IMAGES OF AN UNBIASED INTEREST SYSTEM

ABSTRACT

Since political scientists were introduced to the concept of ‘the scope and bias of the pressure system’ by Schattschneider more than half a century ago, we have grappled with the lack of a standard against which to assess bias. Still, scholars have continued to address Schattschneider's provocative claim. This means that they must have in their minds at least implicit images of the unknown state of an unbiased interest system. We uncover these implicit images in this analysis both for their own intrinsic interest and perhaps as a foundation for more progressive research on biases in interest representation. Ten scholars who have done considerable work on the politics of interest representation were asked to provide a brief description of what he or she would see as an unbiased interest system. After presenting each, we summarize the themes that emerged and discuss possible avenues for empirical research on bias.

KEY WORDS:

• Bias
• influence
• interest groups
• lobbying
• representation

Additional information

Biographical notes

David Lowery is the Bruce R. Miller and Dean D. LaVigne Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Pennsylvania State University, USA.

Frank R. Baumgartner is the Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.

Joost Berkhout is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Jeffrey M. Berry in the John Richard Skuse Professor in the Department of Political Science at Tufts University, USA.

Darren Halpin is a professor in and Head of the School of Sociology at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, Australia.

Marie Hojnacki is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the Pennsylvania State University, USA.

Heike Klüver is a professor of comparative politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Hamburg, Germany.

Beate Kohler-Koch is Professor Emeritus of Political science at Mannheim University and Bremen Distinguished Professor at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences, Germany.

Jeremy Richardson is Adjunct Professorial Fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand; and Emeritus Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, UK.

Kay Lehman Schlozman is the J. Joseph Moakley Endowed Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science at Boston College, USA.