Interest Organization Demography Research in Europe

The size and shape of the Italian interest system between the 1980s and the present day

“…With regard to this crucial aspect, many considerations can be proposed: first, as many other interest systems (Berkhout and Lowery, 2010;Schlozman, 2010;Halpin and Jordan, 2012;Binderkrantz et al, 2015), the Italian system appears to be biased in favour of economic groups: both in 1984-88 as well as in 2010-14, in fact, more than two-thirds of interest groups that entered our survey are either business groups or other sectional groups. This empirical finding largely confirms what has been repeatedly argued in the literature (Danielian and Page, 1994;Schlozman, 2010;Berkhout, 2014). Second, the enlargement of the Italian interest system has not been particularly uneven across various categories of interest groups.…”

“…Yet, it should be stressed that analysing demographic features is the necessary but insufficient pre-condition for studying bias in interest group representation. 2 For all the abovementioned reasons, since the 1990s the so-called 'population ecology perspective' has gained higher analytical relevance in the United States, European, and EU literature with numerous empirical studies having been published (Berkhout, 2014). Notwithstanding, there has been neither systematic analysis of, nor empirical research into, the Italian interest system so far.…”

“…A shared preliminary belief of all these studies is that 'assessing the size and shape of the organised interest system is crucial to addressing a range of fundamental questions about the plurality of interests voiced in policymaking arenas that potentially shape policy outputs' (Halpin and Jordan, 2012: 9). Therefore, empirical works look at system density and diversity, not only with respect to interests populating a given political system, but also with regard to its sub-units, such as, for example, policy domains and economic sectors (Halpin and Jordan, 2012;Nownes, 2012;Berkhout, 2014).…”

“…The first relates to the definition of what a population is: indeed, that same definition varies on the basis of theoretical questions to be answered (Lowery, 2012: 50). A second difference relates to the types of interest group included; with respect to this, scholars can use either a behavioural or a structural definition of interest group (Baroni et al, 2014): of course, this choice directly affects both the selection of cases and the classification of interest organizations (Berkhout, 2014). Third, within this bulk of literature, different theories have been used to explain the size and shape of interest communities: 'bottom up' vs. 'top down' models or supply vs. demand explanations privilege social and organizational features in the former view, with policy-and political-related factors privileged in the latter.…”

Exploring Changes in State Interest Group Systems: Replications and Extensions of the ESA Model

“…Their approach to studying state interest group populations has largely been through the application of population ecology, a concept originating in evolutionary biology to explain species development and diversity. While their approach, culminating in their 1996 book Population Ecology of Interest Representation, has started to be applied in studies of interest groups in Washington, DC (e.g., Nownes and Lipinski 2005;Dusso 2010) and other nations (e.g., Halpin and Jordan 2009;Fisker 2013;Berkhout 2015), it dominates the study of interest groups and lobbying in American state politics. So much so that its core findings are now taken as givens.…”