Outside Lobbying and Issue Responsiveness in Denmark and Germany

Does lobbying affect the policy responsiveness of decision-makers? While there has been a multitude of studies investigating the responsiveness of decision-makers to public opinion, we have hardly any knowledge about how interest groups affect this relationship. In this paper, we argue that outside lobbying has an important effect on the opinion-policy linkage as outside lobbying crucially increases the visibility of policy demands pressuring decision-makers to take action. We empirically test our theoretical claim drawing on a comprehensive media content analysis of public opinion items debated in Germany and Denmark in which we measure the overall media attention as well as media appearances and positions expressed by different kinds of actors affecting the opinion-policy linkage on specific issues. This allows us to examine how the opinion and actions of interest groups affect the ability and willingness of decision-makers to translate the public's policy preferences into policy controlling for additional factors that may affect the opinion-policy linkage at the issue and policy area level. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of the largely overlooked role of interest groups for political representation.