Responsive to Whom? Interest Groups versus the Public

• In Event: Parties and Changing Organizations

Abstract

Scholars are increasingly including both interest groups and public opinion in studies of the responsiveness of policy-makers. However, they generally compare the preferences of both the public and interest groups to policy outputs leaving the process through which interest groups and public opinion affect policy-makers as a blackbox. We add to this by conducting a conjoint experiment to identify the causal effects of learning about public and interest group preferences on the policy positions of politicians. Moreover, we investigate how the ideological alignment of interest groups with politicians affects their ability to affect the opinion of politicians. Our conjoint survey experiments were conducted among all elected representatives in Denmark and the Netherlands in the first half of 2020 and include responses from approximately 3,000 politicians. The results have implication for political representation and understanding the role of interest groups in democratic politics.

Author

• Anne Rasmussen, University of Copenhagen