Networking vs. allying: the decision of interest groups to join coalitions in the US and the EU

Abstract

Ad hoc issue coalitions allow advocates to pool resources and signal support of their position to policy-makers. Ad hoc coalitions, however, are not formed in every instance; groups do not always choose to ally since there are also costs associated with membership. To understand why organizations sometimes decide to band together and sometimes choose to forge ahead alone, I argue that we must consider the institutional structure of the political system; the nature of the issue at hand; and finally the characteristics of the interest group itself. This theory is tested on original data based on interviews with 149 lobbyists active on a random sample of 47 policy issues in the United States and the European Union. The results show that EU advocates are building formal coalitions at a much lower rate than their American counterparts. The qualitative evidence suggests that the democratic accountability of policy-makers may explain these differences.

Keywords:

• Coalitions
• European Union
• interest groups
• lobbying
• United States.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks to Frank Baumgartner, Donna Bahry, Jeffrey Berry and the anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks also to the Fulbright Commission for the Fellowship that supported the data collection and to the Pennsylvania State University for the Fellowship that supported the analysis.

Notes

1. The US interviews were carried out in 2002 under the Baumgartner, Berry, Hojnacki, Leech, and Kimball project – Advocacy and Pubic Policy-making Project – NSF grants number SES-0111224 and SBR-9905195. The EU interviews were carried out during 2004–05 with the support of a Fulbright Fellowship. Analysis was supported by a Fellowship from the Pennsylvania State University.

2. For a full description of the 47 issues, please visit http://www.personal.psu.edu/cxm548

3. Note that Congressional advocates are left out of this analysis; thus it is run on an N of 46.