Do Interest Groups Represent Their Members or Their Professional Staff?

We study interest group representation from the vantage points of two main developments in politics in Western Europe over the previous decades: First, with the membership decline in political parties, interest groups have become increasingly important for representational links since they represent key groups, in-cluding workers, businesses, and senior citizens, within the political system. Second, interest groups have increasingly become professionalized, and many interest groups have bolstered their professional staff. This dual development questions the extent to which the policy priorities of interest groups reflect the concerns of key constituencies in democracies or of the professional staff members hired to facilitate group operations. Leveraging survey data conducted among all national interest groups in Denmark and interviews with staff members and representatives of members in 20 groups, we provide new empirical evidence on the internal decision-making processes in interest groups. By including different types of groups and comparing a newly conducted survey to previous surveys, we are able to analyze differences in membership representation over time as well as across group types. We hence offer the first systematic overview of the balance between membership preferences and professional staff members in shaping interest groups policies and priorities.