Slow but Steady, or Fast and Flexible? Assessing Different Modes of Legitimating Policy Advocacy and Their Implications for the Policy Engagement of Interest Groups

While scholars have scrutinised the different ways that groups can generate and claim to be legitimate advocates for their constituency, there has been less focus on what this might mean in aggregate for the legitimacy of policy making and the political system more generally. Political science views groups as important interlocutors or intermediaries – yet this role is typically assumed to require balancing the political representation of their constituencies and the realities of public policy making. Accounts of the internal organizational development of advocacy communities suggest multiple trajectories with respect to engaging members or supporters in their work. But what implications might the way political representation is understood and put into practice have for the way these groups engage in policy negotiations with government and other groups? This paper first reviews earlier work on different forms of legitimating policy advocacy. Subsequently, we link this work to insights from research on collaborative public governance, and explore the relation between the internal democratic practices of groups and their capacity to be trustworthy and long-term allies of policymakers.