The Times They are A-Changin’: Interest Groups and Lobbying in Times of Societal and Political Change

This section aims to address important and perennial societal as well as political changes for interest groups and lobbying. In recent decades, we have witnessed the rise of radical right- and left-wing parties. World leaders and citizens increasingly question the legitimacy of established democratic practices and international institutions. Crises of social inequality, climate change, migration and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic brought about new opportunities and challenges for interest groups. Policymaking processes are increasingly mediatized and politicized; and digital work environments are now commonplace. These and other changes have transformed how interest representation works at local, national and international levels of governance. An important task of interest group scholars thus lies in examining how interest representation (mobilization, advocacy strategies and access, influence) is affected by these ongoing societal and political changes. Crucial questions concern for instance how old and new (digital) modes of communication affect information exchanges; how politicization is spurred by groups’ (social) media strategies; or how the (framing of) information by lobbyists affects their political influence. Next to communication modes, other advocacy strategies such as coalition and cooperation strategies or venue selection must be adapted to new working environments characterized by an increasing plurality of interests competing for access and influence. Crowded advocacy environments might also put organizational maintenance and survival under strain because of fierce competition for government funding, membership fees and donations, as well as staff. Finally, key research questions concern the assessment of institutional changes such as lobby regulations, transparency measures and whether consultation practices aimed leveling the playing field for interest intermediation effectively increase the legitimacy of political decision-making. Especially in times of crisis such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, biases in mobilization, access and influence can be exacerbated. These societal and political changes also resulted in the emergence of new data collection and analysis methods - next to traditional approaches such as surveys, elite interviews and content analysis. Recently, interest group scholars have embarked on survey experiments, used machine learning for textual analysis, and worked with advanced online data gathering techniques such as web scraping and APIs. While many pitfalls remain, these methods offer new possibilities to tease out causal mechanisms and have made longitudinal research designs more feasible. Overall, this section provides the opportunity to consolidate and deepen our understanding of contemporary interest representation and allows to strive for synergies with the literatures on political communication, party politics, studies of European Union politics, international political economy, public administration and organization studies. The section seeks to involve an international array of both leading and early career researchers, employing a variety of methods and theoretical approaches. We endorse papers addressing one or multiple of the following themes: 1. Organized interests’ (new) modes of communication: groups’ social media use, framing of information, adaptation to digitalization, and traditional modes of communication and information supply; 2. Flexible advocacy strategies for challenging times: groups’ coalition and cooperation strategies, media strategies, targeting of policymakers, grassroots activism, CSR, etc. 3. The interplay between organized interests, the public and policymakers: groups’ ties to political parties, groups’ relation with public opinion 4. Towards an equal playing field of interest representation: assessing access to political-administrative venues and the news media, lobby regulations and transparency measures; 5. Organizational populations in flux: organizational maintenance and survival, biases in interest mobilization, revolving door lobbyists, interest representation on behalf of minorities and disadvantaged societal segments; 6. Advocacy and influence: unraveling agenda-setting and decision-making success 7. New methodological and analytical approaches: experiments, automated text analysis, advanced online data gathering techniques, longitudinal designs, and many more; 8. Interest intermediation in times of crisis: COVID-19, climate change, populism, migration, social unrest, lobbying scandals, etc.