In the light of the recent debate on the fading away of traditional cleavages (class, religion) and the arising of a new value-based cleavage (gender, age groups, etc.), this paper studies the contacts between MPs and an ‘old’ interest group (trade unions) and a ‘new’ interest group (organizations for the elderly) (Enyedi, 2008; Caramani, Celis & Wauters, 2012). A strong linkage between interest groups and MPs is seen as a key factor in interest groups’ capacity to shape policy. The aim is to identify critical factors that affect these contacts. Our major focus is whether the party affiliation of MPs plays a role in the contacts interest groups engage in. Based on the ‘classical’ cleavage theory, we expect that trade unions have most frequently contacts with MPs from socialist parties, but it remains to be seen whether this still holds after the decline of the class cleavage. We also know from earlier research that in general parties from the left are more sensitive to demands of subordinated groups: is this the case for elderly organizations? And if so, are these contacts as intense as for trade unions?
Apart from these factors on the party level, we will also include factors on the individual level (age, sex, experience, etc. of individual MPs) and factors of the political system (electoral system, governance level, etc.) as control variables into our analysis.
