Interest Group Influence in an Era of Multi-Level Governance and Mediatisation

Interest groups are crucial to the practice of modern politics – few policies are made without the input of groups. Nowadays, however, they face increasingly complex political environments. Traditionally the national administrative arena was the central focus of interest group influence in European countries, but in recent decades processes such as multi-level governance and rising mediatisation have fundamentally altered patterns of influence seeking behaviour. Interest groups are affected by the blurring and transformation of traditional boundaries (Bartolini 2005) and the increasing fragmentation or sharing of political responsibilities across different political levels (transnational, EU, national and regional). Consequently, there is an increasing presence of groups at international or supranational venues such as the EU, the UN or the WTO (Hanegraaff, Beyers and Braun-Poppelaars 2011; Lowery and Berkhout 2008). Interest groups are also profoundly affected by the mediatisation of politics which has made political decision making more visible to the general public and required policy makers to use (new social) media to their advantage. This has raised the necessity of maintaining a strong presence in the parliamentary and media arenas for interest groups as well. Few studies, however, explicitly examine the consequences of multilevelness and mediatisation on group influence across different arenas and levels. This workshop aims to advance the study of interest groups by focusing on these issues.