The Role of Interest Groups’ Members in Decision-Making Processes

Interest groups are in pluralist view understood as a link between the public and the government. As such they represent a possible channel for citizens to influence the policy outcomes, which contributes to the legitimacy of adopted public policies and strengthens the democracy. Such understanding supports the thesis - more diverse interest group system is, more interests it represents, and more it contributes to democracy. One of important factors that determine the success and impact of interest groups in public policymaking is the level of professionalization. Interest groups that reached a high level of professionalization operate similar as some companies and could be referred to as protest business. The activity of the organization is mostly led by staff, while members are becoming less and less involved and the link between the organization and its constituency is becoming weak. However, if the interest groups want to be a relevant part of democratic policymaking process, they need to act internally democratic and include constituency in the taken decisions. On contrary, we might face inequalities in representation. Interest of members that are not include in interest groups activities are likely to be overlooked. The objective of this paper is to observe the role of interest groups’ members in the involvement of interest groups in decision-making processes. Main research question is: How important are members in decision-making within the organization? Additionally we will be interested what is the difference in role of members in business and non-business interest groups and whether the country context of an interest groups system defines also the relationship of interest groups with its constituency. To answer these research questions, we will analyse cases from the Central and Eastern Europe: Lithuania, Poland and Slovenia with younger tradition of interest groups. The selected countries are new democracies, post-socialist countries and newer EU member states where the role of interest groups in strengthening democracy is even more important. The role of members will be compared with cases from Western Europe: Belgium, Italy, Netherlands and Sweden that are all established democracies. The statistical analysis will be performed on Web survey data gathered among the population of national interest groups as part of Comparative Interest Groups Survey project.