Customizing strategy: Policy goals and interest group strategies

Abstract

Executive Summary 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.

Communication of political interest groups in Switzerland: Adressees, channels and instruments

“…Important addressees are government and administration, parliamentary factions and political parties, in short: actors in the political field. These findings are expectable and are reproduced in a variety of studies that discuss the influence and strategies of interest groups (Binderkrantz & Krøyer 2012;Dür & Mateo 2013). However, our study highlights that in the overall picture, the logic of support is of greater importance.…”

Lobbying influence: Meaning, measurement and missing

“…We know that lobbying success rests to some considerable degree on matching appropriate strategy and tactics to the circumstances in which a policy is considered (Kollman, 1998;Beyers, 2008;Eising, 2007;Marshall, 2010;Binderkrantz and Kroyer, 2012). A null result in an attempt to exercise influence may be due, therefore, to a failure to adopt an appropriate set of strategies and tactics.…”

Business insiders and environmental outsiders? Advocacy strategies in international climate change negotiations

“…This analysis adds to a growing literature on the strategies of interest groups (Schlozman and Tierney, 1986;Gais and Walker, 1991;Maloney et al, 1994;Beyers, 2004;Binderkrantz, 2008;Mahoney, 2008;Binderkrantz and Krøyer, 2012;Dür and Mateo, 2012, Forthcoming). By looking at advocacy in international climate change negotiations, it applies insights from research on national interest groups to global policy-making processes.…”

“…In particular in the United States, there exists a long tradition of studies on interest group activities in Washington (for example, Bauer et al, 1963;Milbrath, 1963;Berry, 1977;Schlozman and Tierney, 1983;Walker, 1991;Baumgartner and Leech, 1998); more recent work also looks at advocacy behaviour in US states (Nownes and Freeman, 1998), the European Union (Beyers, 2004;Woll, 2006;Mahoney, 2008;Marshall, 2010;Dür and Mateo, 2012, Forthcoming) or individual European countries (Binderkrantz, 2005;Dür and Mateo, 2010;Binderkrantz and Krøyer, 2012).…”