The Agenda-Setting Activities of Interest Groups: Connecting the Dots Between Interests, Strategies, Issues and Government Attention in the UK, US, Germany and The Netherlands

The common view on the agenda-setting influence of interest groups is relatively unnuanced: on one hand, there are business lobbyists that aim to keep issues off the agenda and pressure to reduce ‘government intervention’ by means of inside lobbying, duly responded to with legislative and budgetary attention. On the other hand, there are other, non-business interest groups trying to push issues onto the agenda, publicly arguing in favor of government attention, and receiving symbolic attention by government spokespersons at best. However, scholars commonly study general behavioral patterns, e.g. with the aid of organizational surveys, which remain separate from the contextual factors and outcomes on particular issues. In particular, the patterns observed in interest group surveys fail to take issue salience and priorities into account. On the other hand, issue-centered approaches tend to focus on relatively salient issues, ignoring the wide variation in salience and its effects on agenda-setting strategies. Our study addresses these research design challenges through the use of issue-specific interview questionnaires. We examine the differences between business and non-business lobbyists in terms of their lobby aims (more/less government), their preferred venue of advocacy and the (preferred) outcome in terms of the attention of government actors in speeches, budgets and laws (model: group-issues nested in CAP minor-codes). We therewith connect distinct phases of the interest production process. Our analysis uses data from the AIG project covering Germany, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.