Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xm8r8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-27T21:45:49.451Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Navigating between ‘friends’ and ‘foes’: the coalition building and networking of Italian interest groups

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2018

Andrea Pritoni
Andrea Pritoni*
Affiliation:
Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, Firenze, FI, Italy
*
*E-mail: andrea.pritoni@sns.it
Get access

Abstract

This paper focuses on the reasons that Italian interest groups decide to lobby together with like-minded groups (‘friends’), or engage in networking activity with groups that have conflicting interests (‘foes’), in order to influence public policy. How often do Italian interest groups recur to these lobbying strategies? What favours the construction of a coalition of more or less different interest groups lobbying on a particular issue? What, on the contrary, influences the decision to lobby individually? In order to answer these questions, original data coming from a national survey conducted on 1277 Italian interest groups are provided. Empirical results are interesting: from a descriptive point of view, business groups are more likely to engage in joint lobbying than other group types, whereas the same holds true for unions with respect to networking with rival organizations. From an explanatory point of view, groups that perceive themselves to be threatened by rivals’ influence in policymaking, or by environmental challenges, are more likely to work in coalitions and to engage in networking: resources do not matter in ‘absolute’ and ‘objective’ terms, but in ‘relative’ and ‘subjective’ ones.

Keywords

interest groupsItalian politicscoalition buildinglobbying
Type
Research Article
Information
Italian Political Science Review / Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 49 - 68
Copyright
© Società Italiana di Scienza Politica 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Armstrong, J.S. and Overton, T.S. (1977), ‘Estimating nonresponse bias in mail surveys’, Journal of Marketing Research 14: 396–402.Google Scholar
Baroni, L., Carroll, B.J., Chalmers, A.W., Muñoz Marquez, L.M. and Rasmussen, A. (2014), ‘Defining and classifying interest groups’, Interest Groups and Advocacy 3(2): 141–159.Google Scholar
Baumgartner, F.R. and Jones, B.D. (1993), Agendas and Instability in American Politics, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Baumgartner, F.R., Berry, J.M., Hojnacki, M., Kimball, D.C. and Leech, B.L. (2009), Lobbying and Policy Change, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Berkhout, J. and Lowery, D. (2010), ‘The changing demography of the EU interest system since 1990’, European Union Politics 11(3): 447–461.Google Scholar
Berkhout, J., Carroll, B.J., Braun, C., Chalmers, A.W., Destrooper, T., Lowery, D., Otjes, S. and Rasmussen, A. (2015), ‘Interest organizations across economic sectors: explaining interest group density in the European Union’, Journal of European Public Policy 22(4): 462–480.Google Scholar
Berry, J.M. (1999), The New Liberalism, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Beyers, J. and De Bruycker, I. (2017), ‘Lobbying makes (strange) bedfellows: explaining the formation and composition of lobbying coalitions in EU legislative politics’, Political Studies, 1--26, online publication first. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717728408.Google Scholar
Binderkrantz, A.S., Christiansen, P.M. and Pedersen, H.H. (2015), ‘Interest group access to the bureaucracy, parliament, and the media’, Governance 28(1): 95–112.Google Scholar
Browne, W.P. (1990), ‘Organized interests and their issue niches: a search for pluralism in a policy domain’, Journal of Politics 52: 477–509.Google Scholar
Bunea, A. and Baumgartner, F.R. (2014), ‘The state of the discipline: authorship, research designs, and citation patters in studies of EU interest groups and lobbying’, Journal of European Public Policy 21(10): 1412–1434.Google Scholar
Caldeira, G. and Wright, J.R. (1990), ‘Amici curiae before the supreme court: who participates, when, and how much?’, The Journal of Politics 52: 782–806.Google Scholar
Capano, G., Lizzi, R. and Pritoni, A. (eds) (2014), ‘I gruppi di interesse nell’Italia della transizione: organizzazione, risorse e strategie di lobbying’, special issue of Rivista Italiana di Politiche Pubbliche 9(3): 323–623.Google Scholar
Chiaramonte, A. and Emanuele, V. (2013), ‘Volatile and tripolar: the new Italian party system’, in L. De Sio, V. Emanuele, N. Maggini and A. Paparo (eds), The Italian General Election of 2013: A Dangerous Stalemate?, Centro Italiano Studi Elettorali: Rome, Italy, pp. 63–68. e-book.Google Scholar
Clark, P.B. and Wilson, J.Q. (1961), ‘Incentive systems: a theory of organizations’, Administrative Science Quarterly 6(1): 129–166.Google Scholar
Coen, D. (2004), ‘Environmental and business lobbying alliances in Europe: learning from Washington?’, in D. Levy and P. Newell (eds), Business in International Environmental Governance: A Political Economy Approach, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 197–220.Google Scholar
Cramér, H. (1946), Mathematical Methods of Statistics, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cress, D. and Snow, D. (1998), ‘Mobilization at the margins: organizing by the homeless’, in A. Costain and A. McFarland (eds), Social Movements and American Political Institutions, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 73–98.Google Scholar
Curini, L. (2011), ‘Government survival the Italian way: the core and the advantages of policy immobilism during the First Republic’, European Journal of Political Research 50(1): 110–142.Google Scholar
Fraussen, B., Beyers, J. and Donas, T. (2015), ‘The expanding core and varying degrees of insiderness: institutionalised interest group access to advisory councils’, Political Studies 63: 569–588.Google Scholar
Gais, T. and Walker, J.L. Jr. (1991), ‘Pathways to influence in American politics’, in J.L. Walker Jr. (ed.), Mobilizing Interest Groups in America, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Hannan, M.T. and Freeman, J. (1993), Organizational Ecology, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Heaney, M.T. (2006), ‘Brokering health policy: coalitions, parties, and interest group influence’, Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 31(5): 887–944.Google Scholar
Heaney, M.T. and Lorenz, G.M. (2013), ‘Coalition portfolios and interest group influence over the policy process’, Interest Groups & Advocacy 2(3): 251–277.Google Scholar
Hojnacki, M. (1997), ‘Interest groups’ decisions to join alliances or work alone’, American Journal of Political Science 41(1): 61–87.Google Scholar
Hojnacki, M. (1998), ‘Organized interests’ advocacy behavior in alliances’, Political Research Quarterly 51: 437–459.Google Scholar
Hojnacki, M., Kimball, D.C., Baumgartner, F.R., Berry, J.M. and Leech, B.L. (2012), ‘Studying organizational advocacy and influence: re-examining interest group research’, Annual Review of Political Science 15: 379–399.Google Scholar
Holyoke, T.T. (2011), Competitive Interests, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Hula, K.W. (1999), Lobbying Together: Interest Group Coalitions in Legislative Politics, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Jenkins-Smith, H.C., St. Clair, G.K. and Woods, B. (1991), ‘Explaining change in policy subsystems: analysis of coalition stability and defection over time’, American Journal of Political Science 35: 851–880.Google Scholar
Jones, B.D. and Baumgartner, F.R. (2005), The Politics of Attention: How Governments Prioritize Problems, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jordan, G. and Greenan, J. (2012), ‘The changing contours of British representation’, in D. Halpin and G. Jordan (eds), The Scale of Interest Organization in Democratic Politics: Data and Research Methods, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Klüver, H. (2013), Lobbying in the European Union: Interest Groups, Lobbying Coalitions and Policy Change, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lizzi, R. and Pritoni, A. (2017), ‘The size and shape of the Italian interest system between the 1980s and the present day’, Italian Political Science Review 47(3): 291–312.Google Scholar
Loomis, B.A. (1986), ‘Coalitions of interests: building bridges in a Balkanized state’, in A.J. Cigler and B.A. Loomis (eds), Interest Group Politics, 2nd edn, Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.Google Scholar
Lowery, D. and Gray, V. (1993), ‘The density of state interest group systems’, The Journal of Politics 55(1): 191–206.Google Scholar
Lowery, D., Poppelaars, C. and Berkhout, J. (2008), ‘The European union interest system in comparative perspective: a bridge too far?’, West European Politics 31(6): 1231–1252.Google Scholar
Lowery, D., Baumgartner, F.R., Berkhout, J., Berry, J.M., Halpin, D., Hojnacki, M., Klüver, H., Kohler-Koch, B., Richardson, J. and Schlozman, K.L. (2015), ‘Images of an unbiased interest system’, Journal of European Public Policy 22(8): 1212–1231.Google Scholar
Mahoney, C. (2007), ‘Networking vs. allying: the decision of interest groups to join coalitions in the US and the EU’, Journal of European Public Policy 14(3): 366–383.Google Scholar
Mahoney, C. (2008), Brussels Versus the Beltway, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Marchetti, K. (2015), ‘The use of surveys in interest group research’, Interest Groups & Advocacy 4(3): 272–282.Google Scholar
McCarthy, J.D. and Zald, M.N. (1978), ‘Resource mobilization and social movements: a partial theory’, American Journal of Sociology 82: 1212–1241.Google Scholar
Messer, A., Berkhout, J. and Lowery, D. (2011), ‘The density of the EU interest system: a test of the ESA model’, British Journal of Political Science 41(1): 161–190.Google Scholar
Meyer, J.W. and Rowan, B. (1977), ‘Institutionalized organizations: formal structure as myth and ceremony’, American Journal of Sociology 83(2): 340–363.Google Scholar
Nelson, D. and Yackee, S.W. (2012), ‘Lobbying coalitions and government policy change’, Journal of Politics 74(2): 339–353.Google Scholar
Pritoni, A. (2017), Lobby d’Italia. Il sistema degli interessi tra Prima e Seconda Repubblica, Roma: Carocci.Google Scholar
Salisbury, R.H. (1975), ‘Interest groups’, in F.I. Greenstein and N.W. Polsby (eds), Nongovernmental Politics Handbook of Political Science, Vol. 4 Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Salisbury, R.H. (1990), ‘The paradox of interest groups in Washington: more groups, less clout’, in A. King (ed.), The New American Political System, 2nd edn, Washington, DC: AEI Press.Google Scholar
Salisbury, R.H., Heinz, J.P., Laumann, E.O. and Nelson, R. (1987), ‘Who works with whom? Interest group alliances and opposition’, American Political Science Review 81: 1211–1234.Google Scholar
Schlozman, K.L. (2010), ‘Who sings in the heavenly chorus? The shape of organized interest system’, in L.S. Maisel and J.M. Berry (eds), The Oxford Handbook of American Political Parties and Interest Groups, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 425–450.Google Scholar
Schlozman, K.L. and Tierney, J.T. (1986), Organized Interests and American Democracy, New York: Harper and Row Publishers.Google Scholar
Whitford, A.B. (2003), ‘The structures of interest coalitions: evidence from environmental litigation’, Business and Politics 5(1): 45–64.Google Scholar
Wilson, J.Q. (1995), Political Organizations, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar