Do Institutions Shape the Number of Interest Organizations? Assessing the density of Interest Organizations across Economic Sectors in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the Netherlands

The population ecological Energy-Stability-Area model, and its less formal variants, is at the core of cross-sectoral explanations of the density of interest organizations. Through its evaluation in various contexts (U.S ., EU) it seems to have substantial external validity. However, it has never been evaluated by means of a cross-country research design. This makes it impossible to directly examine whether system-level factors mediate the effect of energy (demand) and area (supply) on the number of organizations. This is unfortunate as traditional, system-specific theories of interest representation (pluralism, corporatism) imply that such effects must be strong: corporatist systems should amplify policy-related, energy factors, whereas pluralist systems should put a premium on society-related, area factors. I present an ESA model on the density of interest organizations per economic sector in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the Netherlands.