Interest groups in Central-Eastern Europe - Filling the Blanks Project

There is no doubt that the relationship between interest groups and political parties has become one of the major themes in political science research. "Filling the Blanks" project – funded by Polish National Science Centre- was designed to advance our knowledge on the current state of this relationship. We do so by investigating populations of national-level interest groups in Czechia, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Selected countries share numerous broader features (e.g., high value-added manufacturing export sectors, relatively high social expenditure, EU members since 2004, etc.), but differ starkly on four decisive variables when it comes to interest group politics – electoral campaign finance, lobbying regulations economic coordination and strength of civil society. We tackle three overarching research questions centered around population ecology, ideological spaces of representation and strategic interactions between interest groups and political parties. We investigate (1) potential overlaps with political parties, (2) formal and informal relations between these two actors, (3) and explore whether interest groups "fill the blanks" – namely, the spaces left by parties that might have moved to more incentivizing positions that, for example, guarantee reaching the state-subsidies threshold. We do so by mapping interest groups on several policy dimensions: gal-tan, economic left-right, immigration and climate protection. Furthermore, we investigate if, and which groups have formal and informal relations with political parties. Finally, democratic backsliding, mortality anxiety and the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on well-being of organizations are being investigated. The paper introduces the project and its preliminary findings.