In a recent article published in The Standard Tom Barton discussed his recent Political Science and Reserach Methods paper on the Voter ID pilot scheme in the UK, which showed a 4.4% point drop in turnout due to the specific scheme implemented. In the article Tom pointed out how the recent changes to the law in the UK could have negative implications for turnout and representation. This generated a response from the Government, who said “we are committed to strengthening the security of our democracy and making sure every legitimate voter can exercise their democratic right to vote. As set out in the manifesto, we are looking at improving voter registration and addressing the inconsistencies in voter ID rules that prevent legitimate voters from voting.”

The ADVODID team are pleased to announce that last Thursday (23rd January) Lise Rødland passed her PhD viva at the University of Oslo. Her thesis is titled: ‘Interest Groups and Political Representation in Long established European Democracies’ sheds new light on the role of interest groups as vehicles of political representation in long-established European democracies. It shows that interest groups tend to adopt positions that align with the preferences of citizens who are well represented through the electoral channel. However, the negative consequences of this, in terms of political representation, could be ameliorated because when a policy area is important to a party, the party tends to grant access to and be receptive to a wider range of interest groups.

In August the team will be presenting reserach from the the project at the ECPR general conference in Thessaloniki. This will include presentations on interest groups and social media, off and online interest group stratergies and how AI is used in lobbying.

In a new study in Comparative Political Studies Anne Rasmussen and Stefanie Reher study whether civil society engagement enhances the link between public opinion and policy. In other words: does joining (politically active) voluntary associations make it more likely that policy is in line with the preferences of the public? To answer this question, they analyse …

The GovLis team is hosting a symposium that will bring together scholars interested in studying whether interest groups help or hurt the representation of the public. The event will take place at Leiden Unviersity (Campus The Hague) on April 25-26 and the deadline for proposing an abstract is March 1st. We hope to welcome you to the event! Please find more information on our event page.

Together with Marcel Hanegraaff, GovLis project member Wiebke Junk is organizing a section on interest groups at the ECPR General Conference September. The event will take place in Wroclaw, Poland. The section is called: “Interest Group and Lobbying Research in an Integrative Perspective: Building Bridges Across the Discipline”Moreover, GovLis’ prinicpal investigator Anne Rasmussen chairs a …

Based on their research about the framing of policy issues, Wiebke Junk and Anne Rasmussen published a post at the London School of Economics’ EUROPP blog. In it they argue that if lobbyists or other interest groups want to use framing to affect policy outcomes, they should work together. In other words: if a single lobbyist tries to frame an issue a certain way, it’s unlikely to help him/her. However, if a larger number of actors frame an issue in the same way, it does help. Curious? You can click the link below to read the entire post.

Framing and lobbying success: Why it pays to work as a team

Does public policy in Europe reflect women’s preferences equally well as men’s? In this new study in the European Political Science Review, Stefanie Reher compares the opinions of women and men on 20 policy issues in over 30 European countries. She finds that in most cases, majorities of men and women want the same policy outcomes. However, when women and men do prefer different policies, men are more likely to get the policies they want. In the paper, Stefanie Reher also looks at differences across countries. She finds that the percentage of women in parliament is not related to the extent to which women get the policies they prefer. However, she does show that the higher the number of parties in parliament, the more likely that women’s preferences are reflected in policy (see figure below).

In a new paper (open access) in Party Politics, GovLis team member Jeroen Romeijn studies the policy positions of political parties in Germany. He finds that opposition parties generally take positions that are in line with public opinion. However, the positions of parties in government are not related to public opinion at all. Instead, they are related to the preferences of the supporters of government parties. Moreover, the paper shows that when the supporters of a political party and the general public disagree on a policy issue, political parties side with their supporters 84% of the time. Taken together, this suggests that when forced with a choice or put under pressure, political parties side with their supporters instead of the general public.

The new GovLis paper “the opinion-policy nexus in Europe and the role of politicial institutions” studies the relations between public opinion and policy on 20 policy issues in 31 European Democracies. In it, Anne Rasmussen, Stefanie Reher and Dimiter Toshkov find that there is a strong relationship between public opinion and policy, as well as a substantial degree of congruence between public opinion and policy. However, they find only limited effects of institutional factors, such as a country’s electoral system and the horizontal and vertical divisions of powers. The paper is forthcoming in the European Journal of Political Research and can be accessed here.