{"id":711,"date":"2013-03-06T13:43:40","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T13:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rulesofreason.wordpress.com\/?p=711"},"modified":"2013-03-06T13:43:40","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T13:43:40","slug":"interest-groups-and-the-making-of-legislation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=711","title":{"rendered":"Interest groups and the making of legislation"},"content":{"rendered":"

How are the activities of interest groups related to the making of legislation? Does mobilization of interest groups lead to more legislation in the future? Alternatively, does the adoption of new policies motivate interest groups to get active? Together with Dave Lowery<\/a>, Brendan Carroll<\/a> and Joost Berkhout<\/a>, we tackle these questions in the case of the European Union. What we find is that there is no\u00a0discernible\u00a0signal in the data indicating that the mobilization of interest groups and the volume of legislative production over time are significantly related. Of course, absence of evidence is the same as the evidence of absence, so a link might still exist, as suggested by theory, common wisdom and existing studies of the US (e.g. here<\/a>). But using quite a comprehensive set of model specifications we can’t find any link in our time-series sample. The abstract of the paper is below and as always you can find at my website<\/a> the data<\/a>, the analysis scripts<\/a>, and the pre-print full text<\/a>. One a side-note – I am very pleased that we managed to publish what is essentially a negative finding. As everyone seems to agree, discovering which phenomena are not related might be as important as discovering which\u00a0phenomena\u00a0are. Still, there are few journals that would apply this principle in their editorial policy. So cudos for the journal of\u00a0Interest\u00a0Groups and Advocacy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Abstract<\/strong>
\nDifferent perspectives on the role of organized interests in democratic politics imply different temporal sequences in the relationship between legislative activity and the influence activities of organized interests.\u00a0 Unfortunately, lack of data has greatly limited any kind of detailed examination of this temporal relationship.\u00a0 We address this problem by taking advantage of the chronologically very precise data on lobbying activity provided by the door pass system of the European Parliament and data on EU legislative activity collected from EURLEX.\u00a0 After reviewing the several different theoretical perspectives on the timing of lobbying and legislative activity, we present a time-series analysis of the co-evolution of legislative output and interest groups for the period 2005-2011. Our findings show that, contrary to what pluralist and neo-corporatist theories propose, interest groups neither lead nor lag bursts in legislative activity in the EU.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Timing is Everything: Organized Interests and the Timing of\u00a0Legislative\u00a0Activity<\/em>
\nDimiter Toshkov, Dave Lowery, Brendan Carroll and Joost Berkhout
\n<\/span>Interest Groups and Advocacy (2013), vol.2, issue 1, pp.48-70<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How are the activities of interest groups related to the making of legislation? Does mobilization of interest groups lead to more legislation in the future? Alternatively, does the adoption of new policies motivate interest groups to get active? Together with Dave Lowery, Brendan Carroll and Joost Berkhout, we tackle these questions in the case of the European Union. What we find is that there is no\u00a0discernible\u00a0signal in the data indicating that the mobilization of interest groups and the volume of legislative production over time are significantly related. Of course, absence of evidence is the same as the evidence of absence, so a link might still exist, as suggested by theory, common wisdom and existing studies of the US (e.g. here). But using quite a comprehensive set of model specifications we can’t find any link in our time-series sample. The abstract of the paper is below and as always you can find at my website the data, the analysis scripts, and the pre-print full text. One a side-note – I am very pleased that we managed to publish what is essentially a negative finding. As everyone seems to agree, discovering which phenomena are not related might be as important as discovering which\u00a0phenomena\u00a0are. Still, there are few journals that would apply this principle in their editorial policy. So cudos for the journal of\u00a0Interest\u00a0Groups and Advocacy. Abstract Different perspectives on the role of organized interests in democratic politics imply different temporal sequences in the relationship between legislative activity and the influence activities of…<\/p>\n

Continue readingInterest groups and the making of legislation<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[16,33,45],"tags":[101,164,239,242,247,346,347,363,389,435],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g3hj-bt","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":689,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=689","url_meta":{"origin":711,"position":0},"title":"Bureaucrats as Policy-makers","date":"February 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Everyone loves bitching about bureaucrats but few know what it is exactly that they do. Ed Page's new book 'Policies without Politicians' provides plenty of insights. As I mention at the end of this book review, everyone who theorizes or\u00a0criticizes bureaucrats should read the book as a reality check. A\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bureaucracy"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":467,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=467","url_meta":{"origin":711,"position":1},"title":"Co-decision and decision-making speed in the EU","date":"May 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Our paper (with Anne Rasmussen) on the influence of early agreements (trilogues) on the speed of decision making in the EU has just been published by the European Integration Online Papers (EIoP). The abstract is below. Anne blogged about the findings here. \u00a0 Abstract: The increased use of early agreements\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Institutions and regulation"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":720,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=720","url_meta":{"origin":711,"position":2},"title":"The evolution of EU legislation (graphed with ggplot2 and R)","date":"March 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"During the last half century the European Union has adopted more than 100 000 pieces of legislation. In this presentation I look into the patterns of legislative adoption over time. I tried to create clear and engaging graphs that provide some insight into the evolution of law-making activity: not an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Data visualization"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.dimiter.eu\/thumb\/figure1.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":845,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=845","url_meta":{"origin":711,"position":3},"title":"5 simple things to know about asylum policy in the European Union","date":"September 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Migration is quickly turning into the defining issue of our time. This might sound clich\u00e9, but is true. Not only does migration top the list of most important problems facing society, but it is also divisive in a way no other issue is. Unlike problems like inequality or the environment,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "EU governance"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":116,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=116","url_meta":{"origin":711,"position":4},"title":"Course on Research Design","date":"November 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I am teaching again the Research Design class for the MSc in Public Administration at Leiden University. It is a rather challenging course since the\u00a0 background of the students is so diverse (from Religious Studies to Psychology to International Relations) and because most of the students have\u00a0very little\u00a0training and a\u00a0certain\u00a0dislike\u00a0for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Teaching"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":52,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=52","url_meta":{"origin":711,"position":5},"title":"Governing by Polls","date":"October 31, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The study of policy responsiveness to public opinion is blossoming and propagating. Work published over the last two years includes\u00a0the 2010 book\u00a0by Stuart Soroka and Chris Wlezien (Canada, US and the UK),\u00a0this paper by Sattler, Brandt, and Freeeman on the UK, \u00a0this\u00a0paper on Denmark, my own\u00a0article on the EU, Roberts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Policy making"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}