Policy Evaluations in Parliament: Do Interest Groups Influence Information Processing by MPs?

Members of parliament (MPs) ask for policy evaluations and use the related findings to inform law-making and to hold the government accountable. Many elected representatives have developed strong ties to specific interest groups and these privileged relationships may have an influence on their parliamentary search for policy-relevant information. This study considers the ties between MPs and interest groups and investigates the following research question: What is the impact of interest groups on MPs behavior related to evaluation request and use? This question is not only relevant from an empirical and theoretical point of view. It is also highly sensitive from a normative stance. If interest groups do have a significant impact on the parliamentary evaluation practice, then this could also have major implications for the democratic accountability of policy processes (i.e. interest- or evidence-based policy-making?) and elected officials (i.e. responsiveness towards sectional or electoral constituencies?). The theoretical framework, which is based on the "legislative subsidy" approach developed by Hall and Deardroff (2006), claims that interest groups do matter for MPs’ evaluation practice and information-processing. They function almost like a "service bureau", delivering technical expertise and procedural advice to MPs. Interest groups are likely to contribute to the use and demand of evaluation evidence. However, we also postulate that citizen groups are more willing than business groups to offer what could be called "evaluation subsidies" to elected representatives. Preliminary findings from a representative survey of Swiss MPs shows that, regardless of their respective political party and individual characteristics, MPs having ties with citizen groups display a higher attention for policy evaluations than representatives linked to business groups. The former foster the parliamentary evaluation practice and work as catalysts, whereas the latter act rather as inhibitors, probably substituting public evaluation with private expertise.