Explaining the Formation Rates of Post-Communist Interest Organizations: Density Dependence and Political Opportunity Structure

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the formation of organized interest groups in the post-communist context and organizational populations over time. We test two theories that shed doubt on whether vital rates of interest groups are explained by individual incentives, namely, the political opportunity structure and population ecology theory. Based on an analysis of the energy policy and higher education policy organizations active at the national level in Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia, we find that while the period of democratic and economic transition indeed opened up the opportunity structure for organizational formations, it by no means presented a clean slate. Communist-era successor and splinter organizations survived the collapse of communism, and all three countries entered transition with relatively high density rates in both organizational populations. We also find partial support for the density dependence hypothesis. Surprisingly, the EU integration process, the intensity of legislative activity, and media attention do not seem to have meaningfully influenced founding rates in the two populations.

Organized interests in post-communist policy-making: a new dataset for comparative research

“…And, critically, at what point did organizational populations become density-dependent (Hannan and Carroll 1992 )? The dataset enables us to trace how various shifts in the political opportunity structure, i.e., political opening, political closure, but also media attention on related policy issues (Labanino et al 2021a ) drove organizational formations, as well as factors determining population density (Labanino et al 2021b ).…”

“…In Slovenia, which already exhibited a relatively sizable and heterogeneous population of interest groups under Yugoslav socialism, various nationalist-separatist movements opposing one-party rule helped steering the nation toward independence and democratization. Throughout the region, civil society mobilization ultimately brought communism to its knees and the early democratization process subsequently heralded an unprecedented boom in organizational formations (Labanino et al 2021a ; Rozbicka et al 2021a ).…”

Explaining the density of post-communist interest group populations—resources, constituencies, and regime change

“…Earlier, Fink-Hafner (1997) provided data and analysis of the number and diversity of Slovenian interest groups before and after the political and economic transition. However, theoretically driven comparative studies on a sample of interest group populations in different public and business sector domains across several CEE countries were only recently published (Dobbins et al 2021;Labanino et al 2020Labanino et al , 2021. Although these articles test the theory of density dependence (Hannan and Carroll 1992) and political opportunity structure (Meyer and Minkoff 2004;Meyer and Imig 1993) to explain the vital rates of CEE interest group populations, none of them addresses the factors defining interest group population density.…”

Towards energy policy corporatism in Central and Eastern Europe?

“…Second, fewer environmental protection and energy conservation interest groups exist (see 11 For more on interest groups influence in nuclear policy, see Horváthová & Dobbins (2019). Labanino et al 2020), while economic associations are more numerous. Among trade associations, the Hungarian Industry Association (Magyar Iparszövetség, OKISZ) is the largest organization, while numerous gas, oil, mining and heating organizations are also key players.…”