Requérant
Steven Eichenberger
Financé par
FNS Postdoc.Mobility, voir page du projet
Durée
2021-2023
Alongside political parties, interest groups represent the most important “representational vehicles” in established democracies. Hardly any serious political commentator, much less any serious political scientist, would deny the importance of interest groups in aggregating citizens’ interests and articulating them in front of government. However, scholarly research has shown that resource inequalities crucially affect interest groups’ access to the major decision-making venues, and the success achieved through lengthy decision-making processes. Furthermore, parties adjust their agendas to interest groups, and ties to interest groups increase MPs’ tendency to vote against their constituents.
In light of this, I ask: when do parties rely on lobbying safeguards to protect the party line against encroachments from interest groups?Lobbying safeguards can be understood as rules, practices and (sanctioning) mechanisms that help parties curtail potentially problematic relationships with interest groups. I seek to understand whether reliance on such safeguards varies across political systems, policy issues and political parties.
I expect the following. H1.Political parties rely on stronger lobbying safeguards when voters can clearly assign them policy responsibility. H2.Political parties rely on stronger lobbying safeguards when handling party-owned issues. H3.Government parties rely on stronger lobbying safeguards compared to opposition parties.
This set of tentative hypotheses is supplemented by additional ones. They are tested in a country-comparative research design, which contrasts parties in the Canadian Westminster system (clear policy responsibility) with parties in the Swiss consensus system (obscured policy responsibility). I seek to administer a survey at the level of individual MPs, who are asked to assess the strength of lobbying safeguards across a set of 10 policy issues, some of which are “party-owned”. This quantitative analysis is supplemented by qualitative interviews with party group leaders, ministers, backbenchers and interest group representatives.
