The Population Ecology of Interest Representation

Gray, Virginia; Lowery, David

doi:10.3998/mpub.14367

Cited by 381 publications

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“…Gray and Lowery (1996) have been the primary scholars shedding light on the underdeveloped area of state-level interest-group processes. Several scholars including Gerber (1999) and Boehmke (2005) both investigate the role of groups in the states as these affect and are affected by referenda and initiative campaigns.…”

Section: Evolving State Structures and The Locus Of Advocacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Converging Perspectives on Interest Group Research in Europe and America

Mahoney¹,

Baumgartner²

2008

West European Politics

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The European and American literatures on lobbying and interest groups developed largely separately in previous decades. Scholars developed different research foci with Europeans more commonly rooted in studies of policy systems and Americans more concerned with precise tactics of lobbying or on the membership calculus following from the work of Mancur Olson.Recent developments in the study of interest groups in Europe suggest that the literatures have begun to be much more closely aligned, a development that can be expected to accelerate in the future. We focus on three major points of convergence, giving illustrations and empirical evidence from the literature on each. First is the impact of governmental structures on the growth and development of national interest-group systems. Using examples from the US and the EU, we discuss the coevolution of groups and the state. Looking both over time and across issue-domains, groups are more active when and where the state is more active. Second, we look at the impact of government structures on the locus of advocacy. Originally explored in the U.S. context, multi-level governance structures in European settings have led to consideration of the concept of venue-shopping. Finally, we discuss the impact of government structures on advocacy behaviors, showing how groups in both systems adjust their lobbying strategies to their political context. Our review of findings and empirical developments in these three areas of interest-group research suggests that the study of groups, long divided by different perspectives may begin to benefit from substantially more convergence of research interests.2

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Section: Evolving State Structures and The Locus Of Advocacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Converging Perspectives on Interest Group Research in Europe and America

Mahoney¹,

Baumgartner²

2008

West European Politics

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“…We acknowledge that one drawback of using mobilization data is that the underlying population of interest groups selecting themselves for mobilization is itself unknown. 7 Some existing studies of interest group population dynamics utilize official lobbying registrars to analyze the existence of different kinds of interest groups -literally their birth and death (Gray & Lowery, 1996;Gray, Lowery, & Benz, 2013). However, following Rasmussen, Carroll and Lowery (2014), we are interested in the decisions and abilities of interest groups to become politically active on a given…”

Section: Section 2 -Empirical Data On Interest Group Pluralitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The interest ecology of financial regulation: interest group plurality in the design of financial regulatory policies

Pagliari

Young

2015

Socioecon Rev

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link AbstractExisting literature has offered a variety of claims regarding why financial regulatory politics features a relative dominance of the regulated financial industry. In this article we explore the broader interest group environment in which financial industry advocacy operates. Using new data on interest group participation in financial regulatory consultations, we provide the first comprehensive analysis of the ecology of interest groups that populate financial regulatory policymaking. Through a new measure of 'mobilized dissent' we find evidence that the level of interest group pluralism in financial regulatory policymaking is constrained by the limited mobilization of voices outside of the business community. We analyze how mobilized dissent toward the regulated financial industry changes in response to different institutional environments. While technical complexity, institutional context, and the global financial crisis are found to impact the level of mobilized dissent, the impact of these environmental conditions varies across different groups. This analysis reveals not only that organized opposition to the financial industry is relatively weak but also that it is relatively disjointed.

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“…Last, one of the more detailed attempts to understand aggregate interest group populations adapts biological theories of species' diversity and density to interest group populations (Gray and Lowery 1996). This model, dubbed the EnergyStability-Area (ESA) model, posits that the number and type of interest groups in a state are a function of three key components: 1. the energy available for consumption, which is government output; 2. the stability of the environment, or how similar the political landscape looks from year to year; and 3. area, a state's carrying capacity or total economic activity.…”

Section: The Initiative and State Interest Group Populationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To test this prediction, I use data on the number of interest groups registered to lobby in each state in 1975, 1980, and 1990, taken from Gray and Lowery (1996), which constitute the most complete picture of state interest groups over time.…”

Section: State Interest Group Populationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Direct Democracy on the Size and Diversity of State Interest Group Populations

Boehmke¹

2002

The Journal of Politics

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This article studies the effect of direct democracy on the size and diversity of state interest group populations, providing an empirical test of a formal model of how access to the initiative process affects group formation and activities (Boehmke 2000). The model predicts that more groups mobilize and become active in initiative states; this prediction is confirmed by the regression analysis in this paper: direct democracy increases a state’s interest group population by about 17%. With an additional assumption, I also generate and test the hypothesis that the increase is disproportionately centered among traditionally underrepresented citizen groups, relative to business and economic groups. This hypothesis is also empirically supported: citizen interest group populations are increased by 29% whereas the increase is only 12% for economic groups, suggesting that direct democracy increases diversity in interest group representation.

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The Population Ecology of Interest Representation

Cited by 381 publications

References 0 publications

Converging Perspectives on Interest Group Research in Europe and America

Converging Perspectives on Interest Group Research in Europe and America

The interest ecology of financial regulation: interest group plurality in the design of financial regulatory policies

The Effect of Direct Democracy on the Size and Diversity of State Interest Group Populations

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