Foreword

• Author: Conor McGrath
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1715
• Published date: 01 May 2019
• Date: 01 May 2019

Foreword

This double issue of the Journal is devoted to a benchmark study of

public affairs and interest group activity in the contemporary Balkans.

Here, the Balkans include the six countries—Bosnia and Herzegovina,

Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia—and the

former Province of Kosovo (now a sovereign state) that were part

of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that ceased to exist

in 1991.

Besides providing the first comprehensive coverage of interest

groups in each of the seven countries and the relation of their group

system to the development of democracy, this volume adds to the lit-

erature on both transitional group systems and comparative interest

groups. As political systems emerging from years of authoritarian rule,

several developments in the Balkans are similar to those in other

regions also in various stages of transition, such as Latin America

and Eastern Europe. At the same time, the Balkan experience with

the major role of international organizations, and in some cases with

war, gives their emerging interest group systems some developmental

characteristics which are unusual in most transitional systems.

The comparisons with other transitional systems are only one of

several contributions this volume makes to the study of comparative

interest groups. Other comparisons include the political party–interest

group relationship; the extent of formal versus informal group

activity; attitudes to interest groups and lobbying of both the public

and public officials; and the extent of the use of various strategies

and tactics.

While each of the country treatments is a stand‐alone article, four

aspects of the organization of the volume facilitate their integration.

One is that research on each country was based on a set of guidelines,

including use of a common research instrument, for gathering original

data in addition to using existing sources. Second, use of the guide-

lines mean that the contributors cover more or less the same topics

in a similar sequence that facilitates comparisons between countries

in the region. Third, the first two articles set out the background to

the project, including the use of terms in the volume, an overview of

political developments in the Balkans, and a first look at the character-

istics of the region's group systems. And fourth, the concluding article

compares the similarities and differences in the seven group systems,

assesses these against advanced group systems, and looks at the key

relationship between interest groups and democracy across the region

today, and its likely course in the future.

Having been involved in comparative interest group research for

close to 20 years, while there are clearly variations between Balkan

group systems and other systems across the world, what struck me

are the similarities. This volume further confirms that there are more

or less common patterns of development and operation of interest

groups and how fundamental they are to the functioning of all political

systems, particularly democracies. The Balkan case shows this clearly

by how various factors that impede interest group development,

particularly war, stymie and in some cases undermine the develop-

ment of pluralist democracy.

Conor McGrath, Ph.D

Lecturer in Public Relations & Public Affairs

Ulster University, Northern Ireland

DOI: 10.1002/pa.1715

J Public Affairs. 2019;19:e1715.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1715

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of1

[Correction added on 30 April 2021, after first publication: An incorrect version of the

foreword was published on 26December 2018 and has now been removed and its DOI

aliased to the correct version of the foreword.]

J Public Affairs.2019;19:e1715. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1of1

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1715