A golden key can open any door? Public funding and interest groups’ access

Abstract

Are government funds an opportunity or a threat to interest groups' participation in policy-making? In answering this question, previous research has raised the question of the interrelatedness between access to policymakers and funding of interest groups' activities. A popular argument represents funding opportunities as inhibitors of interest group access to policy-making because of the funds' negative effect on an organization's autonomy. In opposition to this view, many authors have argued that public funds open access opportunities and contribute to an active involvement of funded organizations in the policy process. This article provides a novel explanation for these contrasting findings. The effect of public funds on access critically depends on the type of contacts organizations have with policymakers. Funding might positively affect access initiated by policymakers (high threshold), but might not affect access initiated by interest groups (low threshold). Using survey data collected from more than 2000 organizations active in four European countries and at the EU level, the article shows that public funds are associated to an organization's participation in policy-making but this correlation is indeed highly dependent on the type of contacts groups have with policymakers. KEYWORDS Interest groups; government funding; access; lobbying; insider State funding of interest group communities is described in the literature as a system of direct transfers from government agencies to an organisation that seeks financial support with the aim of implementing a project or support administrative and organizational changes (Crepaz and Hanegraaff 2020). 1 The existence of such mechanism is generally legitimised by the willingness of the state to support the development of civil society, ensure more efficient implementation, and add strength to the CONTACT

Interest group strategies and policy involvement: Does the context matter? Evidence from Southern Europe

“…The second operationalization gauges the behavioral component and relies on a question regarding how often interest groups seek contacts with different types of actor. While this strategy validates the analytical distinction of different types of targets (e.g., Binderkrantz et al 2017a;Crepaz et al 2021), it departs from standard operationalization and offers a new (and broader) perspective on the dimensionality of policy involvement.…”

Exploring the proportionality of representation in interest group mobilization and political access: the case of the Netherlands

“…Respondents could indicate never, once a year, once every three months, once every month, or once every week. Remember that the theoretical argument presented on our second hypothesis heavily relies on the assumed 'needs' on the part of policymakers rather than the incentives of interest groups to attempt to gain access (Crepaz et al 2019). We therefore choose an indicator that emphasizes the access provision by policymakers rather than the attempts made by interest groups.…”

(Don’t) bite the hand that feeds you: do critical interest organizations gain less funding in the EU?

“…As such, the capacity to locate who is critical and who is not may simply be too difficult to effectively implement. After all, research on lobbying access already suggests that confrontational advocacy does not necessarily inhibit interest organizations' access to policymaking (Crepaz et al, 2021). 2 If policymakers struggle or simply do not filter out confrontational organizations from policymaking, why would they do so for the allocation of public funds?…”

“…We test these hypotheses in the European Union (EU), where the donor is the European Commission (EC), and the funding applicants are politically active interest organizations at the EU level. The EU is the largest donor of interest organizations in the world, which makes it an ideal case for the study of the determinants and the effects of funding on interest organizational behaviour (Mahoney and Beckstrand, 2011;Bloodgood and Tremblay-Boire, 2017;Persson and Edholm, 2018;Crepaz and Hanegraaff, 2020;Crepaz et al, 2021). Yet, so far there has been limited research on this issue in the EU (but see Sanchez-Salgado, 2014;Bloodgood and Tremblay-Boire, 2017), as most of the work relates to public subsidies in North America (Chaves et al, 2004;Brown and Troutt, 2004;Onyx et al, 2008;Suárez, 2011;Mosley, 2012).…”