Comparative Interest Group Research

There are challenges to the development of explanatory models of interest group behavior that are valid across a wide range of countries. The position of interest groups in between the policy process and the society and the economy means that a lot of potentially important explanatory factors cannot be theoretically isolated. This creates a fundamental tension between the aspiration to maximize the external, cross-system validity of research findings and the meaningful embedding in country-specific histories, economic structures and societies. This theoretical challenge is conceptually acknowledged in many contemporary studies but still limits the theoretical progress in the field. This contribution discusses the distinct ways in which interest group research has historically dealt with inherent challenges of comparative research designs

Group Populations

Scholars from a number of disciplines have shown interest in the enumeration of the interest groups active in particular political systems or the numbers of associations present in a given civil society (e.g., Halpin & Jordan, 2012). Descriptive “maps” of the group population are of critical importance for a range of substantive scholarly interests and is a commodity for several adjacent research methods such as surveys, elite interviewing, and issue sampling. This map will look somewhat different depending on the research interest at stake, and researchers will have to define the limits of their population, critically assess the adequacy of data sources available, and decide upon characteristics and categories of classification

Text as Data in Interest Group Research

Text analysis is highly useful for scholars working on lobbying and interest groups. It is a method through which organized interests, their positions on issues, and the frames that they employ can be identified within bodies of text. This technique allows scholars to measure access to different types of venues and the policy positions that groups express. It can reveal patterns of populations and communities that can be used as (in)dependent variables. In turn, these can be linked to characteristics of organized interests, the context in which they operate and policy outcomes

Big Data

“Big data” are datasets so large that they cannot be analyzed without resorting to data processing software. The definition refers to the volume, variety, and velocity of data generation, as well as to the value their analysis can generate. The datafied society—characterized by the centrality of data generation and processing—has radically changed the informational and technological ecosystem in which interest groups operate. It has expanded their action repertoire to include open data, social media data, citizen sensing, and data journalism. Open government data are made freely available by public administrations for everyone to use. For interest groups, they represent an unprecedented opportunity to gain access to first-hand information about the public sector to craft lobbying and campaigning. Social media platforms offer access to large quantities of data that allow interest groups to better understand and more efficiently target their publics. Citizen sensing involves laypeople in the generation of crowdsourced data, often by means of digital sensors. In the hands of interest groups, it helps to generate evidence while involving affected subjects into the process, expanding the remit of advocacy efforts, and contributes to problemsolving by offering novel interpretations of a problem. Data journalism allows interest groups to make sense of large swaths of data in view of transforming complex information into a story that is digestible by and appeals to large audiences, thus supporting advocacy or lobbying efforts. But leveraging the possibilities offered by the datafied society for lobbying and campaigning is not without risks. Three main challenges can be identified: surveillance which has potential chilling effects on political discourse; the uneven reliability of citizen-generated data; and institutional resistance of the state to the citizen demand for greater transparency

Comparative Interest Group Research

There are challenges to the development of explanatory models of interest group behavior that are valid across a wide range of countries. The position of interest groups in between the policy process and the society and the economy means that a lot of potentially important explanatory factors cannot be theoretically isolated. This creates a fundamental tension between the aspiration to maximize the external, cross-system validity of research findings and the meaningful embedding in country-specific histories, economic structures and societies. This theoretical challenge is conceptually acknowledged in many contemporary studies but still limits the theoretical progress in the field. This contribution discusses the distinct ways in which interest group research has historically dealt with inherent challenges of comparative research designs