What Varieties of Interest Advocacy Do Interest Groups Engage In? An Empirical Examination of Interest Group Policy ‘asks’

By definition, interest groups should engage in advocacy that seeks outcomes that benefit their members or supporters. To do otherwise would seem to offend the basic premise of group representation. Yet, we are comfortable with advocacy in the broad public interest, and equally with the notion that some groups pursue ends justified by solidarity with others. Recent scholarship has developed a ‘varieties of interest advocacy’ framework, which places the beneficiary of the advocacy groups engage in at its heart. It parses out four varieties of advocacy – private, spillover, public and concentrated – reflecting whether advocacy benefits only members, both members and others, broad publics, or specific non-member groups. In this paper we empirically deploy the variety of advocacy framework. Specifically, we measure the degree of variation in the variety of advocacy deployed by groups, and the seek to explain this variation. We do so using data from a selection of Australian interest groups, utilising policy asks presented as part of pre-budget submissions.