Coming and holding together umbrellas. Two logics of interest delegation across levels.

A perspective on umbrella organizations can improve our understanding of interest representation across levels of government. Analytically, we distinguish between a “coming together” logic of delegation, when likeminded organizations form or join umbrella organizations on a higher-level to pursue common goals, and a “holding together” logic of decentralization, when organizations establish a federal structure to delegate functions to regional associations. In this contribution, we investigate how groups from the German Land Baden-Württemberg apply these two logics in the delegation of interests between the regional, national and European level. We map the Land’s interest group populations and classify all groups according to their organizational structure, the type of interest they represent as well as the policy areas and economic sectors in which they are active. In order to capture their political mobilization on the three levels – regional, national, and European – we then trace which of these interest groups are present in the respective lobby registers. Our findings will yield important insights in interest groups’ multilevel dynamics and in the equality of political representation.