Defining and classifying interest groups

Abstract

The interest group concept is defined in many different ways in the existing literature and a range of different classification schemes are employed. This complicates comparisons between different studies and their findings. One of the important tasks faced by interest group scholars engaged in large-N studies is therefore to define the concept of an interest group and to determine which classification scheme to use for different group types. After reviewing the existing literature, this article sets out to compare different approaches to defining and classifying interest groups with a sample of lobbying actors coded according to different coding schemes. We systematically assess the performance of different schemes by comparing how actor types in the different schemes differ with respect to a number of background characteristics. This is done in a two-stage approach where we first cluster actors according to a number of key background characteristics and second assess how the categories of the different interest group typologies relate to these clusters. We demonstrate that background characteristics do align to a certain extent with certain interest group types but also find important differences in the organizational attributes of specific interest group types. As expected, our comparison of coding schemes reveals a closer link between group attributes and group type in narrower classification schemes based on group organizational characteristics than those based on a behavioral definition of lobbying.

Framing in context: how interest groups employ framing to lobby the European Commission

“…We have classified the interest groups that participated in the selected consultations into seven actor type categories to allow for a more fine-grained distinction to better capture the diversity among mobilized interest groups (cause groups, business groups, trade unions, public groups, firms, professional associations and other interest groups). This classification allows in particular for a more fine-grained distinction of different types of sectional groups as often advocated for in the interest group literature (see e.g., Baroni et al 2014). The interest group classification into actor type categories was based on information obtained about the interest groups in their consultation submissions and from their websites.…”

Legislative lobbying in context: towards a conceptual framework of interest group lobbying in the European Union

“…5 First, a set of 125 legislative proposals submitted by the EC between 2008 and 2010 was sampled, for which the project draws on a sophisticated and innovative policy-centred sample of interest group mobilization, which allows for considerable variation with regard to policy-related and institutional characteristics so that we are able to systematically analyse how policy-specific and institutional context factors shape mobilization, strategies and influence of interest groups in the EU (Beyers et al 2014;De Bruycker and Beyers forthcoming). Second, this sample was complemented by an organization-centred sampling technique that draws on registries to compile a general overview of all stakeholders in the EU to better understand mobilization biases on specific issues (Baroni et al 2014;Berkhout et al 2015).…”

Interest groups as multi-venue players

“…However, multivariate models indicate that groups' resources do not explain the engagement of business versus citizen groups in a dual-venue strategy (Pedersen et al 2014, 220). This empirical finding probably reflects the strong variation in resource endowment within each group category (Baroni et al 2014).…”