Comparing the Regulation of Interest Mediation Systems in OECD Countries – A Conceptual Framework

The regulation of interest mediation in democratic, economic relevant countries has not been systematically analyzed so far. This is surprising since interest mediation itself, the integration of societal actors into the decision-making processes, has been studied from many different perspectives using varying methodological approaches (Reutter 2012; Willems and von Winter 2007; Beyers et al. 2008; Eising et al. 2017). This paper starts with the assumption that each country has a distinct way of dealing with the interests in its society, ranging from social, environmental, religious to economic ones, just to name a few. Each democratic country has to decide, how and in which ways societal interests are integrated into decision-making and which rules apply for these processes. Existing research in interest mediation in general has in common that the concept of institutions helps us to map similarities as well as differences in the system of interest mediation. Institutions are understood as man-made, formalized (written) or non-formalized (unwritten) common conceptions or understandings of how power and other resources are distributed and exerted, how competences and responsibilities are defined, shaped and shared, as well as how interdependencies are structured (Morisse-Schilbach 2012; March and Olsen 1989; Mayntz and Scharpf 1995). The paper maps the existing institutions relevant for regulating interest mediation in OECD countries to help understand the qualitative similarities and differences. To do so, it looks at formalized (written) or non-formalized (unwritten) rules, in terms of laws and by-laws, administrative procedures, and patterns of practices. The aim is to measure a) the openness of the interest mediation system in terms of equal access for all societal interests, and b) the level of formalized and non-formalized regulation to arrive at a typology of either open or closed as well as regulated or unregulated interest mediation systems.