Capítulo 6. CONCLUSIONES
6.2. BREVE PRESENTACIÓN DE LA METODOLOGÍA PROPUESTA
The supporters-leaders exchange assures the survival of the organization and provides the means of exchange in other environments. This is, of course, a precondition for any policy influence or public relevance. These exchanges are shaped by several contextual forces which in the membership environment largely derive from earlier stages of the influence production process. That is, mobilization and population factors plausibly affect the activities of interest organizations. More specifically, these are the types of members or supporters (individuals, companies, public institutions) and the types of interests, such as an economic sector, a profession, or a certain ‘non-material’ issue, in relation to which to observe varying types of political activities. I discuss these mobilization and population factors below.
First, depending on the nature of the interest, interest organizations have varying problems in mobilizing constituents. In ‘The Logic of Collective Action’ (1965) Olson argues that it is
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more difficult for diffusely spread interests to organize spontaneously.48 Thus, the magnitude
of collective action problems varies between diffuse interests on the one hand and specialized interests on the other hand. There are at least two mechanisms that are consequently assumed to affect the political activities of the organizations representing interests. First, we can assume that the (potential) constituents of diffuse or specialized interests tend to be different, with citizens organized on diffuse interests, and companies (or other organizations) seeking collective action on specialized interests. This difference in membership, together with the nature of the aggregated interest, consequently leads to a fundamentally different evaluation of exchange relations in the news-media environment. Gais and Walker (1991, 106) suggest that citizen groups continually need to reinforce the loyalty of their members and consequently need to show their activism. They seek exchanges with the news media and prioritize ‘an outside strategy of public persuasion and political mobilization’.49 This contrasts with the insider activities of, for example, more specific
interests of a small number of companies or institutions. Second, scholars sometimes assume that the nature of the interest of the constituents (diffuse, specialized) correlates with their distribution across policy sectors and vice versa. As Beyers (2008, 1201) notes, ‘the larger the scope of an organisation, the more policy sectors and issues it needs to cover, the larger and more heterogeneous its constituency.’ As we know that political activities vary by policy sector, we can consequently assume that organizations which are active in a variety of sectors are also likely to require a broad range of influence tactics and membership-related activities. Organizations that represent diffuse interests thus, necessarily, engage in a broader range of activities, including exchanges in several environments than organizations that represent narrower interests.
Second, interest organization population density affects the value that actors in the institutional and news media domain attach to the supporters-related goods offered by interest organizations. This argument is brought forward, with varying levels of complexity, in three research traditions. First, as discussed earlier, in neo-corporatist thinking competitive pressures from similar organizations (density) have a straightforward detrimental effect on the capacity of interest organizations to simultaneously engage members and strike policy deals. As Streeck and Kenworty (2004, 451) note ‘the logic of influence tends to place a premium on interest organizations being broadly based and
48While theoretically convincing, Olson’s arguments have not found strong empirical support. This is, for instance, the case when used to examine the relative presence of voluntary groups vis-à-vis representatives of companies in interest systems (eg Lowery et al.2004; Berry, 1999 154-55). However, apart from the relative presence, ‘group’ scholars have seldom directly compared the activities of organizations with different types of supporters.
49An argument similar to Gais and Walker’s (1991) has been developed for organizational maintenance. As said earlier, Jordan and Maloney (2007) argue that organizations increasingly tailor their activities to be in line with their supporters or members preferences. This is the result of an increase in competition between interest organizations and a corresponding easier ‘exit’ of supporters. Again, organizations that have to maintain individual supporters, such as Greenpeace or an automobile club, as opposed to a few companies, face strong incentives to develop activities that offer selective benefits or that are publicly visible. Their empirical work is theoretically supported by Hirschman’s model described in ‘Exit, Voice and Loyalty’ (1970).
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representing more general instead of highly special interests’. Policy makers are not interested in a variety of exchanges with specialized actors in a fragmented interest community, but seek to exchange a representational monopoly with a single interest organization that aggregates various interests within a sector. This is impossible in dense communities. Thus, in such supporters’ environments, interest organizations will have more difficulties producing exchanges in the influence environment. Second, a more nuanced argument is presented in population ecology studies. Gray and Lowery (1997, 1998) show that, in the US, population density affects group strategies. More specifically, community density affects the support for political action committees and the formation of coalitions. In other words, organizations in dense interest communities are more likely to specialize by tactic when they have similar political positions.50 In terms of exchange
relationships this suggests that in the face of competition, organizations specialize in a single logic of exchange. To avoid conflict with fellow organizations they are thus expected to divide the interest community along lines of institutional interaction, news media contacts, and supporters base. Third, studies of social movement industries similarly find that tactical and positional specialization is related to interest community density and resource partitioning within sectors (McCarthy and Zald 1977; Downey and Rohlinger 2007). This effect, however, is to be understood as operating alongside the simultaneous effect found by Soule and King (2008, 1598) of the ‘influence of a broader environmental resource base’ within society that favors unspecialized, more general organizations. Competitive pressures, they suggest, lead to a community that is typical of concentrated markets: a couple of (older) generalists on the one hand, and various specialists emerging and flowering in the fringes of the sector.51 Taken together, the structure of interest communities conditions
the capacity of organizations to combine exchanges in multiple domains. As said earlier, in the exchange scheme I evaluate exactly these types of exchanges, and I am only indirectly interested in exchanges within a single domain (such as leadership-supporters exchanges).
To conclude, under the logic of support supporters provide compliance and public action or support, and in return have several mechanisms to control organizational leaders (especially on internal governance matters) and receive information on attempts to get news media coverage of a political issue. Interest organizations are unlikely to be able to facilitate all these exchanges simultaneously. Environmental factors related to the mobilization of interests and population of interest organizations lead organizations to specialize in certain aspects of these exchanges. That is, if interests are diffusely spread across constituents, organizations are expected to value news media exchanges more highly than more ‘private’ exchanges. Further, due to the diffuse nature of their interests it is more likely that they face a more fragmented influence environment, as they will want to influence multiple policy sectors simultaneously. At the same time, the density of the interest community additionally conditions the space for action of diffuse or specialized interests. Neo-corporatist thinking leads us to expect that organizations in dense communities are
50Please note that specialization by tactic or logic of exchange is conceptually different from specialization in terms of interest (encompassing vis-à-vis specialized, see Beyers (2008, 1201).
51The age distribution seems similar to what Berkhout and Lowery (2010b) found in the context of the EU interest community.
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less likely to produce exchanges with state-related actors. Population theory suggests that organizations will specialize in a certain influence tactic, probably either media-related action or institutional activities. Social movement studies also expect specialization, but expect that this is conditioned by, among other things, the age of the organization, with new entrants being specialists in any of the goods discussed and older organizations generalists able to intermediate between several domains. The research I present in chapter three further develops and examines more specific expectations based on this discussion.
2.6.2. the logic of influence
The interaction of interest organizations with constituents or the news media has only sporadically been understood as exchange relationships. This is not so for the interaction of interest organizations with political institutions. Throughout the history of the study of interest organizations, this interaction has frequently been conceptualized as an exchange relationship. This is the case in pluralist, economic, resource-dependency, and corporatist approaches to interest representation. In the fifties pluralists took a ‘benign’ view of the ‘exchange of information’ (Bauer, Pool and Dexter 1963, 154-178). They did not consider the unbalanced nature of the information being exchanged or the variation across different interests in accessing policy makers. In ‘economic approaches’ to interest representation it is assumed that ‘legislation and regulation are sold to the highest bidder in political markets, just as other goods and services are sold in more familiar commercial markets’ (McChesney in Lowery and Brasher 2004, 22). These transactions, contrary to the pluralist view, are expected to have negative side effects, consisting in distorting competition and weakening citizens´ control over politics. The resource-dependency approach is very similar to my exchange approach, but differs in that it sees resources as a property of an organization instead of part of a relationship. Such studies take a more formal approach to resources than I suggest in this thesis (Poppelaars 2009; Beyers and Kerremans 2007). Lastly, as became clear in the earlier sections, the logic of influence is also the most developed exchange relation in neo-corporatist thinking and practice.
A recent example of the use of the group-institution exchange perspective in the EU context is provided by Bouwen (2004, 338). In this perspective he appreciates ‘the pluralist emphasis on the plurality of groups and the importance of information, and the corporatist attention to resource exchange’. He suggests that different institutional venues need different types of information, i.e. ‘resources’. This explains different access patterns to the European Commission and the European Parliament by different types of business interest organizations.
2.6.2.1. the exchange relationship with policy makers
The political institutional environment creates opportunities for the exchange of supporters- and reputation-related resources, provided by and for policy makers. In relation to supporters these are (1) organizational privileges and favorable policies in exchange for (2) supporters’ discipline and political/technical support, and in relation to the logic of reputation the resources are (3) political information in return for (4) acceptable policy frames in the news media. Several contextual factors affect these exchanges: they depend on the type of political control potentially exerted upon the actor or venue (parliament, minister, bureaucratic venue) and on the system of structured interest group access in general.
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First, state officials can give interest organizations access to the policy process. This access is beneficial for the interest organizations because it has indirect effects on the membership environment and may lead to favorable policies. In terms of indirect effects, political actors, from parliamentarians to ministers to bureaucrats, can offer a representational monopoly or privileged access to interest organizations (Streeck and Kenworthy 2004, 452). This could indirectly have structuring effects on the membership environment, for instance through a reduction of the population density in an interest sector. Obviously, there is variation in the type of access that is granted. This could range from a formal constitutional role, including legally binding decision powers, to informal irregular contact with a parliamentarian. As a more direct effect, besides providing help in their organizational problems in relation to supporters (via representational monopolies), access is also the first step for policy makers towards making substantive policy concessions favorable to the constituents of the interest organization.52 These could be market regulations that put companies or sectors in a
favorable position relative to competitors, subsidies for the organization, or specific policies that groups have been campaigning for.
Second, organizational leaders offer policy makers the compliance of their constituents. As discussed earlier, depending on the logic of support leaders have varying modes and levels of control over their supporters. Leaders may have some formal powers but also have means such as informal persuasion via internal media, appeals to supporters’ loyalty, and socialization via membership participation. In situations of limited control they can still offer political actors information on political support. Such information on political support or possible non-compliance or resistance, could help to increase the effectiveness of policies (Poppelaars 2009, 4-6) and, under a pluralist notion of democracy, may enhance the democratic quality of decision making through the weighting of various interests (e.g., Lindblom 1959). Considering the ‘de facto’ compulsory nature of membership and the related leadership control over members in corporatist systems, Streeck and Schmitter suggest that the exchange of compliance is also restricted to such systems. This contrasts with the ‘softer’ interpretation of control suggested above, and also contradicts Lipsky’s (1968, 1149) findings in a very non-corporatist environment. He found that leaders of protest movements use their control over their members, or what he calls group cohesion, in policy bargains. He writes, ‘leaders’ ability to control protest constituents and guarantee their behavior represents a bargaining strength’.53
Third, interest organizations monitor policies and assess upcoming legislation not only to inform their constituents, but also to transform this information for the news media. They rely on policy makers to supply them with policy-relevant information or information on political strategies. In large part interest organizations react to government activities (Baumgartner and Leech 2001), and I assume that their news media activities reflect that. Although commonly understood as agenda setters, interest organizations also continuously monitor and seek information on policy plans or policy evaluations. As discussed below, I expect this to form the basis of the ‘information subsidies’ offered for exchange in the
52See Bouwen (2007) for a discussion on the relation between access and influence.
53Lipsky, however, suggests that Schelling (1960, 28) would not agree, because ‘binding oneself’ does not work in international relations: that is, ‘public opinion’ restricts the room to maneuver for democratic states in international negotiations.
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news media environment (Gandy 1982; Hamilton 2004). For example, in February 2009, the Dutch Stichting ‘Natuur en Milieu’ presented a report on the progress of the climate change policy targets set by the government. Such ‘accountability politics’ (Keck and Sikkink 1999, 97-98) requires thorough policy research, and assumes simultaneous attention in policy circles and probably in the broader news media.
Fourth, following from the previous point, even when interest organizations themselves are not in the news they can attempt to transform public claims of others into policy-relevant material such as policy statements and reports. These are valuable for policy makers in order to respond to public challengers. Whereas organizations provide input for the news media (see below), the point here is about the ways in which news media attention is translated into policies (or not). Interest organizations contribute to the transformation of the ‘popular rhetoric’ of the news media into the policy speak of political institutions, or strategically use news media frames to internally challenge policy frames in the policy sector.54 Thus, interest organizations offer to or withhold from politicians the instruments
they need to respond to news media signals.