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

Abstract

This article familiarizes readers with the international research project ‘The Missing Link: Exploring Organized Interests in Post-Communist Policy-Making’ (OrgIntCEE). The project team has focused on how populations of organized interests in the region have evolved, how they interact with state institutions as well as the group-specific characteristics driving access to policy-makers. The project also explores how Europeanization has affected post-communist interest groups as well as other factors contributing to their “coming-of-age.” We provide a comprehensive overview of the population ecology and survey datasets, while shedding light on the challenges during the data collection process. After a short overview of the project context and structure, we present some country-specific aggregated data on organizational densities and their political activity. We also reflect on potential uses for the data, before wrapping up the article with a self-critical assessment of what could have been done differently as a roadmap for future research.

The Macro-Political Context and Interest Groups' Access to Policymakers

“…were contacted more intensely, and nearly all responded. In general, there is a bias in the sample towards organizations that are primarily advocacy, lobby and interest representation groups over organizations that are alsooccasionallyinvolved in consultations on policy and regulatory issues, but whose main focus is not directly policy related (for a detailed breakdown of the response rates per policy area and populations see Dobbins et al 2023).…”

“…Data. The data sets associated with this research are available as supplementary files (10 to 14) to Dobbins et al (2023), https://doi.org/10.1057/s41309-022-00172-1, or at https://www.orgintcee.org.…”

Democratic Backsliding and Organized Interests in Central and Eastern Europe: An Introduction

“…Finally, based on a new survey of 428 Czech, Hungarian, Polish, and Slovenian interest groups (Dobbins et al, 2022), Labanino and Dobbins (2023) explore whether backsliding turns interest groups away from lobbying at the national level towards the EU or the regional levels. Their article finds that it is rather the closure of the political opportunity structure in general than a lack of individual group access to policy-makers that explains moving away from the backsliding national level towards the supra-or sub-national levels.…”