Party-interest group interactions and consequences for political representation

Does interest group lobbying matter for political representation? According to recent research, the positions and priorities of interest groups are skewed in favour of the more affluent and highly educated. If groups reproduce this bias in their efforts to influence political decision-makers, this may result in unequal representation. In this paper, I add to the literature on interest groups, political parties, and political representation by studying whether interest groups give equal weight to the preferences of people of different incomes, genders, and educational levels when lobbying political parties. Building on existing theories of political participation and drivers of interest group issue prioritisation, I develop hypotheses on how two such drivers, internal responsiveness and political opportunity structure, can result in unequal representation by interest groups. First, I theorise that interest groups are more responsive to the preferences of the highly educated, the affluent and men, and thus more likely to front the positions of citizens with these characteristics when lobbying political parties. This is a consequence of internal responsiveness leading interest groups to respond to their supporters when deciding whether to lobby a party on an issue. Interest group supporters are likely to be highly educated, affluent and male because political participation depends on resources like money, civic skills, and free time. This results in biased issue prioritization by interest groups when lobbying political parties. Second, I hypothesise that interest groups consider political opportunities when deciding whether to lobby a party or not on a specific issue. Consequently, interest groups consider the attention given to an issue by political parties before deciding whether to lobby on the issue. This is likely to further strengthen the bias in favour of the affluent, highly educated and men in interest group lobbying because parties on average put more emphasis on the preferences of citizens with these characteristics. I test the hypotheses by combining existing survey data from individuals with an ongoing survey of Norwegian interest groups and controlling for other potential drivers of issue prioritisation such as media salience, policy capacities, and nicheness. The paper sheds light on a so far unexplored cause of unequal political representation: the representative link between citizens and political parties operating via issue prioritization by interest groups.