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

Abstract

In most political systems, the community of policy insiders represents a small subset of the total interest group population. Therefore, one key question is which factors explain why some mobilized interests become insiders and others remain outsiders. By contrasting a bottom-up registration of interest groups with a top-down census of all groups that enjoy access to policymakers, we present a unique approach to distinguish insiders from outsiders. This approach allows us to systematically analyze which factorssuch as resources, constituency, scale of organization and policy portfolio -predict who becomes a policy insider. Our analysis focuses on interest group politics in Belgium, and shows that next to resources, the size of the membership, the scale of organization and a group's policy portfolio are strong predictors of the likelihood to gain access.

Organizing Transmission Belts: The Effect of Organizational Design on Interest Group Access to EU Policy‐making

“…Moreover, the actual effects do not seem to follow a straightforward pattern. If anything, these findings could signal that the level of interest aggregation (mixed versus national versus individual organizations) becomes less outspoken than several studies have implied until now (Bouwen, 2002(Bouwen, , 2004Bunea, 2014;Eising, 2007;Fraussen and Beyers, 2016).…”

“…First, we included organizational age , measured as the natural logarithm of the years since the organization's establishment. As argued by Hannan and Freeman (, p. 81), older organizations ‘tend to develop dense webs of exchange, to affiliate with centres of power, and to acquire an aura of inevitability’ (see also Fraussen and Beyers, ). Consequently, we expect older EAs to be more likely to enjoy (higher levels of) access to both EU administrative and political officials.…”

“…Membership type is often considered an important aspect of EU interest groups as it reflects the diversity of the interest group population (Berkhout et al, 2017a;Fraussen and Beyers, 2016). We specifically focus on the level of aggregation of organizational membership, namely, the distinction between national and/or regional associations, and individual organizations, such as firms.…”

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

“…Despite the increase in number of citizen groups, some existing research points to the "resilience" of neo-corporatism: Various authors show that economic groups enjoy more access to the administrative venue than citizen groups in traditionally neo-corporatist systems Fraussen & Beyers, 2016;Fraussen, Beyers, & Donas, 2015). This is not necessarily attributed to economic groups' ability to "constrain and discipline their own members," which, according to Crouch (1983, p. 452), represents the "heart of neo-corporatism."…”