Issue Congruence Between Citizens and Interest Groups in Germany

This paper provides the first systematic attempt to analyze the overlap of topics deemed important by both the public and interest groups in Germany. Studies in the US context have shown that groups and the public have different agendas, casting doubt over the liberal democratic expectation that organized interests can serve as representative transmissions belt between citizens and the policy-makers. Moreover, we do not know to what extent citizen groups are really better advocates of the concerns of citizens compared with business groups. To assess the overlap and disparities between the issue agendas of citizens and interest groups, we conducted expert interviews with 119 lobbyists representing, business (including interest groups and firms) and non-business groups. Furthermore, we surveyed a representative sample of about 1,000 adults in Germany about their policy priorities. We asked the lobbyists about the most important issues they were currently working on, while citizens were asked for the most important issue on which they would like to see a change in what government is doing. Our data enable us to explore the degree of the overlap between interest groups and citizens agendas in Germany, and if the latter are more congruent to certain types of organized interest, e.g. cause groups or business associations. Our research design allows us, furthermore, to examine if the preferences for government action differ between different groups in society, such as younger and older citizens and citizens of lower and higher socioeconomic status. While research so far has been confined to the presidential and pluralist system of the US, our results facilitate important insights into the process of preference aggregation in parliamentary and corporatist systems.