Replication Data for: Change or Stability in the Structure of Interest Group Networks? Evidence from Scottish Public Policy Consultations

Abstract

Scholars have hotly debated the structure of group engagement in policy making. Two aspects of this conversation are examined here. Firstly, some claim that the ‘explosion’ of organized interests brings with it increasing fragmentation but also policy ‘balkanization’. Others suggest increasing fragmentation, but with overlap between sub-sectors. A second area of this debate concerns the existence and number of ‘central’ or ‘core’ groups. While we see evidence that, in aggregate, there is no more policy specialization among UK organized interests, we do not know if this means there are fewer or more central groups. In this paper we utilize public policy consultations in Scotland over a continuous 25 year period, and the tools of network analysis, to examine the above propositions. We find that the expanding system of policy consultation is not associated with more balkanization or with a decline of central policy actors that span policy communities