through political pressure, personal contacts with actors or by parliamentary lobbying (Wilson 1983, 897). Generally, there are numerous pathways for stakeholder engagement, but there is no guaranteed place at the negotiation table. In statist systems, by contrast, private interest and advocacy groups are mainly viewed as a disturbance. Instead, a strong, technocratically operating executive generally dominates policy-making without regularly consulting non-governmental stakeholders (Woll 2009). While there may be some kind of alliance between the government and certain advocacy organizations, most likely large energy providers in this case, there is no guarantee for them or other stakeholders (e.g. consumers, environmental activists, etc.) to directly shape policy.
To demarcate corporatism from these two contrasting paradigms, we bind together the above considerations and define several "ingredients" of energy corporatism. In economic policy and beyond, corporatism usually entails the transfer of policy-making away from parliament and a high level of self-management and co-responsibility vested in "peak organizations". Streeck and Kenworthy (2005) call this the structural dimension of corporatism, which can result in the marginalization of smaller, more specialized, or newly emerging interest organizations. The functional dimension of corporatism (ibid.) sees for strong political coordination and exchange. As shown above, corporatist arrangements are also characterized by a distinct consensus orientation and relatively equal representation of diffuse groups pushing for non-exclusive public goods such as clean air and water (i.e. ecological groups) and concentrated (business) interests seeking private benefits (i.e. energy producers) (Olson 1965). Corporatist constellations also exhibit mechanisms for policy coordination between rivalling interests.
To grasp these aspects, we conducted an online survey of all national-level energy-related organizations in Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and the Czech Republic between March 2019 and April 2020. The survey included numerous open and closed questions regarding interactions between interest groups and governments, regulatory authorities as well as policy coordination with the state and between rivalling organizations. We received 118 responses in total (see Table 1 below for response rates). While the survey offers the advantage of authentic insights directly from policy-makers, the disadvantage is that it only provides a snapshot of the situation in 2019-2020, which is our baseline for the empirical analysis. We also conducted numerous interviews with interest groups and experts and analyzed official data on existing institutionalized tripartite dialogue bodies as well as unionism in general.
Regarding the functional dimension, we identify two main ingredients: institutionalized inclusion of organized interests into policy-making, reflecting their strong culture of consultation and deliberation with the state, as well as consensus-oriented relations between organized interests. To grasp this, we asked all organizations about their perception of policy coordination and the intensity of consultation with state actors, which we broke down into the executive/ministries and (presumably less politicized) energy regulators (see below). How would you rate the level of policy coordination/political exchange between the state and your interest group? (1-very weak, 2-weak, 3moderate, 4-strong, 5-very strong) Approximately how often does your organization consult with regulatory authorities in your sector? (1-never, 2-annually, 3-biannually, 4monthly, 5-weekly) Furthermore, we are interested in the stability of interest intermediation over time and asked (separately): Approximately how many times does the present / previous government consult interest groups in your sector? (1-never, 2-annually, 3-biannually, 4-monthly, 5-weekly) A high degree of continuity spanning beyond different governing coalitions indicates relatively stable interest intermediation arrangements and that governments are not just consulting their temporarily preferred interest groups. This aspect comes into play, in particular, with Hungary and Poland, but arguably also with the Czech Republic (Hanley and Vachudova 2018), which, according to various observers, have been affected by "democratic backsliding" in the 2010s (Sata and Karolewski 2020). Hence, the questions simultaneously enable us to explore Olejnik's (2020) argument about "patronage corporatism" under "illiberal" governments.
To address the second ingredient of the functional dimension, namely consensus-oriented relations between organized interests, we first asked two questions: Do you think that opportunities for participation in the policy process are equally distributed among interest organizations? (1-very much to the favor of other organizations, 2-somewhat to the favor of other organizations, 3-equally distributed, 4-somewhat to the favor of our organization, 5-very much to the favor of our organization) As corporatism generally entails strong political exchange and coordination between rivalling interests instead of open political competition, we asked: Approximately how often does your organization consult with interest groups representing opposing interests in your area of activity? (1-never, 2-annually, 3-biannually, 4-monthly, 5-weekly) We identified three main "ingredients" for the structural dimension: the transfer of policy-making away from parliament, existence of a regular interest intermediation body devoted to energy-related issues, and a representation monopoly for certain encompassing organizations (see Sect. 4.2. for the operationalization).

Analysis
We apply a most similar cases design. The countries are similar regarding a wide range of variables (e.g. post-communist democracies, new market economies, middle-income countries, EU members). Their energy mixes are also very similar despite some notable variation regarding the share of coal, natural gas and nuclear energy (Fig. 1).
Yet they differ starkly on several decisive characteristics for interest group politics such as election funding, lobbying regulations and economic coordination. The Czech Republic is an open market economy with privately funded elections and weaker lobbying regulations (Šimral et al. 2015;McGrath 2008), and thus potentially more penetrable for organized interests. Poland also is a relatively liberal market economy. However, elections are publicly funded, and extensive lobbying regulations exist, which may stymie the influence of interest groups (McGrath 2008). Hungary exhibits stronger market coordination (Tarlea 2017;Duman and Kureková 2012), whereby elections are publicly funded. Since 2010, however, lobbying is only loosely regulated (Laboutková et al. 2020; European Union, European Commission, Justice and Consumers 2020). 6 Slovenia is the most coordinated market economy in CEE (Avdagic and Crouch 2006;Bohle and Greskovits 2012). Regulatory controls over lobbying, party funding and electoral campaigns are comparatively weak, hence providing an interesting polar opposite case to Poland. As hinted above, our countries also differ regarding their level of economic corporatism, with Slovenia being the clear forerunner (8th place out of 42), Czechia trailing far behind (29th of 42) and Hungary (35th of 42) and Poland (37th of 42) demonstrating some of the lowest scores in CEE and the OECD according to Jahn (2016). Despite very different methodology, 7 our analysis enables us to discern whether energy policy intermediation reflects general country-specific interest intermediation patterns or presents a special case of sectoral corporatism.
Our response rates by country and group type are displayed in Table 1, 8 although it is important to note that we succeeded in receiving responses from nearly all major energy-related organized interests (e.g. large environmental/consumer groups, large energy employees unions, energy distributors unions, etc.). 9 To grasp patterns of interest intermediation, we grouped the responding organizations so as to reflect the specifics of the sector. We first aggregated scores for all organizations, umbrella and non-umbrella organizations. The logic behind this is that in the corporatist paradigm, the state generally engages with a few intermediary associations with an encompassing or umbrella character, often resulting in representation monopolies. In the pluralist paradigm, smaller organizations may instead exploit their organizational features (e.g. greater internal homogeneity) to access policy-makers.
We then broke down all organizations into area-specific groups, i.e. renewables organizations, traditional fossil fuel and nuclear organizations, green civic movements, employers' and employees' organizations. Due to the multiple goals and foci of various energy organizations, we allowed for double classifications (e.g. renewables or fossil fuel organizations that represent employers were included in both groups). Using 20% as a baseline 10 we also created a list of government-funded 7 Jahn's analysis is based on a rank ordering derived from intense database and desk research and focuses on changes over time; our ranking is based primarily on survey responses, reflecting mainly the current status quo. 8 Organizations were contacted up to 3 times by e-mail and up to 2 times by phone. 6 Largely regarded as a failure, the 2006 Act on Lobbying Activities aiming to provide a tightly regulated lobbying-framework was abolished in 2010 and substituted with the two regulations in 2010 and 2013, respectively (Laboutková et al. 2020). 9 With the exception of some large Polish coal-mining unions. 10 We stick to 20% as it constitutes a significant share of organizations' budgets, greatly affecting their capacity to act. Also, the 20% cut-off is a logical baseline due to the dispersion of our gathered data (i.e. few borderline cases such as 18-19% or 21-22%). Towards energy policy corporatism in Central and Eastern…  Olejnik's (2020) argument that illiberal governments are giving incentives and privileges to certain organizations in exchange for political support. The government-funded group also included organizations who reported regularly receiving more than 20% from national governments or the EU cumulatively. The logic for this is that most EU funds for advocacy organizations are allocated by national and regional governments (European Union 2020). Unfortunately, we lack data on the extent to which the responding organized interests operate on behalf of state-owned businesses, but will address this issue later. We begin with the perceived level of policy coordination with the state.

Functional dimension of corporatism
Most groups of organizations rate coordination with the state (functional aspect of corporatism) as weak (Fig. 2). In Hungary though, there indeed seems to be a significant degree of policy coordination between the state and selected organizations, most notably traditional energy providers and traders (fossil/nuclear) and energy employers' organizations. However, numerous renewable energy organizations also reported a meaningful of degree of coordination. Hence, there does not seem to be a major bias towards traditional fossil or nuclear energy. In the Czech Republic, the gap between "clean" and traditional energy associations is much larger. Another difference is the assessment of employers vs. employees: while in the Czech Republic there appears to be a slight bias towards employers' associations, the bias towards employers is much more distinct in Hungary. This also applies to Poland, where employees' groups generally report low coordination. In Slovenia, which is otherwise regarded as a "corporatist superstar" in CEE (Jahn 2016), the level of energy policy coordination with the state is strikingly low across the board. At least for this indicator, we also find no substantial evidence of closer ties between governments and government-funded organizations in the countries most affected by "democratic backsliding" (Hungary and Poland).
Hungarian and Slovenian energy organizations mainly shy away from consultations with parties (see Figs. 5 and 6) and are much more involved in consultations with energy regulators (Fig. 3). We see a clear bias towards consultations with energy employers over employees, with the exception of Slovenia. Green/civic environmental advocacy organizations in all four countries are largely excluded from consultations with energy regulators, again shedding doubt on the political clout of looser civil society groups.
Despite the reality of changes in the levels of corporatism over time due to partisan politics and/or political-economic developments (Jahn 2016), we assume that corporatist interest intermediation arrangements are-at least ideally-envisioned to be stable over time, irrespective of the present national political-economic and partisan context. Therefore, we compared the intensity of consultations between the present governments (Poland = the moderately national-conservative PiS government, 2015-present; Hungary = the strongly national-conservative For Poland, we find a relatively stable level of consultations, yet a clear boost for renewables and green/civic organizations under the PiS government. This is again rather remarkable considering its general pro-coal stance (Fig. 4). We also see no evidence for the argument that government-funded groups are favoured.

Fig. 3 Consultations with regulatory authorities
Regarding Hungary (Fig. 5), we do find a marginal decline in the intensity of consultations between the previous socialist-liberal and the Orbán governments affecting nearly all groups of organizations, and in particular energy employees' organizations. However, renewable business organizations appear to be consulted more often and the advocates of "dirty" energies less often than by the previous government.
In Slovenia (Fig. 6), all groups of energy organizations (excluding traditional energy sources) consult more often with the centre-left government (up to March 2020). We also find the first evidence of favouritism towards state-funded organizations, albeit contrary to our expectation as Slovenia is the country in our sample least affected by "democratic backsliding". However, Slovenia stands out from the other countries as, according to our data, only green/civic and renewable energy groups benefit from generous government support. This points to a recent upgrading of the position of regenerative energies in stakeholder engagement forums in Slovenia.
In Czechia (Fig. 7), the current Babiš government also appears to allow for more consultations than the previous Social-Democratic led coalition which also included his party, the liberal Ano. Unlike Slovenia though, no explicit preference is given to organizations representing different sources of energy, as organizations representing fossil and renewable energy as well as green and civic organizations exhibit similar levels of access today as with the previous government.
As for the distribution of opportunities for participation (Fig. 8), in Poland, employers see themselves at a relative advantage, again reflecting the weak position of labour in the region. This coincides with the Hungarian results, according to which energy employees also see themselves strongly disadvantaged, whereby employers' associations as well as green and renewables business organizations perceive a level playing field. Polish coal and fossil groups explicitly noted that they see their dominance in the sector threatened by the renewables sector and generous EU funding for environmental groups.
Slovenian energy organizations, by contrast, are not as optimistic. They mainly see a bias towards other organizations, while employers, fossil/nuclear as well as non-umbrella organizations perceive opportunities as relatively equally distributed. Umbrella organizations mostly perceive themselves as disadvantaged in comparison with other energy organizations. This is an interesting insight as, in contrast with the corporatist paradigm, it sheds doubt on a fixed position of large encompassing organizations in Slovenian energy policy-making. Instead, it points to a dynamic competition between numerous smaller organizations.
Finally, do rivalling energy organizations consult and coordinate with one another?
The Czech Republic stands out with the most frequent consultations with rivalling organizations (e.g. employers/employees; traditional/regenerative energy groups), pointing to a certain degree of policy coordination (Fig. 9). Slovenia scores as a relative laggard. Hungary appears more corporatist, at least on this indicator, as umbrella groups as well as employees and employers report frequently engaging with each other. For Poland, we find that at least employers and employees frequently consult with one another. Numerous employers' and employees' organizations reported their frequent presence in the Rada Dialogu Społecznego (Social Dialogue Council-RDS). Yet as shown below (Fig. 10), the parliament remains the central interest intermediation arena.

Structural dimension of corporatism
Now we further explore the forums in which consultations take place. Is decisionmaking is transferred away from the parliament? Do intermediate coordination bodies exist? And do certain groups hold representation monopolies within them and elsewhere? To assess whether the organizations tend to engage in parliamentary lobbying, which is less typical of corporatist systems, we asked: How would you describe your level of participation in parliamentary hearings/ parliamentary committees?
Clearly, Polish organizations are most active in the parliament, whereas Hungarian and Slovenian organizations score very low on this indicator (Fig. 10). In Czechia, fossil and nuclear as well as renewable groups enjoy better parliamentary access, while in Hungary it is green and civic organizations. This again hints at their exclusion from more exclusive state-centred decision-making structures under Orbán.
Altogether though, our approach up to now bears significant disadvantages. Most importantly, while aggregating organizations into groups makes it possible to outline broader differences between countries and types of organizations, it does not allow us to identify specific organizations frequently engaged in political consultations. In other words, the aggregate scores of diverse organizations by type may water down the impact of outliers, i.e. organizations with "representation monopolies". Moreover, the already presented data only partially reveal in which channels policy-makers engage with energy stakeholders. Hence, we still do not know what exact organizations governments talk to frequently, where they talk to them and how these patterns of interactions vary by country.
To overcome these difficulties and better grasp the structural dimension of corporatism, we took two further steps. We first drew on open survey responses and interviews and analyzed secondary literature to understand the overall institutional set-up. Then we calculated organization-specific variables for consultation frequency to gauge for potential "representation monopolies". To do so, we aggregated all scores for all organizations for the frequency of "government consultations", and "consultations with regulatory authorities" into one score per each organization. We gave organizations engaging with annual consultations with governments and regulatory authorities one point each, for biannual consultations two points, for monthly consultations 12 points and for weekly consultations 52 points each to roughly reflect the approximate frequency of actual consultations. As agreed with survey respondents, the names of the organizations were anonymized (see Figs. 11,12,13 and 14).

Czech Republic: Energy consultation forums and share by organizations
Distinct types of associations varying in importance, functions and power engage in Czech energy policy-making, including economic and trade associations, representing both regenerative and traditional energy sources, as well as environmental is the leading ministry deciding on energy policy issues together with ČEZ, a major electric power distribution company. Organizations representing labour and capital are merged into one association, the Confederation of Industry of the Czech Republic (Svaz průmyslu a dopravy České Republiky, SP ČR) to collectively harmonize and represent heterogeneous socio-economic interests. It is likely the strongest and most influential as well as richest employers' organization in the Czech Republic with more than 1500 corporations as. Then, there are ideational groups-environmental associations (e.g. Czech Union for Nature Conservation (Český svaz ochránců přírody, ČSOP). The state essentially also operates as an interest advocate, as it owns the main energy providers (Fuller 2003; see also Kubin 2021).
Considering the self-assessed shares of consultations, organizations dealing with renewable energies and environmental protection organizations appear to have a significant degree of consultation power. Also, the traditional energy organizations, here industrial organizations, suppliers, engineers and power-plant workers, are equally frequently consulted organizations. Hence, a broad range of actors appear to consult governing bodies, reflecting a plurality of interests in Czech energy policymaking. Instead of representation monopolies, we see somewhat of an equilibrium between numerous employees and business organizations, most notably SP ČR, as well as traditional and renewable energy associations. Subsequently, an important channel for dialogue is the Council of Economic and Social Agreement (RHSD) founded in 1990, which enables trade unions and employers' associations to consult the state (Navrátil and Pospíšil 2014, 33). Informally it is called "Tripartita" and the ministry as well as the Confederation of Industry regularly discuss energy-related issues at this platform. However, there is no explicit working group on energyrelated issues.
Despite this relative balance of interests between renewables and traditional energy groups (without a formal interest intermediation platform) (see Fig. 12), our interviewees explicitly pointed to the existence of a formidable state-industry alliance to the detriment renewable energy groups. Initial consultation and policy formulation tends to take place behind closed doors with large industrial groups and without public participation. Only later are anti-nuclear voices and pro-renewable voices heard, 11 enabling them to fine-tune already predetermined policies (a series of Interviews with Nuclear Energy and Renewable Orgs in Czechia conducted in 2018).

Hungary: energy consultation forums and share of consultations
Hungarian energy policy-making appears to be weaker on the pluralism and corporatism dimension than the Czech Republic. First, as shown above and unlike the Czech case, the parliament is not a major forum for interest advocacy. Second, fewer environmental protection and energy conservation interest groups exist (see Labanino et al. 2020), while economic associations are more numerous. Among trade associations, the Hungarian Industry Association (Magyar Iparszövetség, OKISZ) is the largest organization, while numerous gas, oil, mining and heating organizations are also key players. Third, and most importantly, tripartism has been on the decline in Hungary. As early as 1988, the National Interest Reconciliation Council (Országos Érdekegyeztető Tanács, OÉT) was set up by the last communist government as a peak, national-level interest intermediation forum, which was reinforced by the first democratic government (e.g. the budget and tax laws had to be first introduced there, it set the minimum wage). The first Orbán government between 1998 and 2002 already significantly weakened tripartism, but its reforms were reversed by the subsequent socialist-liberal coalition government. However, after winning a landslide victory in 2010, Orbán effectively ended tripartite social dialogue in Hungary. The OÉT was dissolved and a new, national-level consultative body was formed in which government representatives are merely observers. For the private sector, nevertheless, a new tripartite, albeit also consultative forum was set up in February 2012, the Permanent Consultation Forum of the Private Sector and the Government (VKF-Versenyszféra és a Kormány Állandó Konzultációs Fóruma) (Labanino 2020).
We do see in Fig. 12, however, that a multitude of organizations consult state institutions, albeit with a somewhat greater level of selectivity than in the Czech Republic. A major heat supplier's umbrella organization accounts for nearly onefifth of all consultations, while other suppliers' organizations representing mainly traditional energy sources (oil, gas, nuclear) are also highly present. As also shown above, employers' organizations are at a clear advantage over employees' organizations under Orbán, where only one energy industry trade union is consulted approximately monthly. Employees' report much better relations with the previous government (see Fig. 5).
This is all reflective of the relatively few channels of influence for Hungarian energy interest groups, in particular green/civic and renewables groups. Consultations appear somewhat skewed towards fossil fuels and industrial groups. While this disproportion is not drastic, it sheds doubt on corporatism in terms of balancing rivalling interests. Numerous respondents also emphasized the statist nature of Hungarian energy policy-making, citing the responsible ministry as the epicentre of policy-making. 12 Instead of grassroots, green civic lobbying, interviewees pointed to strategic alliances between the government and individual large corporations, as shown in Fig. 2, where large employers' organizations are the main addressees for policy coordination.
This observation of strategic arrangements between the government and large corporations is also confirmed by our interviews and review of secondary literature (e.g. Transparency International Hungary 2014). Shut out from government consultations, green civil society groups focus their activities on parliamentary lobbying (see Fig. 10). However, it is unclear whether the ideas of these groups are incorporated into policy, as data are rarely published by authorities and ministries. Thus, existing democratic participative elements have their limits (Interview Nuclear Energy Org-HU 2018). Legislation is generally designed in expert circles by stateowned companies, business organizations and expert groups, thus creating unequal participation opportunities (Interview Green/Civic Org-HU 2018; Aalto et al., 2017). While environmental groups are given space to express themselves to maintain legitimacy, they generally fail to assert their policy ideals (Interview Nuclear Energy Org-HU 2018).

Slovenia: Energy policy forums and share of consultations
On these indicators, Slovenian energy policy-making appears more corporatist despite evidence to the contrary presented above (i.e. the low level of coordination with the state, see Fig. 2). Unlike the Czech Republic and Hungary, our Slovenian informants emphasize that energy policy is coordinated within two tripartite institutions with a specific energy and environmental focus-the ESOE (Economic and Social Council for Energy) and Council of TNP (Triglav National Park). However, most surveyed Slovenian energy organizations reported only occasional participation and also explicitly emphasized their professional and non-political character. This aspect is, in turn, reflected in the higher scores in Fig. 3 regarding consultations with regulatory authorities. While the level of political coordination with the state is the lowest among all four countries, our pie charts show that, to some extent, representation monopolies have emerged and that the consultations are relatively equally spread between green/civic groups promoting environmental sustainability and energy business groups, but also between employers and employees. Specifically, green organizations account for about one-third of all consultations, while energy sector employees are much better represented than in the Czech Republic and Hungary. Thus, for Slovenia, we could not detect any favouritism towards classical "dirty" energy sources (Fig. 13).

Poland: Energy forums and share of consultations
Considering the importance of coal in Poland (Kubin 2021), the strong position of renewables and environmental groups is eye-catching.
Yet in view of the sub-optimal response rate for fossil fuel groups (see Table 1), we checked the legislative archives of the Polish parliament (Sejm), which offers detailed data on consultations regarding all legislation passed since approximately 2015, including information on all invited organized interests. 13 An overview of every energy-or environment-related law largely confirmed our finding that at least renewable business organizations are regularly involved in relevant consultations (Fig. 14), although negotiations are heavily dominated by political party representatives.
Why is this? Our interviewees, first, stressed the importance of informal connections between "dirty" energy groups and party representatives and the purely formal nature of political consultations, which have been stipulated by law since 2015. Most importantly, most energy enterprises in Poland, in particular hard coal and lignite, are state-owned and directly subordinate to the state-treasury. Thus, party politicians are delegated to the boards of these companies or labour unions delegate their representatives to become parliamentarians. Essentially, party representatives, from both major Polish parties (see Kubin 2021) elected in the major coal-mining regions, and only to a lesser extent interest groups, advocate the interests of the fossil fuel sector. The mining trade unions actively provide information on their constituencies to members of parliament, making it extremely difficult for politicians to act against the interests of "dirty" energy. Interviewees emphasized the intertwinement of coalmining interests and partisan politicians, resulting in a "big fossil energy family" that operates outside formal consultation process, while clean energy organizations are essentially given a life-line with EU subsidies (Interview with Polish energy analysts, conducted in 2020).

Comparative corporatism scores
Looking beyond these country-specific peculiarities, we calculated "energy corporatism scores" taking all the survey results and our additional research into account. To do so, we defined nine indicators for the functional and structural dimensions of corporatism with a maximum score of 5 points, resulting in 45 as a maximum value.
For the functional dimension, we grasped the institutionalized inclusion of organized interests by calculating the average scores for all organizations for the following variables on a 1-5 scale: perceived level of policy coordination, consultations with regulatory authorities, consultations with the present and previous government. Regarding the latter, to grasp the stability over time, we awarded 5 points for frequent consultations (more than biannually) with an upward trend, 4 points for frequent consultations (more than biannually) with a stable trend, 3 points for a moderate level of consultations (annually to biannually) and upward trend, 2 points for a moderate level of consultations (annually to biannually) and stable trend, 1 point for a low level of consultations (annually to biannually) and low or stable trend.
Regarding consensus-oriented relations between organized interests, we included the score for "consultations with rivals" of all organizations on 1-5 scales, again based on the survey outcomes. Assuming that green/civic and renewables' organizations are traditionally at a structural disadvantage, regarding the variable "perception of equal opportunities" we aggregated the scores for these two groups, again on a 1-5 scale.
To grasp the structural dimension, we assessed whether a regular institutionalized intermediation body exists. We granted 1.5 points for the existence of an interest intermediation forum (e.g., for the bipartite arrangement in Hungary, where only the private sector is consulted), 2.5 points for a tripartite socio-economic body, and additional 2.5 points for an energy or environmental dialogue platform within the body. Finally, we used our survey question regarding parliamentary lobbying (1-5 points) as a sign of non-corporatist policy-making. Thus, the scores were reversed from the original values in the survey: the higher the parliamentary access per country, the fewer corporatism points given. To reflect representation monopolies of certain encompassing organizations, we calculated what share of all (100%) annual consultations the five most frequently consulted groups participate in, and transposed this number to a 1-5 scale ( Table 2).
The "aggregate corporatism score" shows that none of our countries' energy policies are particularly corporatist on our scale, with Slovenia in the lead, trailed slightly by the Czech Republic. While Slovenia's forerunner position among our four CEE countries appears to coincide with Jahn's (2016) classification of Slovenia as the most corporatist country in CEE, our score for energy-related corporatism is still quite low. And although Jahn's ranking for the Czech Republic is rather low (29th of 42), we would classify Czech energy policy-making as moderately corporatist, albeit in a different way than Slovenia. While in Slovenia there are interest intermediation forums for energy policy, in the Czech Republic there are none. Further, Czech energy policy-making consultations with political parties are somewhat stronger as is the consultation of rivalling organizations, while in Slovenia this is not the case. Czech energy employers and employees coordinate energy-related issues within the party system and parliament, whereas Slovenian employers' and employees' organizations operate through non-parliamentary channels. Hence, both countries reach similar corporatism scores but with different mechanisms. They are also similar as employees' groups of energy suppliers and green or civic energy groups are strongly incorporated into the policy-making process-the latter somewhat stronger in Slovenia. Hence, we classify Czech energy policy-making as moderately corporatist with numerous pluralist traits. Slovenia is also moderately corporatist with a strong position of green associations and institutionalized interest intermediation forums. Hungary demonstrates a decreasing level of energy corporatism. Even though Jahn (2016) classified the Hungarian (socio-economic) policy-making as increasingly corporatist before Orbán, our data paint a picture of weak corporatism with strong statist and technocratic elements due to Orbán's tight alliances with energy organizations and the very weak position of employees' organizations.
Our data for Poland show that energy policy is conducted through a mixture of parliamentary lobbying by all groups, formalized (but arguably ineffective) consultations dominated by partisan actors and renewables groups, and most importantly informal clientelistic networks of coal-mining enterprise managers and parliamentarians, which in our view justifies the low corporatism score.

Conclusions
This article focused on energy policy, which is a critical policy area high on the agenda of both more pro-European, western-leaning and more national-conservative, illiberal CEE governments, while also playing a crucial role in ongoing processes of re-industrialization and environment-friendly modernization in the region. Moreover, energy policy is a key case for exploring not only relationships between employers and employees in CEE but also means of influence of environmental movements in a region generally considered an environmental laggard. Despite the comparative insights presented above, exploring interest intermediation structures in post-communist energy policy-making posed numerous challenges. Besides a complex specification of the dependent variable, a clear-cut categorization of organizations, and identification of outliers in the given structures, we must cope with the reality that interest configurations may still differ within individual policy areas. For example, interest mobilization for or against energy taxes, the promotion of renewables, energy efficiency and independence may bring about entirely different constellations. Nevertheless, despite some gaps in data collection, our respondents have provided us a wealth of valuable information to map out the broader contours of the policy-making process.
Our data show that all four interest intermediation systems are roughly half-way towards fully-fledged corporatism with different "mutations". Hungary maintains strong components of the statist paradigm with a trend towards a bipartism between the state and large private energy suppliers, while the Czech Republic is somewhat more pluralist. Slovenian energy policy-making is largely carried out in multilateral interest intermediation forums and green/civic and renewables organizations occupy a very strong position in formal consultation structures. This strong position of green/civic and renewables groups also applies to Poland-at least on paper, i.e. in formalized consultations, but all other evidence points towards resilient interlinkages between the coal-mining sector, the state apparatus and party system. As for the equal participation of employers and employees, the Czech, Polish and Hungarian cases reflect a bias towards employers' organizations, while the Slovenian case exhibits stronger labour unions. This variance roughly falls in line with Jahn's (2016) findings on employer-employee relations in these countries.
Finally, our data paint a differentiated picture of Olejnik's hypothesis that illiberal governments primarily exchange with (state-funded) organizations they are well-disposed to, while combatting others (2020). In Poland, there is indeed a strong entanglement of state-owned enterprises with partisan actors outside new formalized consultation channels, but no evidence of (green and renewable) groups being combatted, rather the contrary: they are the main addressees in formal consultation bodies. In Hungary, by contrast, organizations representing state-owned enterprises report the highest level of direct contacts with the government, but there is no evidence other state-funded groups being treated differently than non-funded groups.
Our aim was to outline the broader contours of the present policy process, bearing in mind that consultations do not necessarily translate into actual influence. As the Polish case shows, there is always the risk of façade-like corporatist structures amid the predominance of informal clientelistic networks as the main energy policy channel. With this modest contribution to better understanding interest intermediation in the post-communist context, we encourage scholars to conduct case studies on individual reform processes from a comparative country perspective not only to test our aggregate findings, but also to better understand the opportunities and limits for action of organized interests in the emerging corporatist arrangements. And most importantly, this would enable us to understand whether and when the demands and preferences of key stakeholders are translated into concrete policy changes and whether changes have occurred over time, also in view of EU's evolving energy strategy against the backdrop of democratic backsliding in the region.
Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. This research was conducted as part of the research project 'The Missing Link: Examining organized interests in post-communist policymaking' of the University of Konstanz, Germany and the University of Opole, Poland funded by the Beethoven 2 Polish-German Funding Initiative of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Narodowe Centrum Nauki. We sincerely thank both organizations for the generous funding.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// creat iveco mmons. org/ licen ses/ by/4. 0/.