The impact of democracy on interest group system institutionalization

• Author: Direnç Kanol
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1594
• Date: 01 November 2016
• Published date: 01 November 2016

■Academic Paper

The impact of democracy on interest

group system institutionalization

Direnç Kanol*

Political Science, Near East University, Nicosia, Turkey

This paper providesthe first large-N study, which measuresthe variation in interest groupsystem institutionalization. It

shows that the level of democracy is a very strong determinantof strength of interest groups across countries. Findings

are corroborated by analysing the Tunisian case to alleviate the reverse causality problem. Implications for comparative

interest groupsand democracy research are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Interest groups are indispensable tools for citizens’

participationin politics as they enable them to convey

their ideas to elected representatives between elec-

tions, which take placeonly once in a couple of years.

For a long time, however, research was confined to

interest groupsin the United States of America. From

the classics of interest groups research such as The

Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures

(Bentley 1908), The Governmental Process: Public

Interests and Public Opinion (Truman 1951), The

Semisovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democ-

racy in America (Schattschneider 1960), to more

recent works like Basic Interests: The Importance of

Groups in Politics and in Political Science

(Baumgartner & Leech 1998) and Lobbying and

Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why

(Baumgartneret al. 2009), the unit of analysis has been

the American interest groups.

Exceptions to this regularity emerged after the rise

of the European Economic Community, which in-

trigued some scholars to study the growing number

of powerful interest groups in Brussels. Some of the

most important works on EU lobbying include Orga-

nized Interests and the European Community

(Greenwood et al. 1992), Lobbying in the European

Community (Mazey & Richardson 1993), Lobbying

the European Union: Instituti ons, Actors and

Issues (Coen & Richardson 2009 ) and Lobbying in

the European Union: Interest Groups, Lobbying

Coalitions, and Policy Chang e (Klüver 2013).

Studies about interest groups in places other than

the United States of America or the EU, however,

are still very rare. There are only a couple of existing

analyses of interest groups elsewhere (Johnson 2008;

Hrebenar et al. 2008; Köppl & Wippersberg 2014;

Biggemann et al. 2014; Meier 2014; Gates 2014; Gozetto

et al. 2014; Irwin & Githinji 2015). There is also a

dearth of studies which analyse variation among

countries using interest groups and advocacy either

as the dependent or the independent variable

(Pijnenburg & Thomas, 2004; Kanol 2015a). Never-

theless, the number of comparative studies in inter-

est group literature is slowly increasing (McGrath

2005; Mahoney 2008; Yadav 2011; Woll 2012;

Klimovich & Thomas 2014; Kanol 2015b). Despite

this slow trend, however, no large-N study exists,

which attempts to explain interest group system

institutionalization across countries.

In the next part, concepts such as institutionalized

interest groupsystem, matured interestgroup system

and integrated political advocacy system are

discussed. These concepts all mean the same thing,

so a discussionto shun conceptual confusion is neces-

sary. Afterwards, the link between the level of

democracy and interest group system institutionali-

zation is discussed relying on the literature. The ex-

pected positive impact of the level of democracy on

interest group system institutionalization is put to a

*Correspondence to: Assistant Professor Direnç Kanol, Near East

University, Political Science, Near East Boulevard, 99138, Nicosia/

TRNC, Mersin 10, Turkey. E-mail: direnc.kanol@neu.edu.tr

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 16 Number 4 pp 341–349 (2016)

Published online 27 January 2016 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1594

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.