The Rise of Citizen Groups? Interest Group Representation in Denmark in 1975 and 2010

Transcription

1 The Rise of Citizen Groups? Interest Group Representation in Denmark in 1975 and 2010 Anne S. Binderkrantz (AU) Helene M. Fisker (AU) Helene H. Pedersen (AU) Paper prepared for ECPR 42nd Joint Sessions of Workshops, April 2014, Salamanca, Spain Work in progress Please do not cite without permission from the authors. 1

2 It is of central democratic concern to which extent political systems provide different societal groups with equal opportunities for representation (Dahl, 1961; Olson, 1965; Schattschneider, 1975 [1969]; Schlozman et al., 2012). Diversity in group representation may be seen as a democratic good but many studies have found significant bias in the group system, with overrepresentation of privileged groups such as business interests (Danielian and Page, 1994; Schattschneider, 1974 [1935]; Schlozman et al., 2012; Schlozman, 1984). Over time, some studies have identified a change towards a relatively better representation of for example citizen groups (Berry, 1999; Grant et al., 2012), while others remain skeptical about the contours of the pressure group system (Schlozman et al., 2012). Addressing the distribution of political voice across different organized interests over time requires insights about the ability of groups to mobilize and organize as well as their options for having their voices represented to political decision makers. In other words, we need information about the population of groups as well as groups political access. Access to decision makers can be reached in different political arenas: interest groups voice their concerns in the media, lobby politicians and seek access to bureaucrats. Recent research finds significant variation in the patterns of group representation across these arenas. Economic groups are generally best represented in insider arenas, whereas citizen groups stand a better chance in more public arenas (Binderkrantz et al., 2014; Halpin et al., 2012). Existing research has also demonstrated changes over time in the balance of representation of different groups in single arenas (Binderkrantz, 2012; Binderkrantz and Christiansen, 2014). Lowery and Gray (2004) argue that interest groups way to influence can be divided into different stages in what they call the influence production process and expect linkages and feedbacks between the different stages. However, little research exist connecting data on different stages in the influence production process, primarily because: scholars have rarely had the luxury of having data at all these levels of analysis (Lowery, 2012: 51). Here we focus on the composition of the full population of interest groups as well as the set of groups who have obtained access to different political arenas. While we are not able to connect all stages in the influence production process, it allows us to address the issue of how developments over time affect the group population as well as patterns of political access. Accordingly our research question is: How has the balance between citizen groups and economic groups developed in the group population and across different political arenas? Until now longitudinal data on the interest group population and group representation in different political arenas have not been incorporated in a single study, but a unique dataset with a combination of historical and newly gathered data gives us the opportunity to compare the population and access of interest groups in 1975 with similar data from This allows us to analyze not only how the group population develops, but also whether developments in the population spill over into the different political 2

3 arenas. We compare the development in the Danish interest group population with the development in group representation in the Danish parliament, the bureaucracy and the media between 1975 and Due to the availability of a survey among Danish interest groups from 1976 and a new from 2011 we are also able to estimate how general resources number of staffs impact on access over time. We thus have an extraordinary possibility to study developments in the influence production process for different types of groups and link it to their resources. The influence production process: group representation in the population and in political arenas Lowery and Gray (2004) suggest that there are four different stages in the influence production process: first groups are mobilized for political action, then they enter a population of groups seeking to affect policy outcomes, the third stage entails the use of lobbying strategies and the fourth and final stage concerns the possible effect on group actions on policy outcomes. Inspired by the conceptualization of group influence as an influence production process we focus on two aspects: first, the population of politically mobilized groups and second, the composition of groups who have accessed different political arenas the bureaucracy, parliament and the media. This allows us to investigate the dynamics affecting both the set of groups mobilized for influence and the set of groups present in different political arenas. Our first point of interest relates to the composition of the mobilized set of groups. A prerequisite for having any political voice is that groups have managed to mobilize. This issue has received much scholarly focus since Olson s seminal pointing out of the collective action problems associated with mobilizing interests (Baumgartner and Leech, 1998; Olson, 1965; Schlozman et al., 2012). Newer literature has suggested that both bottom-up and top-down factors may affect mobilization into the population (these mechanism are also referred to as supply and demand) (Leech et al., 2005; Mahoney, 2004). Some groups may mobilize from the bottom because there is a supply of members who needs someone to represent their interests. Other groups may mobilize as a result of changes from the top of the political system, such as creation of new policy program. Explaining the factors that affect the development of the group system over time is important for evaluating the opportunities different groups have for being mobilized. The second point of interest is the composition of the set of groups with political access. Here, mobilized groups are more or less successful in obtaining representation in politically relevant arenas. Interest groups participate in various parts of the political process, from formation of the political agenda to the eventual implementation of policies (Bernhagen and Trani, ). Throughout these processes, they seek access to administrative and parliamentary decision makers and reporters (Beyers, 2004; Eising, 2007; Kriesi et al., 2007). While Congress has been at the center of much US research, European scholars 3

4 have traditionally been preoccupied with group interaction with bureaucrats (Baumgartner et al., 2009; Rhodes and Marsh, 1992). In reaction to the increasing political importance of the media, this arena has attracted increased attention (Bernhagen and Trani, 2012; Binderkrantz and Christiansen, 2013; Danielian and Page, 1994; Kollman, 1998). Group representation in political arenas may be seen as the result of a political exchange between groups on the one side and gate keepers bureaucrats, politicians and reporters on the other (Beyers and Kerremans, 2007; Bouwen, 2004; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978; Salisbury, 1984). Basically, to gain access groups both need to seek access and be able to supply relevant goods demanded by the different gate keepers. There are thus two sides to this argument: what groups want from the interaction group goals - and which type of resources they can supply (Binderkrantz et al., 2014). Interest groups are expected to include different political goals in their portfolios, but the balance between goals is likely to vary. A relative high focus on agenda setting is expected to lead groups to focus on public arenas while a relatively high focus on decision making is expected to draw groups towards decision making processes. Notably, the goals of groups may vary both across groups and over time. Citizen groups may be expected to be very concerned with agenda setting through public arenas in order to call attention to their causes, while economic groups may be expected to be more concerned with decision making safeguarding the interests of their members sometimes preferably in less public arenas (Beyers, 2004; Binderkrantz, 2008). However, as media has become more important for the political process, economic groups may also increasingly seek access here. Just as groups seek different goals and thus approach different arenas they also possess different resources making them more or less likely to gain the access they seek. A crucial distinction relates to insider vs. outsider resources (Binderkrantz et al., 2014). Insider resources consist of information and expertise of relevance to the policy process on the one hand, and control over members or production units relevant to the political fate of policies on the other. Outsider resources consist of the ability to mobilize and campaign on broadly appealing issues and thus influence the political agenda through their ability to provide reporters with stories of news value. These resources are of relevance to all types of gate keepers but just as the priority of goals may vary across groups the demand for the different resources may vary across arenas with public arenas more in demand for outsider resources while decision making arenas are more in demand for insider resources. Since access depends both on groups seeking access and gate keepers demanding resources the development from the population stage to the access stage is not an automatic process but depends on the contextual factors influencing group mobilization, group goals, and gate keeper demands. 4

5 Contextual changes over time At least five interrelated societal changes in West European countries during the last 50 years may have influenced groups ability to mobilize, their goals and resources, and the demands of the gate keepers: Erosion of the class society, emergence of new politics, mediatisation, buildup of extensive welfare states, and demographic changes. In this section we discuss how these changes may have affected the population of politically mobilized groups as well as group access to political arenas. The erosion of the class society has weakened the traditional linkages between voters, interest groups and political parties (Christiansen et al., 2009: 36). While groups and parties in previous decades represented important social cleavages, today s voting cross-cuts traditional patterns (Schmitter, 2008: 198). The increased electoral volatility has for example weakened the capacity of unions to deliver their members votes to the social democratic parties (Öberg et al., 2011: 386). This significantly influences the exchange between interest groups and decision makers, as traditional partners are less able to supply decision makers with valuable resources such as votes and political support (Allern et al., 2007). Especially in Scandinavia this is closely related to changes in corporative institutions. Corporatism can be defined as the institutionalized integration of privileged organized interests in policymaking and implementation (Saalfeld, 1999: 24), and a range of studies have shown that there has been a decline in the level of corporatism in Scandinavian countries since the 1980 s (Allern and Saglie, 2008; Finer, 1966; Kriesi et al., 2007; Saalfeld, 1999). This may in particular affect unions and business groups as these have traditionally been important players in the corporative system. A consequence of these developments is that there has been a change in the balance between the corporative and the parliamentary channel (Rokkan, 1966; Rommetvedt et al., 2012). Corporatist institutions have become less valuable for decision makers and a strengthening of parliament has occurred (Binderkrantz, 2003; Rommetvedt, 2005). Further, as the link between social groups and voters weakens, the value of expertise may have become relative more important than organizing many members as their voting behaviour is less predictable. This will benefit groups capable of providing such expertise. Second, and related to the erosion of class society, new politics issues such as immigration, the environment, and law and order have become more prominent at the expense of traditional political conflicts related to economic and distributional issues (Stubager, 2009). This reflects underlying socioeconomic developments and spurs changing interest group systems (Berry, 1999; Grant, 2004). More interest groups mobilize to represent groups that are not related to industrial sectors, which mean more public interest groups and more groups representing for example patients, the elderly, environmentalists, and consumers (Binderkrantz, 2008; Öberg et al., 2011). These groups push for access to political arenas, 5

6 and decision makers have an interest in catering to such groups in a situation where voters find their issues important. Third, mediatisation has changed communication among political actors including interest groups. The media plays an independent role as agenda setter and political actors will thus focus more on a prominent presence in the media (Kepplinger, 2002). Mediatisation pushes decision makers relative attention away from what goes on in public committees and motivates groups to make a relative substitution away from traditional insider strategies towards strategies aimed at the media (Binderkrantz, 2012). This may affect both the demand and supply side of the exchange relations. Groups are likely to focus relatively more on agenda setting and outsider resources are becoming increasingly important. Fourth, the buildup of extensive welfare states has changed the role of the state. Welfare state policies cover all aspects of citizens life and as a consequence the state has come to play a large role in the everyday life. This can create conflicts between the state and the citizens that are fundamentally different from conflicts in earlier societal structures. Therefore there is a need for new forms of representation as many citizens need new kinds of interest groups to represent their interests regarding the welfare policies towards the state. This creates the foundation for the mobilization of a range of citizens groups. Finally, demographic changes have also had consequences for the interest group system. Especially two demographic groups have grown since the 1970s. The number of elderly persons and the number of immigrants in many European countries have experienced a rise. These persons may mobilize and organize to voice their interests and thus lead to an increase in citizen groups. The combination of these changes are expected to: 1) change the balance between economic groups and citizen groups in the population, 2) change the balance in representation of economic groups and citizen groups in the political arenas, and 3) increase the importance of general resources making groups able to lobby effectively independently of their type. As a bottom-up process demographic changes, the role of the welfare state, and new political conflicts will facilitate mobilization and organization of citizen groups. This will result in an increased number of citizen groups relative to economic groups in the group population. Economic groups will still be better represented in the political arenas as they are capable of providing the increasingly demanded expertise and still controls important aspects of the production of services and goods in society. But the overrepresentation in relation to citizen groups will be less pronounced as the shift in the population may spill over into the political arenas as a higher number of citizen groups in existence may also mean that more citizen groups seek and get access to relevant political arenas. This will especially be evident in the public arenas, where citizen groups will be eager to express their interests and gate keepers will have interests in listening to broadly appealing issues. The 6

7 administration is the least public arena, so here the tendency towards more citizen group access will be least evident. Regarding the two public arenas: parliament and media, we expect citizen group access to increase the most in parliament, since the media besides seeking out stories of broad public appeal also indexes the voices of the general debates and have an interests in talking to insiders of the political process which include economic groups (Bennett, 1990). Finally, we expect the importance of general resources to have increased due to the changing context. As the social linkages weaken the provision of expertise and probably also the ability to communicate and present this expertise in a political relevant manner become more important. Expertise may be gained from detailed knowledge about production of goods and services but may also be gained from resources spend on research and political communication. We therefore expect that groups general resources in terms of money or staff will be more important for representation in political arenas today than in the 1970s. Our expectations are summarized in table 1. Table 1 Expectations of changes in group population and group access over time Group population Group access Administration Parliament Media Citizen groups will come to constitute a larger share relative to economic groups Citizen groups will become better represented in all political arenas General resources will become more important to access in all arenas The general tendencies will be less pronounced The general tendencies will be most pronounced The general tendencies will be more pronounced than in administration but less so than in parliament Research design To test our expectations we need measures of the group population, groups representation in relevant political arenas, categorization of group types, and measures of group resources. All measures should be provided at two points in time where the contextual factors differ. This is very demanding in terms of data but Denmark offers a unique opportunity for having exactly such measures. In 1975 before the contextual changes described seriously influenced politics Buksti and Johansen carried out an extensive data collection on Danish interest groups mapping the population, group access to public boards and committees as well as conducting a survey. Denmark has since the 1970s developed as described above with weakening class structures, declining corporatism, mediatisation, and extensive welfare state policies (Allern and Blach-Ørsten, 2011; Christiansen, 2012; Öberg et al., 2011). So in 2010 Denmark represents a modern political system we can compare with the corporatist system in the 1970s. To facilitate the comparison we have collected data on the interest group population in 2010, managed a survey among them and registered group access in the administration, media, and parliament in 2010 and complemented 7

8 the 1975 dataset with data on group access in media and parliament. This makes it possible to study interest group mobilization and representation in three political arenas over time. Identifying the population A first step is mapping the relevant population of interest groups. We only register national interest groups, and interest groups are defined as membership organizations seeking political influence but not running for public offices. For 1975, we rely on the extensive data collection carried out by Buksti and Johansen in the 1970s. Here, a list of national interest groups was compiled using a variety of sources (Buksti and Johansen, 1979; Johansen and Kristensen, 1982). For 2010, we construct a list of the Danish interest group population including all groups identified in the 1970s controlling if they still existed and supplemented with all groups represented in public committees, answering administrative consultations, writing letters or sending delegates to parliament and groups mentioned in two national newspapers. Additionally, the internet has been searched for more relevant groups. We end up with a population of 2,091 national interest groups in 1975 and 2,543 in Hence the population has increased by 22 percent. Counting access points As we have argued interest groups may seek access to more political arenas. We have identified three highly important arenas: the administration, the national parliament, and the media. To identify groups gaining access to these arenas we use the following indicators. Administrative access is measured by seats in public committees, which is a highly valuable access point to the administrative preparation and later administration of political decisions (Christiansen et al., 2009). These data were already collected by the research team in the 1970s and in addition, we have established a database of all committees active on December 31, In both years, all committee members have been registered and the unit of analysis is number of group appearances in public committees. In 1975 a total of 1,748 administrative appearances by groups were registered and in 2010 the number of appearances was 1,964. Hence we find an increase of 12 percent in access points in the administrative arena. Media access is measured as appearance in a news story. Again we needed to do the data collection for both years of study. Two large national newspapers with opposite political leanings were selected (Jyllands-Posten and Politiken) 1. The papers first sections and business sections were searched for articles with interest group mentioning. In each period, front pages were registered for the full year, and the remaining pages were recorded for 26 weeks distributed over a full year. We only included political 1 For the present version of the paper only Politiken is included in the 1975 dataset 8

9 relevant articles and omitted negative mentioning of groups, as they cannot meaningfully be seen as constituting group access to the media arena. We registered a total of (NOT FINALIZED YET) media appearances in 1975 and 3,672 appearances in (WE CANNOT INFORM ABOUT THE DIFFERENCES AS THE DATA COLLECTION IS STILL NOT FINALIZED). Finally, parliamentary access is measured by letters from groups send to parliamentary committees. The Danish parliamentary committees consist of party representatives mirroring the seat distribution in parliament. Committees both scrutinize and discuss bills and raise issues by asking questions to relevant ministers. These issues are not necessarily related to bills but maybe problems or issues interest groups have called attention to. These letters were not collected by the research team in the 1970s but are stored at the parliamentary library and in the archive material we have identified all letters from interest groups in the parliamentary term 1975/76. Likewise from the parliamentary electronic archive we have identified all letters send to parliamentary committees in the parliamentary term 2009/10. In 1975 we identify 359 letters from national interest groups. In 2010 we identify 1,071 letters. This is an impressive increase of 66 percent, which may be related to the increasing importance of parliament as a political arena but also related to the much easier circulation of communication due to the electronic developments. We must be aware that the access to parliament as it is measured here is more achievable than access to public committees and access to the newspapers as groups do not need to be invited to write a letter. The only factor limiting the ability to send letters is group resources. Categorizing groups into economic and citizen groups Most central for investigating bias and diversity in group representation is the distribution across different types of groups. Theoretically, our focus is on the balance between economic groups and citizen groups. In the analyses, we distinguish further between different types of economic and citizen groups to get a more detailed picture of where the changes emerge. With respect to economic groups we distinguish between: 1) trade unions, 2) business groups and 3) institutional groups representing public authorities and institutions. While these all possess resources of particular relevance for the interaction with public authorities, the balance of representation between trade unions and business groups is interesting from a normative point of view. Citizen groups are rather diverse. A central distinction relates to whether groups represent a specific delimited constituency such as patients or the elderly or whether they work for broader causes such as the environment or humanitarian issues. In the latter groups, members or supporters of the group do not have a selective interest in group goals. We distinguish between: 1) professional groups organizing specific job or education related groups but not negotiating working condition such as the unions, 2) 9

10 identity groups organizing specific groups not related to the labor market such as different types of patients, students, or ethnic minorities, 3) leisure groups such as sports associations and 4) public interest groups whose members do not have a selective interest in group goals. All groups in the populations have been coded as one of these seven group types based on information available on, for example, group web pages or printed descriptions in the case of the old organizations not appearing in the new population. Estimating group resources Finally, information about group resources is retrieved from surveys. In 1976, the survey Interest Groups in Denmark 1976 was administered to all national Danish interest groups with the impressive response rate of 85 percent. From this survey we have retrieved information about the total number of group employees, which is used as the measure of group resources in In 2011 a survey was also issued to all groups in the population with a response rate of 65 percent. Different measures of group resources were included in this survey, but to facilitate comparison with the 1975 data we use a measure of the total number of employees. To obtain linearity the measures of resources were logarithmically transformed and recoded to range from 0 to 1 in both years. For each group we combine information obtained from the survey with data about representation in the three arenas through unique ID-numbers for all groups. For each arena, groups are given an appearance score, which reports how many times the group appeared. The maximum number of appearances in 1975 was 101 for the administrative arena, 18 for the parliamentary arena and 91 for the media arena. The corresponding numbers in 2010 was 126 for the administrative arena, 64 for the parliamentary arena and 254 for the media arena. Changing mobilization and representation from 1975 to 2010 The combination of data on both the population stage and the access stage at two different points in time gives us the opportunity to investigate how the balance between citizen groups and economic groups have developed in the population and whether there are spill-over effects from the population stage to the access stage. Table 2 shows the composition of the population in 1975 and 2010 and how the three arenas are comprised of different group types. As expected there has been a general shift in the population. In 1975 the main part of the population consisted of economic groups as these accounted for 55.4 percent of the total population. In 2010 the balance in the population is changed in favour of the citizen groups as these now constitute 57.7 percent of the population. The change of 13.1 percentage points may not seem very impressive given the 10

11 significant societal developments. However, this is not a result of low mobilization of citizen groups but rather a result of persistence in the number of economic groups. The absolute number of citizen groups increases from 933 to 1,467 from 1975 to 2010 which corresponds to an increase of 57 percent. In the same period the number of economic groups only decreases by the absolute number of 82 corresponding to 7 percent. Hence, economic groups do not die out very easily and part of the decrease is caused by mergers rather than closedowns. There is however no doubt about economic groups experiencing greater competition from citizen groups of various kinds. Especially public interest groups are better capable of mobilizing and organizing in the new political system probably reflecting the interest in new politics issues. The next question is whether the change in the population has spilled over into the three arenas. For arenas we both display representation of individual actors and access points to show how many different groups are represented but also how much their interests are voiced. Starting with the administration, the expectation was that the general trend found in the population should also be found in the administration though to a lesser extent as administrative practices and bureaucrats need for information about the condition for producing goods and services is still relevant. The expectation is supported by the data. Both looking at individual groups and access points, the representation of citizen groups has increased by around 5 percentage points compared to the 13 percentage points in the population. This means that the population stage do indeed spill over into the administrative arena though moderated by the barriers build up by the gate keepers. Moreover, even though citizen groups come to constitute the major part of the population, economic groups are still highly dominant in the administrative arena. In 2010 economic groups still held 80 percent of all the seats in public committees. 11

12 Table 2. Overview over group types in the population and three political arenas Population Administration Media Parliament Total contact Economic groups Groups Contacts Unions Groups Contacts Business Groups Contacts Institutions Groups Contacts Citizen groups Groups Contacts Professional Groups Contacts Identity Groups Contacts Leisure Groups Contacts PIG Groups Contacts Total Groups 2,091 2, Contacts 1,748 1, , ,

13 Looking at the parliament next, the expectation was that as a public arena the increase of citizen representation should be at least as large as in the population. Again the data supports our expectation as the representation of citizen groups increases by around 20 percentage points independently of whether we look at individual groups or access points. This means that the changes in the population indeed influence the political process as significantly more citizen groups also access parliament. In this arena the dominance of economic groups is dissolved in We must however keep in mind that the estimation of parliamentary access is based on letters which are not necessarily read or taken into consideration of politicians. The value of this access point in terms of influencing policy may thus be lower than access in the administration. Finally, looking at the media arena we expected the increase of citizen groups to be similar to the changes in the population as this also constitutes a public arena attractive to citizen groups but still managed by reporters interested in illuminating power relations in society. Here the expectation is not supported. The share of individual citizen groups mentioned in newspapers does increase by around 11 percentage points very similar but not fully as strong as in the population. But the extent to which these citizen groups are able to make space for themselves on the newspaper pages is modest as the share of access points taken by citizen groups actually decreases by around 2 percentage points. Reporters and newspaper editors seem willing to let more different groups voice their interests but economic groups are still dominant in relation to how much they are allowed to say. This is reflected in the overall balance of media attention. In 2010 almost equally many citizen groups and economic groups are mentioned, but economic groups still dominates the news as 70 percent of all occurrences refer to economic groups in 1975 as well as in One reason for the divergence between individual groups and access points is the fact that major economic groups such as The Confederation of Danish Industry or Local Government Denmark covers a broad spectrum of policy areas and are very often informed and thus interesting for newspapers to approach. REMEMBER DATA COLLECTION STILL UNDER WAY. To sum up changes in the population do tend to spill over into the relevant political arenas, but they do so to different extent. In parliament the tendency is intensified, in the administration and in the media the tendency is weakened. The process from moving from mobilization to access is not straight forward but depends on the resources groups are able to offer gate keepers with different preferences. To test if the importance of group type has changed over time and our last expectation regarding the importance of resources, we show the results of a negative binominal regression in Table 3. The dependent variable is the count of access points for each group in the relevant arena in each year. For instance The Confederation of Danish Industry accessed the administration 81 times, the media 254 times, 13

14 and parliament 10 times in As the dependent variable is a count variable and the distribution is overdispersed (variance larger than the mean) we use the negative binominal regression model. Table 3 Negative binominal regression of group type and resources on group representation across arenas, 1975 and 2010 Administration Media Parliament Citizen group *** (0.156) (0.187) (0.202) Employees *** *** *** (0.608) (0.721) (0.701) Year *** *** *** (0.243) (0.289) (0.291) Employees*Year *** *** *** (0.724) (0.826) (0.791) Citizen group*year (0.230) (0.250) (0.257) Constant *** *** *** (0.182) (0.240) (0.249) Observations Pseudo R Standard errors in parentheses. * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001, p= Models are estimated with a negative binominal regression due to overdispersion. Table 3 reports the results of three different models, one for each political arena. To test the impact of group type we include a group dummy (Citizen groups = 1). To test if being a citizen group becomes less important for gaining access as the number of such groups rise in the group population we include an interaction term between group and year. Further to test how group resources influence access we include a measure of the number of employees (logarithmically transformed and standardized with a range from 0 to 1). Again to investigate if the effect of resources increases over time as expected we include an interaction term between year and employees. First, looking at the impact of group type, Table 3 shows that being a citizen group influences levels of access negatively in all arenas in 1975 (single term), but when controlling for employees - only significantly so in the administration. Further the interaction term is not significant. The negative impact of being a citizen group seems to decrease in 2010 in the administrative and parliamentary arena but actually 14

15 increase in the media. But the change is only close to being significant in the administration. As the coefficients are difficult to interpret substantially we illustrate (figure 1) differences in predicted counts across the two group types in 1975 and 2010 respectively. The impact of citizen groups is only statistically significant in the administration where Figure 1 illustrates how the differences between the predicted access points decreases from 1975 where economic groups are predicted to hold 2.6 seats in public committees whereas citizen groups only have one to 2010 where economic groups hold 1.5 seats and citizen groups have 0.8. Economic groups still dominates the administration but less so in 2010 than in Figure 1 Differences in predicted counts across groups types and year in three political arenas. Administration Media Parliament Economic groups Citizen groups Now turning to the impact of resources, we expected resources to become more important as gate keepers will increasingly demand expert knowledge presented in a comprehensive and political meaningful manner. The results do not support our expectation. The main effect of employees shows how the number of employees affects the number of access points positively and statistically significantly in 1975 in all arenas. The interaction term between employees and year shows how this positive impact decreases significantly in 2010 also across all arenas. However, this general effect is mainly driven by the top 5 percent of actors having extraordinary many employees. Figure 2 illustrates the marginal impact of year on the relationship between employees and access for the 95 percent of the groups taking the value 0.55 or below on the employee measure. Hence, the curves in figure 2 show if the moderating impact of year is positive or negative for different levels of resources up to 0.5. If the impact is positive, the positive relationship between resources and access is stronger in 2010 than in 1975 as we expected. 15

16 Effects on predicted access Effects on predicted access Effects on predicted access Figure 2 Marginal effects of year on the effect of number of employees on access in three political arenas Administration Media Parliament Employees transformed 95% confidence intervals Average marginal effect of year Employees transformed 95% confidence intervals Average marginal effect of year Employees transformed 95% confidence intervals Average marginal effect of year First looking at the administration, we see a very small but statistically significant positive effect for lower levels of resources where most groups are located, but for medium levels of resources (around 0.3 to 0.5) the effect turns statistically insignificant. Finally, for very high levels of resources (not shown) the effect becomes significant again and highly negative. Hence, the administration is still an arena for the very resourceful and even more so in 1975 than in 2010 contradicting our expectations. But resources do have a larger though only modestly larger effect of gaining a small number of seats in 2010 than in Hence resources get more important for gaining access but less important for gaining much access. The same results are found in the media and parliament, though the positive impact at lower levels of resources is substantively larger for these arenas especially for parliament. Conclusion The question of representation of different interests is crucial for democracy and research has shown different results regarding the balance of different groups access to political decision makers. Societal changes have further changed the interaction between citizens, organized interests and other political actors. The erosion of class society, emergence of new salient political issue, strong welfare states, and demographic changes may foster mobilization and organization of more citizen groups. Further mediatisation, decreasing corporatism, and volatile voters will make decision makers more likely to interact with these groups granting them access to key political arenas. The study of such tendencies and relationships between developments in the group population and group representation is severely demanding in terms of data. This study has utilized the unique data opportunities in the Danish case to scrutinize these dynamics. By comparing the Danish interest group population and group access to three political arenas media, administration, parliament in 1975 to the population and group access in 2010 and linking these observational data to survey measures of resources we are able to show: 1) to what extent citizen groups have indeed taken a stronger position in the 16

17 population of organized groups, 2) to what extent this possible population change have spilled over into access to three different political arenas, and finally 3) to what extent general resources in the form of staff have gained importance for groups success in gaining access. We find that more citizen groups have indeed mobilized from 1975 to Today citizen groups constitute the majority rather than the minority of the Danish group population. Their success in organizing has spilled over into gaining access. But the spill-over effect varies across political arenas. In the administration, the relative increase of citizen groups access is lower than in the population, and economic groups are still highly dominant in this arena. In the parliament, citizen groups have actually gained relatively more access than they have done in the population. The dominance of economic groups is dissolved even though economic groups stand for a larger share of parliamentary access than the share they constitute in the population. Finally, in the media, citizen groups do not seem to be able to translate their mobilization into access. Even though a larger share of the groups mentioned in newspapers are citizen groups, economic groups still account for the large majority of all appearances. Hence looking across all three arenas, citizen groups have become better represented, but economic groups still dominates the administration and the media even though citizen groups have come to constitute the majority of all groups organized in the population. Regarding the importance of general resources we find an interesting pattern. Generally the number of employees matters less to the amount of access gained in 2010 than in 1975, but looking at the impact of year at different levels of employee numbers we find that in 2010 having some employees was more important for gaining access than in 1975, while it was more important in 1975 to have extraordinarily strong organizations in terms of employees to gain extremely high levels of access. We may thus conclude that in 2010 you cannot really do as an organization seeking influence without some level of professionalization, but as an extremely strong organization you will not have as disproportionate a level of access as you did in Normatively these conclusions show that the balance of representation have leveled out, so that non-economic interests are now better organized as well as represented compared to the 1970s, but this does not mean that the balance is even. Economic groups are still highly dominant and especially business groups have taken an even stronger position. In that sense politics is still biased. These results all refer to a specific case the Danish interest group system and new similar data need to be collected and analyzed to determine if similar trends are found in other countries. The Danish case is comparable to other Scandinavian countries, where corporatism has also been in decline and comprehensive welfare states have been buildup since the 1960s. Many of the other societal changes class erosion, emerges of new politics, and demographic developments are also found in most of the 17

18 West European countries, which means that a mobilization of citizen groups is also likely to have taken place here and also to have influenced the political process by new groups gaining access to decision makers more or less successfully. 18

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