What Makes Them Successful? Influential Interest Groups in Hungary (1990–2014)

Abstract

Although many scholars of Central and Eastern Europe politics write about the relative weaknesses of civil societies, some studies delivered evidence of cases where interest groups were able to influence particular decisions and policies. Therefore, we aimed at identifying and examining the most influential national interest groups of eight different policy areas in post-communist Hungary hoping to explore the reasons for their success. Older generations of organisations benefit from political embeddedness, while newer advocacy groups rely more on legal instruments and public mobilisation. The operation of successful groups has not been affected by the strong political polarisation of the Hungarian party system.

Notes

¹ The number of variables involved is high in light of the sample size, but the clear and interpretable structure mirrored by component loadings makes the PCA acceptable. The PCA on a lower number of variables results in similar components, but it causes an unnecessary loss of information.