The impact of democracy on interest group system institutionalization

Abstract

This paper provides the first large‐N study, which measures the variation in interest group system institutionalization. It shows that the level of democracy is a very strong determinant of strength of interest groups across countries. Findings are corroborated by analysing the Tunisian case to alleviate the reverse causality problem. Implications for comparative interest groups and democracy research are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Interest groups and social media: An examination of cause and sectional groups' social media strategies in the EU

“…In line with Baroni, Carroll, Chalmers, Marquez, and Rasmussen () and Kanol (), we conceptualise interest groups as membership‐based groups, which seek to influence public policy. We opt to leave out firms, professional consultancies, think tanks, and other important nonmembership‐based organised interests in order not to stretch the meaning of the “interest group” concept.…”

Lobbying the Autocrat

“…What is more, authoritarian regimes exercise tight political control over society, drawing into question the very possibility of group mobilization and action Reny 2019;Chaudhry 2022). Unsurprisingly, democracy is a strong predictor of interest group system institutionalization and lobbying activity more generally (Kanol 2016;Bearce and Roosevelt 2022), suggesting that the phenomenon we want to investigate may be marginal at best under authoritarianism. We also know, however, that social forces and organized actors do interact with authority figures, including ruling parties, under autocratic rule.…”

“…These patterns of competition and cooperation shape community density, diversity, coalition building and a number of other features of the group ecology (Lowery, Halpin, and Gray 2015). Core resources such as policy maker access, new members, and potential funding may be scarcer under dictatorship so that the carrying capacity of the interest system is constrained (Kanol 2016). But the rise and decline of advocacy groups may also be a function of the changing opportunities of the organizational ecology itself, for instance, mutual legitimation payoffs in sparse ecologies and crowding out in dense ones.…”

“…, for instance, finds evidence that interest groups access public officials more easily at the European level than at the national level, since the European Union is made up of different political arenas that offer multiple points of access. A more rigorous version of the institutionalist approach argues that democracies provide more opportunities than autocracies for interest groups to organize their resources and exercise pressures on public officials (Kanol 2016).…”

“…Finally, scholars argue that democracies allow more groups to participate in the policy process compared to nondemocratic regimes (Kanol 2016). Therefore, I control for the number of years a country has been democratic; a longer democratic experience should reflect a legacy of more group consultations.…”