When might interest groups normally lobbying the top level of government choose to lobby lower levels? Little research focuses on this kind of multivenue lobbying, so in this paper I study patterns of national group advocacy in the American states using data from 2006 to 2020. While it is rare for national groups to lobby state governments, some do. Why? My explanation draws on the idea that sometimes national groups need to lobby when opportunities present themselves coupled with their ability to lobby. I find that it is business-oriented associations that are more likely to lobby than cause-oriented citizen groups, but that advocacy resources are also an important motivator as is federal spending in the states or high levels of state corporate taxation. While the partisan leanings of state lawmakers do not matter much, party polarization does, with all national groups more likely to lobby a polarized state legislature.
The study draws on original biographical data for 267 individuals in leadership positions in Norwegian interest groups and identifies 400 career transfer events. Distinguishing between intra-sectoral transfers within the education domain and inter-sectoral transfers across policy domains, the study shows that, within the observed population of interest group leaders, leaders with prior experience in policymaking environments, including state organizations and interest groups, are particularly prominent among employed leaders, reflecting the strategic recruitment of individuals with insider knowledge and governance expertise. Building on actor homophily and professionalization perspectives, the study further demonstrates how organizational- and individual-level factors (type of interest the group represents and type of position, respectively) shape transfer patterns. Leaders representing employees and providers of education services are more likely to remain within the same sector, reinforcing professional continuity and domain-specific expertise, whereas leaders representing beneficiaries exhibit greater inter-sectoral mobility, reflecting more heterogeneous recruitment pathways. Employed leaders display higher inter-sectoral mobility and elected leaders remain more embedded within their sectoral domain. While based on Norway, the findings have broader relevance for corporatist and welfare-state systems and offer comparative insights for pluralist settings.
Research suggests that lobbyists derive value from both political connections—“whom they know”—and issue expertise—“what they know”—but that connections generally command the larger premium. This study examines whether those market premiums vary across the policy agenda. Drawing on resource-dependence theory, we argue that clients value different lobbying resources depending on the constraints they face within a given issue domain. Using nearly 600,000 U.S. federal lobbying reports from 1998 to 2017, we examine how the premiums associated with lobbyists’ connections and expertise vary across domains that differ in size, technical complexity, and partisan conflict. We find that connections carry a persistent premium and generally outweigh expertise in magnitude. The premiums associated with both connections and expertise are higher in larger domains and in more technically complex domains, where clients face greater constraints on access and information. However, expertise receives a lower premium in highly partisan domains, while the evidence that partisan conflict changes the connection premium is less robust. Together, these findings suggest that clients place different market values on lobbying resources as the political constraints they face vary across issue-domain environments.
Legal mobilization and litigation have long been acknowledged as a distinct form of interest group politics. However, organized interests vary in their internal organization, the importance they attach to legal action, and the goals they seek to achieve with legal strategies. This paper analyzes litigation activity of organized interests in Germany. It makes use of novel data collected from an organizational survey that includes firms as actors of legal mobilization. The data reveal considerable differences across types of organizations in terms of litigation activity. Among the organizational characteristics that have a bearing on the frequency of litigation, endowment with legal human resources and the membership structure emerge as significant predictors. Conversely, we find no evidence that organizations with more financial resources litigate more frequently.
A growing body of research has identified the revolving door, or the movement of personnel between government and private sector lobbying, as a source of corporate influence in policymaking processes. However, studies vary in how they define and empirically measure revolving door lobbyists across different institutions and populations, producing fragmented explanations for how lobbyists’ social and professional backgrounds influence policymaking processes. This study develops a career trajectory approach to identifying revolving door lobbyists, which improves upon prior approaches by (1) measuring multiple types of revolving door sequences, differentiating between “single-revolvers” and “super-revolvers,” (2) detecting unreported lobbying work, (3) describing how characteristics of revolving door lobbyists vary across type, and (4) distinguishing how different types of private sector organizations are represented in revolving door career trajectories. I illustrate this approach through descriptive sequence analysis of the careers of bureaucrats employed by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) from 2001 to 2020 (n = 658). Over half of all employees (52.3
The American lobbying landscape has increasingly shifted focus to the federal bureaucracy, yet little scholarship examines interest groups’ involvement in bureaucratic policymaking. In particular, the widening bureaucratic revolving door represents a significant area of scholarly neglect. We test competing claims regarding the bureaucratic revolving door in administrative lobbying using original data on a set of nationally active interest groups’ efforts to influence federal rulemaking through the notice and comment process, joint with publicly available data on registered lobbyists. In line with existing scholarship, we find no evidence of a connection between lobbying influence and the bureaucratic revolving door. We conclude that the disparate advantages of revolving door lobbying may represent the exception rather than the rule, and may be prevalent in regulatory stages that place a higher premium on personal connections, such as pre-proposal rulemaking. These findings contribute to broadening discourse regarding the revolving door and administrative democracy.
To understand the empirically observed decline of advocacy activities by progressive non-governmental organizations (NGOs) during the 2015–2023 rule by a populist government in Poland, this paper discusses the empirical study of 32 advocacy NGO activists and experts. It addresses the following research question: How have democratic backsliding and humanitarian emergency impacted advocacy NGOs in Poland and what kind of responses did NGOs come up with? The analysis provides evidence that the legal restrictions and administrative measures aimed at closing the civic space for human rights, rule of law, and environmental protection advocacy groups, while providing new opportunities for loyal NGOs, are taking place not only in authoritarian contexts, but have also been observed in a European country, a former democracy’s champion. Constructive strategies adopted by harassed advocacy NGOs included supporting the well-being of their own staff, engaging in service-provision and “transcalar advocacy” (in: Pallas and Bloodgood (eds) Beyond the boomerang: from transnational advocacy networks to transcalar advocacy in international politics, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 2022). This research contributes to the literature on the differentiated effect of democratic backsliding on NGOs where government-funded ‘loyal’ NGOs receive targeted support while organizations working in fields essential for democracy experienced de-funding and limitation of access to political opportunity structures. It also sheds light on the impact of the Russian war on domestic NGOs.
The role of litigation in politics, policy change, and advocacy remains insufficiently understood in part due to challenges in the availability, comparability, and transparency of legal data. This paper evaluates six foundational sources of U.S.-based federal litigation data - LexisNexis/NexisUni, Westlaw, the Federal Judicial Center Integrated Database, the Public Access to Court Electronic Records database, and two datasets from CourtListener, an open data source - with a focus on environmental law as an illustrative domain. We show that data source choice fundamentally shapes inferences about litigation trends, substantive focus, and the engaged players (litigants). We also show how data sources can be harmonized to make them more comparable, although harmonization may have some analytical cost. More broadly, we caution against relying on any single data stream and advocate for using multiple legal data sources to, at a minimum, illuminate features and omissions of legal data. Our findings highlight important methodological and theoretical implications for social scientists studying legal advocacy and interest group advocacy more broadly, including field-level advocacy dynamics, venue shopping, and patterns of advantage or disadvantage across legal conflict. While our focus is on the U.S., researchers across national contexts can improve how litigation is measured and understood by increasing the awareness of the strengths and limitations of legal data sources, which will in turn strengthen research on advocacy in the courts and the broader politics of policymaking.
Media lobbying has become a central strategy through which interest groups seek to influence policymaking by shaping public discourse. Although prior research highlights the relevance of timing, media space, and narratives, these dimensions are typically examined in isolation. This study advances a communication perspective on lobbying by analyzing how time, space, and narrative interact across the policy cycle. Focusing on Finnish business associations during a prolonged crisis, the study examines variations in media visibility across policy stages, media outlets, and narrative levels. Drawing on a mixed methods analysis of news coverage in quality newspapers and tabloids, the findings show that media lobbying effects vary across policy stages, with heightened visibility during key policy windows and the implementation stages. Business associations strategically deploy macro and micro-narratives—most notably economic, renewal, and blame focused narratives—to align their interests with broader societal concerns in temporally sensitive ways. The study contributes to interest group and lobbying theory by demonstrating that media lobbying effectiveness cannot be reduced to organizational resources alone, but depends on actors’ capacity to strategically mobilize time, media space, and narrative. By integrating narrative theory with policy process perspectives, the article conceptualizes communication as a constitutive mechanism of influence across shifting policy contexts.
This study compares trade policy lobbying in the United States and European Union, focusing specifically on patterns of firm-centric trade policy lobbying. Analyzing lobbying data from 2014 to 2018, our research highlights both similarities and differences. On the one hand, we find that in both political systems the economic sectors displaying high multinational corporation (MNC) activity, and product differentiation exhibit higher levels of firm-centric lobbying. On the other hand, we show that there remain two important differences between these two political systems. First, firm-centric lobbying over trade policy is generally higher in the US than in the EU. Second, and relatedly, we find that the effects of MNCs activity, and product differentiation on firm-centric trade policy lobbying is greater in the EU than in the US. Overall, our findings suggest that globalization may be engendering a convergence in how important firm-centric trade policy lobbying is in these two political systems.
While interest groups are often portrayed as vehicles of political representation, skeptical voices highlight the political inequalities and representational biases in the interest group system. In recent years, a considerable body of research has assessed the representative strengths and drawbacks of interest groups empirically. However, to date we lack a coherent theoretical perspective on the role played by interest groups in political representation that accommodates the conflicting views and findings. Assuming that moving forward theoretically requires adequate concepts, we propose a perspective on interest groups as vehicles of substantive representation that is reflected in public policy. Focusing on the level of the interest group system, we develop the concept of effective substantive representation against a backdrop of normative accounts of democratic representation as well as positive theoretical and empirical research on interest group politics. We apply the concept theoretically to two main mechanisms of interest representation—information provision and agenda setting. Finally, we illustrate the concept’s analytical value in the context of two intervening factors—group type and system of interest representation.
If associations include multiple constituencies with conflicting preferences, whose preferences will they represent? We argue that the higher the territorial level of policy-making authority in a polity, the more influence the resource-rich constituencies will have on an association’s policy positions. We apply this argument to the contrasting positions over medical remuneration taken by the medical associations in two federal countries, Australia and Canada between the 1960s and the 1990s. In Australia, organised medicine consistently took elitist positions that increased the income gap between the highest and lowest paid medical disciplines. Conversely, the Canadian medical associations took solidaristic positions that aimed to reduce that gap. This difference reflects the greater centralisation of healthcare policies in Australian compared to Canada. Moreover. the impact of healthcare policy centralisation has been reinforced by the stratarchical organisation of Australian medicine, suggesting a connection between the literature on interest groups and that on the multi-level organisation of political parties.
Prior research has established that nonprofits play a role in shaping public policy. However, prior research has focused widely on social service nonprofits generally, leaving us with little knowledge of how specific sectors such as immigrant-serving organizations (ISOs) engage in policy advocacy. Here, we survey 170 organizations across the United States to understand when ISOs seek policy change. Our findings reveal that ISOs utilizing the H-election option on their Form 990s are significantly more likely to engage in policy advocacy. Such groups are particularly more likely to engage in formal and regulated advocacy activities like lobbying. Interestingly, groups in communities with high concentrations of H-election organizations also report advocating at higher levels. Organizational factors, such as staff turnover and a range of funding sources, also predict advocacy engagement. These findings provide practical insights for nonprofit leaders and scholars who wish to understand how service-based groups deal with highly contentious issues like immigration.
This research agenda article presents a novel perspective on lobbying influence by distinguishing between two modes of lobbying: fast and slow. Fast lobbying targets intuitive, heuristic-based decision-making, while slow lobbying engages deliberate, effortful cognitive processes among policymakers. The prevailing interest group literature has largely focused on the latter, conceptualizing lobbying as a rational, evidence-driven exchange. However, this article argues that lobbying influence extends beyond conscious deliberation to include subconscious persuasion. It reinterprets psychological insights—particularly Robert Cialdini’s seven principles of influence—as tools for understanding how intuitive persuasion shapes elite decision-making. While these principles are widely recognized in behavioral economics and marketing, their implications for political influence remain underexplored. The article examines the extent to which such mechanisms have been integrated into interest group research and highlights areas that remain neglected. It bridges cognitive and social psychology with interest group research to conceptualize fast lobbying as a distinct and underexamined mode of influence. The article concludes by outlining a research agenda and raising ethical questions about the role of intuitive persuasion in democratic policymaking.
A major question in politics concerns how the policymaking process shapes political legitimacy. Drawing from the distributive and procedural justice literature, we propose two explanatory factors influencing legitimacy: (1) the distributive policy impact (i.e. the extent to which policy losers show lower support), and (2) the inclusion of organized interests in the decision-making process (i.e. whether their involvement increases the acceptance of a decision outcome). In addition, we advance the existing legitimacy literature by theorizing how individuals, given their core preferences and their evaluation of a policy outcome, value alternative decision scenarios and policy outcomes. We test this framework through a survey experiment on the extent to which individuals support different road transport pricing schemes. Although our results give credit to the winner-loser model, they challenge a utilitarian perspective on legitimacy, as many individuals care about equity principles and the decision-making process, irrespective of specific policy outcomes.
This article analyses the linkages between political parties and social organizations in Latin America, by highlighting the role of ideology in these relations. Using data from the Political Representation, Executives, and Political Parties Survey (PREPS), it shows that, despite the discrediting and crisis of legitimacy of parties in the region, which suggests a distancing from society, linkages with social associations continue to be widespread. The findings also show that ideology significantly influences the direction and intensity of these linkages: left-wing parties privilege relations with trade unions and women's or ethnic organizations, while right-wing parties associate with business and religious groups. The analysis also stresses the importance of other partisan and contextual factors. Specifically, larger, clientelist and older parties are more likely to build stable relationships with social organizations. Moreover, factors such as electoral competition and volatility shape these dynamics.
