Density, diversity and corporatism: Exploring the links between macro- and micro-level factors mediating interest group access to policy-makers

What micro-and macro-level factors explain the access of interest groups to policy-makers? As Hanegraaff, Ploeg and Berkhout (2020) recently emphasized, there is very little research linking macro-level factors, such as the density or the diversity of interest group populations with micro-level explanations of access, i.e., resources spent on lobbying, the interests and issues represented or venue characteristics. Their analysis revealed that overall density as well as system maturity affected access negatively, while specialized groups fared better in dense communities. However, density did not influence the effect of important micro-level variables (e.g., resources, group type) on access. That is, density is one of many important context-level variables, but not a critical one. In our proposed paper, we broaden the scope of the macro-level factors influencing access, by not only focusing on the impact of density, but also testing the structure of interest intermediation (i.e., policy-specific level of corporatism), and the diversity of interest group populations in policy domains. Specifically, we are interested in how these contextual variables affect each other in determining access, and their influence on the individual (interest group-level) factors such as resources, the level of professionalization and expertise. Are groups in more diverse policy domains in terms of constituencies and issues generally less affected by density levels? Do corporatist (or statist) interest intermediation structures favor general, encompassing groups even in dense interest group landscapes? We take advantage of two unique datasets which we have compiled: 1) a comprehensive population ecology dataset of Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Slovenian national-level energy, healthcare and higher education policy organizations, and 2) our comparative interest organization survey of these populations focusing heavily on political access and perceptions of corporatism and interest intermediation structures in general. By combining the survey data and our population ecology databases to model density and diversity more systematically, we are able to comparatively address an essential question raised by Schattschneider (1960) and Olson (1982) decades ago, namely whether dense interest group populations are a precursor for policy gridlock due to the omnipresence of narrow self-interested groups, or a sign of healthy links between vibrant civil societies and political institutions, which in turn enable equal participation opportunities for different groups. This question remains particularly crucial in the Central and Eastern European context where civil society underwent a highly distorted development and interest groups and interest intermediation systems have taken a different and still poorly understood historical trajectory compared to their Western counterparts.