Conceptualizing and measuring party-interest group relationships

Allern, Elin Haugsgjerd; Otjes, Simon; Poguntke, Thomas; Hansen, Vibeke Wøien; Saurugger, Sabine; Marshall, David

doi:10.1177/1354068820949393

Cited by 17 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…From the perspective of political parties other forms of membership organisation have become important (Allern and Bale, 2012; Beyers et al, 2008; Rasmussen et al, 2018). To develop a fuller account of the role of organisational connections in stabilising electorates we need to look beyond trade unions to the evolution of a more diverse civil society and the nature of its ties with political parties (Allern et al, 2020).…”

Section: Encapsulating Voters Through Societal Tiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holding on to voters in volatile times: Bonding voters through party links with civil society

Martin¹,

Lange²,

Brug

2020

Party Politics

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Political parties are increasingly confronted with electoral volatility. However, the support for some parties is more stable than that of others. Although it has been established that parties’ links to civil society stabilised their electorates in the period until the 1980s, it has not yet been investigated whether such links still fulfil this function in our volatile age. In this paper, we argue that traditional party connections, as well as links to modern day civil society organisations, continue to tie voters to parties. Using a novel dataset covering 149 parties in 29 elections in 14 West European countries, we establish that parties with stronger links to civil society do indeed have a more stable support base. This relationship holds for parties of the left and right. Our results demonstrate that parties’ societal embeddedness continues to play a role in understanding party competition in the 21st century.

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Section: Encapsulating Voters Through Societal Tiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holding on to voters in volatile times: Bonding voters through party links with civil society

Martin¹,

Lange²,

Brug

2020

Party Politics

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“…The access mechanism could moreover be probed further, for instance by considering the ties that parties and interest groups maintain. Which ties, in terms of institutionalisation (Allern, Otjes et al 2020), matter for influence? Lastly, investigating interest group influence on parties using other influence measures is relevant in order to establish the robustness of these results.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Party goals and interest group influence on parties

Røed

2021

West European Politics

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Although research on interest group influence has had a revival in recent decades, little is known about interest group influence on political parties. This study considers how parties' goals can affect interest groups' ability to influence these actors. Interest groups are expected to be more likely to influence parties that are ideologically approximate to the interest groups as well as parties that are more willing to make policy compromises; the access that interest groups have to parties mediates these effects. Results from the empirical analysis of 5000 party-interest group observations from Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom support these expectations. In addition to contributing to the literature on parties and interest groups, the findings shed light on party position taking and when the link between citizens and parties is likely to be affected by interest groups.Research on interest group influence has had a revival in recent decades (e.g.

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“…Interest groups, for their part, are dependent on parties to advance their policy goals because in many countries parties exercise considerable control over the legislative agenda and voting in parliament (Quinn, 2002;Warner, 2000). While interactions between parties and groups in the policy process can result from general organisational ties (Allern, Otjes, Poguntke, et al, 2020), probably more common are interest group 'lobby routines' of the type we examine here: situations where a group usually talks to a specific party across issues in a given policy domain. Working with the same party repeatedly reduces transaction costs, increasing efficiency in pursuit of policy goals.…”

Section: Theorising Interest Group and Party Lobby Routinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy positions, power and interest group-party lobby routines

Allern

Klüver

Marshall

et al. 2021

Journal of European Public Policy

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Prior literature points to the importance of party power and ideology for interest group-party contacts in the legislative arena. But interest groups do not often have ideologiesthey are typically active in a small number of policy domains and there may be different parties that share more similar preferences across different policy areas. Therefore, we examine whether and how party power and proximity in policy preferences predict the existence of party-interest group 'lobby routines' in specific policy domains, using a novel survey of representative samples of interest groups in seven long-established democracies. We find that groups often form routines with different parties in different policy areas and that preference proximity on relevant policy dimensions is positively associated with having such area-specific lobby routines. However, the results also suggest that powerful parties are more likely allies and that the effect of policy proximity on routines is positively conditioned by power.

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Conceptualizing and measuring party-interest group relationships

Cited by 17 publications

References 52 publications

Holding on to voters in volatile times: Bonding voters through party links with civil society

Holding on to voters in volatile times: Bonding voters through party links with civil society

Party goals and interest group influence on parties

Policy positions, power and interest group-party lobby routines

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