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Group Populations

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Interest Groups, Lobbying and Public Affairs

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Definition

Scholars from a number of disciplines have shown interest in the enumeration of the interest groups active in particular political systems or the numbers of associations present in a given civil society (e.g., Halpin & Jordan, 2012). Descriptive “maps” of the group population are of critical importance for a range of substantive scholarly interests and is a commodity for several adjacent research methods such as surveys, elite interviewing, and issue sampling. This map will look somewhat different depending on the research interest at stake, and researchers will have to define the limits of their population, critically assess the adequacy of data sources available, and decide upon characteristics and categories of classification.

Introduction

Mapping interest groups in a given setting have preoccupied scholars from a number of disciplines. The motivation to map the interest group population varies substantially across the disciplines. Students of public policy eventually...

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Further Reading

  • Halpin, D., & Jordan, G. (Eds.). (2012). The scale of interest organization in democratic politics: Data and research methods. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Joost Berkhout

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  1. Joost Berkhout
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Correspondence to Joost Berkhout .

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Berkhout, J. (2020). Group Populations. In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Interest Groups, Lobbying and Public Affairs . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13895-0_42-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13895-0_42-1

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-13895-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-13895-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Political Science and International StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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