More equal than others: Assessing economic and citizen groups' access across policymaking venues

Abstract

This study assesses whether economic interest groups (business associations and trade unions) enjoy better access to the policymaking process than citizen groups. It compares the interest group population in Switzerland with those sets of groups present in the administrative and legislative venues. The study devises an aggregate measure of access to policymaking as a whole, which weights access according to different venues' importance. It theorizes the granting of access as a sequential process. Policymakers first decide whether to grant any access at all (selection stage) and then decide on the amount of access (allocation stage). Empirical evidence shows that policymakers do not discriminate between economic and citizen groups at the selection stage, but that they subsequently grant more access to economic groups. These findings qualify existing research, which interprets economic groups' superior access as the resilience of neo‐corporatism, while also questioning the pluralizing effect of multiple policymaking venues.

Prioritizing professionals? How the democratic and professionalized nature of interest groups shapes their degree of access to EU officials

“…Vif scores in range from 1.06 to 4.12, suggesting that multicollinearity is not a problem. (Weiler et al, 2019), results indicate that, in the Commission, being a business organization does not affect the level of access to public officials. One possible explanation of this null finding is the time-consuming process of internal consensus formation that business organizations, particularly at the EU level, necessitate to define policy positions (De Bruycker et al, 2019).…”

“…In other words, it is important to examine why some groups seldom meet with public officials, while others gain frequent access. Previous studies focusing on the level of access of interest groups have found that economic groups enjoy more access in administrative venues than citizen groups (Binderkrantz and Christiansen, 2015;Fraussen et al, 2015;Weiler et al, 2019). Rasmussen and Gross (2015, p. 358) also show that specialist groups have higher levels of access to advisory groups of the EU than diffused interest groups.…”

“…Business groups are expected to be better represented in administrative venues such as the Commission (e.g. Fraussen et al, 2015;Kohler-Koch et al, 2017;Weiler et al, 2019). Moreover, recent research has demonstrated that business organizations face more difficulties than citizen groups when establishing policy positions on specific policy issues, which implies that they have a more active involvement of their members (De Bruycker et al, 2019).…”

“…First, it builds upon previous work stressing the relevance of how groups are internally organized and the significant variation in that regard (Minkoff et al, 2008;Baroni et al, 2014;Fraussen, 2014;Halpin et al, 2018) by highlighting two critical functions of groups: member involvement for representation and organizational capacity to efficiently provide policy input. Second, by examining the effects of having representative and efficient structures on the number of meetings with EU officials, the paper contributes to the literature centered on interest groups' level of access to public officials (Binderkrantz and Christiansen, 2015;Fraussen et al, 2015;Rasmussen and Gross, 2015;Grömping and Halpin, 2019;Weiler et al, 2019). Third, the paper provides an evaluation of the democratic potential of policy insider groups, which is crucial to assess how governance systems function.…”

Politicized policy access: The effect of politicization on interest group access to advisory councils

“…Access to political‐administrative venues such as advisory councils provides interest groups with important opportunities to monitor policy processes and to shape public policies. Drawing on resource‐exchange theory, many interest group studies have demonstrated that supplying technical expertise and signalling the scope of societal support for particular policies leads to access (Bouwen 2002; Binderkrantz et al 2015; Fraussen et al 2015; Weiler et al 2018). In this article, I relate interest groups' capacities to provide technical expertise and societal support with the politicization of particular policy domains.…”