Interest Group Strategies And Policy Involvement Does The Springer

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... 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.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access. Price excludes VAT (USA) Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout. 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. 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. Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review T1 - Interest group strategies and policy involvement T2 - Does the context matter?

Evidence from Southern Europe N1 - PTDC/IVC-CPO/1864/2014) SFRH/BD/147659/2019 UIDB/04627/2020 UIDP/04627/2020 Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 10, Article number: 565 (2023) Cite this article Government officers are key players in designing and implementing public policies. Not surprisingly, a growing body of research approaches their connections with other stakeholders, such as ministers, elected officials, and political parties. Fewer studies, however, address the relationship between bureaucrats and interest organisations.

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of recent publications regarding interest groups and the public bureaucracy. The paper introduces the findings of an extensive literature review with bibliometric techniques and qualitative content analysis. To map previous studies, I analysed 1978 abstracts with VOSviewer and R. The final collection included 415 papers which were read and coded through NVivo. Based on this review, this paper exposes data on authors, countries, and research methods related to texts published between 2000 and 2022. In addition, it critically examines concepts and empirical evidence regarding the interactions between interest groups and government officers.

This study advances the research agenda on interest groups by identifying gaps in previous studies and proposing new perspectives to analyse the political connections of the public bureaucracy. The findings indicate that most publications focus on interest group strategies, revolving doors, and venue choice. Fewer texts assess influence over political appointments and personal networks. Therefore, further research is required to address the causal mechanisms between access to the bureaucracy and interest group influence over public policies. Moreover, the bibliometric analysis revealed that research networks have been located in the United States and Europe and publications tend to focus on the ‘global North’. In this sense, more regional diversity might be beneficial for the development of theoretical and methodological structures able to ‘travel’ to other cases.

The political domain encompasses a varied range of individuals and groups: citizens, politicians, political parties, bureaucrats, social movements, and interest groups, among others. Government officers are responsible for designing and implementing public policies and play a key role in executing political decisions. On the input side of political exchanges, interest groups voice needs from society to the State. Not surprisingly, there is a growing body of research addressing the role of these actors in decision-making processes. Nevertheless, frew studies approach the relationship between interest groups and non-elected officials (Boehmke, et al., 2013; Boehmke, 2018; Dwidar, 2022). Although the political functions of public employees is undeniable, assessing their political connections is challenging as it often involves contested concepts and subjective variables, such as power, motivation, and influence.

Not Surprisingly, terms such as ‘politicisation of the bureaucracy’ or ‘patronage’ frequently have pejorative connotations. This paper aims to advance the research agenda on interest groups and the public bureaucracy by mapping previous studies to identify their topics, gaps, and research strategies. I start from the proposition that the research literature on interest groups and bureaucrats is still underdeveloped, as cited by previous studies (Boehmke, et al., 2013; Boehmke, 2018; Dwidar, 2022). Accordingly, the paper introduces the findings of an original study aiming to identify the overlaps between these two research topics: public bureaucracy and pressure politics (lobbying and interest groups). In this sense, the search focused on publications on politicisation, patronage, and lobbying since these concepts are related to bureaucrats’ political connections. By employing bibliometric techniques, I identified themes, authors, and organisations to provide an overview of this field.

The general collection included 1978 texts analysed through VOSviewer and R Studio. In addition, I read and coded 415 texts with NVivo to identify the concepts, theoretical frameworks, and methods employed in these studies. Through qualitative content analysis, I discuss concepts and empirical evidence regarding the interactions between bureaucrats and interest groups. The study innovates by combining different research topics in political science and analysing an unprecedented large volume of publications. This paper introduces its finding through an integrative literature review highlighting the similarities and divergences between studies on interest groups and the public bureaucracy. The research questions guiding this project were:

Interest groups pursue a wide range of policy goals. In their attempts to realize these goals, groups may lobby bureaucrats and politicians, approach the media and engage in protest activities. This article investigates the relation between the characteristics of policy goals and the strategies of influence utilized by interest groups. Policy goals are captured by four dimensions emphasizing: (i) the divisibility of goals, (ii) the degree of change sought, (iii) the type of interests pursued, and (iv) how technical goals are. The relevance of these dimensions and the effect of goals on influence strategies are tested in a survey of national Danish interest groups. The findings support the importance of group goals as determining strategy.

Groups pursuing general interests mainly lobby parliament and the media, whereas groups with technically complicated goals lobby bureaucrats more intensively. The more divisible a goal a group is pursuing, the more actively it engages in all types of influence strategies. Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript. A fundamental raison-d’être for interest groups is to pursue policy goals. Groups are politically active because they want to see their goals fulfilled. And groups are crucial for political science because of their success with – sometimes – achieving their goals.

This basic observation points to the importance of capturing what it is groups want in politics and how the nature of policy goals affects their policy-relevant activities. When are politicians the prime target of group activities, when do groups approach bureaucrats and which goals lead groups to engage in media-directed activities? These questions inform the theoretical and empirical discussion in this article. In a political context with multiple paths to influence – notably the administrative, the parliamentary and the media arena – interest groups engage in a mix of activities expected to maximize their political influence. Here, it is argued that groups customize their political strategies to the situation at hand. Some policy goals are well suited to capture the attention of the media, whereas others are more easily raised in direct interaction with bureaucrats.

While groups may have a general preference for some strategies over others based on group history, ideology or other group characteristics (Gais and Walker, 1991; Grant, 2000a), their goals in a specific situation also... The nature of policy goals pursued is thus a central piece in charting the maneuvering of groups across political arenas. Generally, factors at three levels affect group strategic choices: the institutional level, the group level and the issue level (Dür and De Bièvre, 2007; Mahoney, 2007). While previous discussions of the issue level have focused on issue characteristics such as saliency and level of conflict (Kollman, 1998; Leech, 1998; Mahoney, 2007), this article investigates the role of the policy goals... Two groups active on the same issue can have very different goals. A business group may seek a specific change in policy that will benefit its members, while an environmental group may work to prevent such change to the benefit of the environment.

More generally, it is argued that policy goals can be classified via four dimensions: first, whether the goal pursued may only be met fully or not at all or has a more divisible nature;... These different specifications of group goals are expected to affect the influence strategies pursued. Agenda-setting can be defined as the process in which the policy agenda of policymakers is set. Policy agendas reflect how policymakers pay serious attention to and prioritize a portfolio of policy issues such as the economy, health, social welfare, and foreign policy. While having the attention of the policymakers is not a sufficient condition for policy change, it is not possible to change a policy without attention. Agenda-setting thus has substantial implications for policy outcomes.

It is therefore also a crucial policy stage for interest groups to lobby in to eventually attain favorable policy outcomes for themselves and for the interests they represent. Agenda-setting research generally builds on the key assumption that policymakers are boundedly rational. According to this perspective, policymakers have short attention spans and policy agendas and therefore have limited carrying capacity. To get their agenda heard by policymakers, interest groups thus have to... This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access. Bachrach, P., & Baratz, M.

S. (1962). Two faces of power. American Political Science Review, 56(4), 947–952. https://doi.org/10.2307/1952796. Baroni, L., Carroll, B.

J., William Chalmers, A., Marquez, L. M. M., & Rasmussen, A. (2014). Defining and classifying interest groups. Interest Groups & Advocacy, 3(2), 141–159.

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