Representation Bias in Interest Group Mobilization on Multiple Levels

Research on multi-level lobbying suggests that interest group mobilization differs between levels of government. Assuming differential abilities of interest groups to overcome collective action problems, we argue that business interests are over-represented in particular at higher levels of the political system. In order to assess the size and direction of business bias in interest representation, the distributions of actor types at different levels have to be mapped and compared. In this paper, we will map interest group populations on the subnational, national, and European level and their mobilization across different policy areas. Our analysis starts with the subnational level by mapping all groups based in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. To determine the set of active organizations on the three levels, we then trace which of these groups are present in the respective lobby and transparency registers in order to capture groups’ political mobilization and code each group into the policy area in which it is (primarily) active. To control for policy areas ist important as the responsibilities of the three levels as well as interest group populations differ between them. Furthermore, we control for delegation to umbrella groups and direct corporate lobbying in our analysis. For this we will examine on the one hand how interest groups join or forge umbrella organizations to be present on multiple levels. Here we distinguish between delegation which follows a “coming together” logic (see Stepan 1999), when likeminded organizations form or join an umbrella organization to pursue common goals, and a “holding together” logic of decentralization, when organizations establish a federal structure to delegate functions to regional associations. Given the incremental nature of the European integration process, we assume that delegation between the national and the European level follows a coming together logic. By contrast, delegation between the subnational and the national level can be expected to follow a holding together logic. On the other hand, we will also shed light on the opposite trend that actors avoid aggregating positions in associations and prefer to lobby alone by including corporate lobbying in our analysis. In sum, our analysis will address a lack of attention to multilevel dynamics in interest group populations and yield important insight in the equality of political representation.