The Expanding Core and Varying Degrees of Insiderness: Institutionalised Interest Group Access to Advisory Councils

Abstract

The interaction between organised interests and policy makers is an important ingredient of contemporary political systems. In earlier work, interest group scholars have distinguished groups that enjoy access to consultation arrangements from those that are bound to stand on the sideline. Frequently, these insiders are considered to be equally connected to public authorities. Yet their degree of 'insiderness' differs significantly. By unpacking the set of organised interests that have gained access, this article distinguishes core insiders from groups that occupy a more peripheral position in an interest intermediation system. Empirically, we demonstrate and explain varying degrees of insiderness in the community of insider groups in Belgium, using the extensiveness of representation in advisory bodies as a proxy for access. Our findings show that, although nowadays a diverse set of organised interests gets involved in policy-making processes, the inner circle is dominated by traditional economic interests.

Who’s in and who’s out?: Explaining access to policymakers in Belgium

“…Yet, there are still significant and substantial differences in the 'insiderness' among those who gained this form of access. For a more detailed account of this matter we refer to Maloney et al (1994), and, for the Belgian case a recent publication by Fraussen et al (2014). 5 In addition we also tested models with an interaction term for membership density (the number of members) and membership types (individual members, institutional members, and associations).…”

Representation beyond people: Lobbying access of umbrella associations to legislatures and the media

“…At the interest group level, research has focused on the effect of group type, pointing to differences in access between economic and public interests (Beyers, 2004;Binderkrantz, Bonafont, et al, 2016;Binderkrantz et al, 2015;Boehmke et al, 2013;Eising, 2007;Halpin et al, 2012;Rasmussen & Gross, 2015). Relatedly, studies have emphasized the importance of resources for securing access, including informational resources (Chalmers, 2013;De Bruycker, 2016;Tallberg et al, 2015), financial resources (Eising, 2007;Fraussen et al, 2015;Rasmussen & Gross, 2015), and support resources in form of the size of individual membership (Fraussen et al, 2015;Fraussen & Beyers, 2016).…”

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

“…Any errors are the responsibility of the authors. Similarly, if the focus is put on levels of access rather than a simple binary measure of access, economic groups are found to enjoy more access than citizen groups (see, in particular, Fraussen et al, 2015). 3 It is important to point out, however, that neither early scholars of neo-corporatism nor those pointing to its demise have considered better access for economic groups (as compared to citizen groups) a constitutive feature of neo-corporatism.…”