Party Interest Group Ties And Patterns Of Political Influence

A common view in scholarly literature and public debate is that the relationship between parties and interest groups shapes the nature of democratic governance. Still, party-group relationships have been largely overlooked by political scientists to date and taken for granted across different countries, institutional make-ups, types of party systems, and sectors. The proposed research project will advance the state of the art in this field by seeking to systematically examine the nature, the shaping factors and the consequences for policy-making of party-group relationships in long-established... The project will provide a truly comparative study of the varieties and impact of party-group relationships on a scale hitherto unparalleled within the social and political sciences. It will break new ground by examining party-group links from both sides rather than using either groups or parties as starting point. Aiming to renew both theory and methods within party/interest group research, we believe this new study will be of great value to the different kinds of scholars concerned with questions about the nature and...

The relationship between political parties and interest groups is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, and how to study it is open to debate. Accordingly, we will first look for a way to conceptualize party-group relationships that reduces the dimensions along which they can vary so that, after having mapped similarities and differences, we can examine the factors... Empirically, the major goals of the project are to: In this way, we also hope to expose the broader role of party-group relationships in democratic governance. For more information on the conceptual issues, research questions and hypotheses of the project, please contact the Principal Investigator, Elin Haugsgjerd Allern. The project will be designed as a genuine comparative study across countries.

With an eye on tractability and feasibility, we concentrate on the national/leadership level of politics. The units of analysis for are first, political parties and second, interest groups, but also the relationships as such (the dyads). Countries will be compared in terms of general patterns of party-group relationships. We look at the extra-parliamentary organization, but include parliamentary groups, too, since parties in some countries only have weak central organizations. In this way, we can also compare across ‘faces’ of parties, and touch more directly upon public decision-making as far as general patterns of influence is concerned. The project is divided into three main empirical modules: 1) an extensive study of all long-established democracies, 2) a detailed comparative study of parties and interest groups in 7-8 selected countries and 3) use...

The project includes a considerable data collection effort, including mapping of party statutes, a party survey, and an interest group survey, mapping of elite networks and perhaps also interviews with those involved in policy-making. Political parties and interest groups sometimes work closely together and have strong organisational ties, while others have more limited connections. Drawing on a new study, Elin Haugsgjerd Allern, Vibeke Wøien Hansen, Simon Otjes and David Marshall examine the full diversity of relationships that exist between parties and interest groups. The relationship between parties and interest groups can be diverse. Some parties and groups foster very strong organisational ties: they have representatives on each other’s boards and meet regularly in a joint co-cooperation committee or similar. A second set of pairs only routinely invite each other to events like annual congresses or seminars, while others do not interact in a structured manner at all.

In a recent study, we examine the full diversity of relations between parties and interest groups. Both parties and interest groups are important players in the democratic process. They both seek to exert influence on public policy. When they operate in concert, they can have a big impact. When they oppose each other, they can cancel each other out. Above all, their relationships are important for the political decision-making process.

Organisational ties mean stable access to decisionmakers on both sides and may affect how well parties represent their voters. Essentially, we can differentiate between three kinds of relationships: parties and interest groups that have no organisational relationship at all, parties and groups that foster a highly institutionalised relationship and parties and groups that... We expect that different features of both the parties and groups contribute to these different kinds of relationships. More precisely, we place parties and groups on a scale from strong organisational ties to weak or no organisational ties. Groups interested in some kind of relationship with a party, however weak and informal, probably seek broad policy-goals that are ideological of nature: that is, they are able to locate themselves along ideological conflict... We therefore expect that organisational ties between a party and an interest group are likely to be absent if the group is non-ideological, such as for a typical patient group, in its policy orientation.

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