Politics over policy? The role of public support and politicization for the legislative take-up of policy recommendations by interest groups

This paper examines how much impact interest groups’ policy recommendations have on the legislative changes made to proposed bills in four Belgian parliaments. While previous research has often adopted a policy-oriented perspective to theorize upon advocacy success, this paper adds a politics-oriented perspective. This implies that, instead of emphasizing resource-based exchanges in relation to concrete policies, we analyze how public support and the politicization of issues affect the legislative take-up of policy recommendations tabled in advisory councils and parliamentary hearings. By comparing these two venues, this paper sheds light on how institutional characteristics interact with the issue-specific political context. We hypothesize, first, that the higher the degrees of politicization surrounding proposed bills, the more legislative changes are made in response to recommendations. In particular, more opposition from a larger share of interest groups causes a greater amount of changes to the bill. Second, interest groups are more likely to attain their preferences when public opinion is supportive of their policy position, especially when issues are politicized. These effects are expected to be more pronounced for recommendations voiced in parliamentary hearings compared to advisory councils. We test our expectations for 72 policy issues addressed in 224 bills for which we combine public opinion data with evidence on lobbying in these two venues.