The Added Value of Qualitative Comparative Methods in Interest Group Studies

Methods in interest group studies have significantly progressed since the field’s early days. In the EU, the methods that are available to researchers have expanded, hand in hand with new types of publicly available data. While only a little over a decade ago it was possible to highlight the lack of large-N, comparative studies on interest groups (Beyers, Eising, and Maloney 2008), the years since have seen the growth of large-N studies of interest groups at EU level and within member states (Lowery 2014). These studies have made a significant contribution to our knowledge of the population of interest groups in the EU, when and how they lobby decision-makers, and their influence on policies and public opinion. In the general shift from individual case studies to quantitative studies, however, a ‘third path’ has been somewhat overlooked: comparative qualitative methods. These methods can provide some of the advantages of both qualitative and quantitative research, increasing the generalisability of findings while keeping focus on the detail and complexity inherent in interest group and lobbying activity. This paper outlines recent advances in qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and set-theoretic multi-method research (MMR), highlights the questions that they can answer, and lays out some ways in which they can contribute to the study of interest groups and lobbying activity.