Interest groups are an important influence in the subnational policymaking process. Previously, environmental policy scholars measured the strength of environmental groups in the American policymaking subnational process by using proxies like state-level group membership in major nationwide environmental organizations (e.g., Sierra Club). Although these prior measures of group strength have face validity, recent scholarship suggests that the utilization of group financial resources is a better measure of the influence of interest groups in state-level models. We take this approach and provide a new way to measure state-level environmental interests by using aggregated financial information (income and assets) from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data obtained via the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS). This measure provides several advantages over previous approaches because it varies over time, is derived from easily accessible public data, includes a greater diversity of environmental organizations, and it is considered reliable by prior scholars. We demonstrate its empirical value by deploying our measure in a model of state policy adoption. We encourage researchers to further utilize this new measure in their analysis of environmental advocacy at the subnational level.

Both European Union law and the European Convention on Human Rights offer an opportunity structure for a broad array of interests to pursue their objectives through strategic litigation. The spectrum of rights that litigants can claim is sufficiently broad that no consensus has emerged on the general consequences of such litigation. While much research has emphasized European law as a resource for civil society groups, EU law in particular has also been identified as a boon for businesses who challenge cornerstones of coordinated capitalism. This paper sets out to provide a better empirical basis for a normative evaluation of the consequences of strategic litigation in European law by asking who engages in it and who does not. It draws on data from a large-scale survey among interest groups in eight European countries. While results show significant differences in country-level litigation rates, the focus of this analysis is on the impact of group characteristics on the choice of litigation as a strategy. The findings confirm that litigation requires specific resources but highlight that groups with a prior interest in European affairs and those with antagonistic relations to national authorities are the most likely to turn to strategic litigation based in European law.

When observed in comparative perspective, until the early-1990s the Italian welfare state was clearly an outlier, characterized by an unbalanced allocation of resources among welfare sectors (so-called functional distortion) and towards social groups (distributive distortion). Since then, however, profound transformations have affected both the institutional architecture and the distributive profile of the Italian welfare state. Through an in-depth reconstruction of three decades of welfare reforms in Italy, this article shows how retrenchment and regulatory reforms in pension and labour market policies in an earlier phase (1992–2015), combined with the rather unexpected ‘expansionary turn’ in family and anti-poverty policies in more recent times (2016–2022), have partly reduced the comparative imbalances of the Italian welfare state, making it less of an outlier than in previous decades. To understand such puzzling developments, it relies on an explanatory framework centred on the interplay between socio-political demand and political supply, showing how the emergence of new coalitions, which for the first time mobilized latent social needs, combined with the reshuffling of the party system and the electoral success of parties challenging the austerity paradigm, quite unexpectedly contributed to make the Italian welfare state now look more ‘mainstream’ than in the past.

Scholars studying organizations often work with multiple datasets lacking shared identifiers or covariates. In such situations, researchers usually use approximate string (“fuzzy”) matching methods to combine datasets. String matching, although useful, faces fundamental challenges. Even where two strings appear similar to humans, fuzzy matching often struggles because it fails to adapt to the informativeness of the character combinations. In response, a number of machine learning methods have been developed to refine string matching. Yet, the effectiveness of these methods is limited by the size and diversity of training data. This paper introduces data from a prominent employment networking site (LinkedIn) as a massive training corpus to address these limitations. By leveraging information from the LinkedIn corpus regarding organizational name-to-name links, we incorporate trillions of name pair examples into various methods to enhance existing matching benchmarks and performance by explicitly maximizing match probabilities. We also show how relationships between organization names can be modeled using a network representation of the LinkedIn data. In illustrative merging tasks involving lobbying firms, we document improvements when using the LinkedIn corpus in matching calibration and make all data and methods open source.

This article examines the Committee for Constitutional Government, a conservative organization that spearheaded a novel form of mass-based mobilization and direct-mail propaganda to counter New Deal reforms from 1937 to the late 1950s. I argue that the members of the committee offered a supple and variegated response to New Deal liberalism, one with deep roots in the American past. Organizationally, the committee differed from other conservative groups of the period in the vastly greater reach of its propaganda, the small-donor financial base of its operations, and its extensive cultivation of a grassroots movement committed to right-wing reform. The committee was a critical political actor from 1937 to 1955, systematically shaping legislation and countering the trend toward social democracy in America. The ultimate result of its campaigns was to retard the growth of the administrative state and help formulate a cogent conservative critique of reformist liberalism.

In recent years, the movement of personnel from the public sector to interest groups has garnered considerable attention throughout Europe. Consequently, there has been an increased focus on the phenomenon of revolving door lobbyists within academic literature. This research contributes to this scholarly discussion by examining how the employment of such lobbyists facilitates access. We argue that interest groups gain advantages by recruiting individuals from the public sector in policy domains with limited mobilization, but this benefit decreases as more interest groups mobilize. Our analysis of survey data from seven European political systems supports these expectations, indicating that recruiting professionals with experience in the public sector enhances access, especially in policy areas with minimal lobbying activity. This highlights the potential for interest mobilization to counterbalance the advantages of hiring revolving door lobbyists.

Research on the activities and influence of interest groups in state legislatures faces a data problem: we are missing a comprehensive, systematic dataset of interest groups’ policy preferences on state legislation. We address this gap by introducing the Dataset on Policy Choice and Organizational Representation in the United States (CHORUS). This dataset compiles over 13 million policy positions stated by tens of thousands of interest groups and individuals on bills in 17 state legislatures over the past 25 years. We describe the process used to construct CHORUS and present a new network science technique for analyzing policy position data from interest groups: the layered stochastic block model, which groups similar interest groups and bills together, respectively, based on patterns in the policy positions. Through two demonstrative applications, we show the utility of these data, combined with our novel analytical approach, for understanding interest group configurations in different state legislatures and policy areas.

This study examines interest groups’ influence on the European Commission’s policy agenda. We argue that organizations can gain agenda-setting influence by strategically emphasizing different types of information. Analyzing a novel dataset on the engagement of 158 interest groups across 65 policy issues, we find that prioritizing information about audience support is more advantageous than emphasizing expert information. However, the effectiveness of highlighting the scope of audience support depends on the level of issue salience and degree of interest mobilization. Specifically, our findings indicate that when dealing with issues characterized by quiet politics, there are no systematic differences among groups employing distinct modes of informational lobbying.

This research note builds upon a number of important articles published in a variety of outlets concerning the population ecology of interest groups. Importantly, Lowery and Gray (1995), Nownes (2004), and Nownes and Lipinski (2005) empirically demonstrated the dependence on the density of pre-existing, similar groups when predicting new group formations. In this letter, I add to this research by modeling the density of ideologically divergent reproductive rights groups as well as offer supporting evidence for the popular Energy-Stability-Area model. The former is a novel consideration in the field of population ecology which primarily examines ideologically similar groups. I show that density dependence is at play among these polarized groups. I also provide insight into counter-mobilization movements of group formation by empirically demonstrating which groups are initial movers versus reactionary formers. In doing so, I raise important questions for researchers concerned with the emergence, longevity, and impact of interest groups over long periods of time. Finally, this research provides some insight into the expectations of group formation behavior in light of the landmark Dobbs decision.

Sociolinguists study the valorization of specific languages as a ‘language ideology’. Contemporary nation-states frequently identify with and promote specific languages. Such linguistic nationalism is a language ideology, but not the only one. This article examines earlier millennia to uncover the dynamics by which imperial systems managed linguistic diversity and how and why they favored and disfavored particular languages and scripts. I analyze states and empires as coalitions of interest groups. I invoke the scribal masters of imperial chanceries and archives as one such group. I develop a heuristic framework (or “model”) to understand the interactions of language and power that unfolded across West and South Asia. I begin with a great empire, the Persian, that did not employ its founders’ ethnic speech but instead refined an older state language in governance. That choice entrenched an interest group that endured through a thousand years till displaced by Arab conquest after 660 CE. But a simpler ‘New Persian’ revived in the eastern Iranian lands. Turkish and Mongol conquest elites emerging from Inner Asia carried this language and its scribes into their growing domains in the Indian subcontinent. I then explain why the non-Persian Mughals in the 1550s selected Persian as their state language and rejected the constant pressure to use Urdu creole. Mughal rule left behind a tenacious Persian-writing elite that the early British empire employed. Finally, I explain the state processes behind the colonial-era decline of Persianate administration and the emergence of a new linguistic politics in colonial India.

This article provides an empirical overview of federal lobbying in Canada, examining lobbying contacts by field and sector from 2011 to 2022. We track shifts in lobbying representation over this period, including across Harper Conservative and Trudeau Liberal administrations. The study reveals the dominance of business interests in lobbying in Canada and a high level of lobbying concentration. By sector, export-oriented industries with high environmental and climatic impacts—namely, agriculture, fossil fuel and manufacturing industries—predominate. With the transition to Trudeau, we find a significant increase in overall rates of lobbying and a modest increase in the ratio of public interest representation. Overall, the lobbying industry is characterized by greater access but unequal voice.