Reaching Across the Interest Group Generations: Technological Change and Organizational Diversity in Group Systems

Organised interest systems that seek to influence public policy-making are commonly characterized as undergoing rapid transformation. Some researchers focus on the post-war professionalization of advocacy; others point to a series of generational shifts in the ways interest groups organize, and still others suggest that the internet is positively (re)shaping the structure of such systems and their democratic capacities. Assessing these claims requires data that both maps the terrain but also records and is attentive to organizational diversity. Taking the existing distinction between representative, campaign, and net-mediated forms of advocacy organization as our point of departure (Skocpol 1999); Minkoff et al, 2008; Karpf 2012), we first address the distinct features and practices of these “three generations” of groups. Subsequently, we assess the reproduction of these organizational features and processes within the aggregate group population, relying on data from a survey of 400 national interest groups in Australia and qualitative interviews. In the last section of our paper, we discuss the implications of our findings for the representative character of group systems and their possible contribution to public policy.