This research line covers everything that can be summarized under the broad heading of state-society relations. During the past decades the number of interest associations and civil society organizations has increased both within states, at the supranational and the global level. At the same time, we have witnessed a decline of party politics, in the form of lower turn-out, higher volatility, and decreasing membership. This research line concentrates on the development of interest group communities situated at multiple levels of government and in different institutional contexts (Europe, WTO, UN, Belgium, Flanders), and deals with how interest organizations adapt their internal structure as well as their external strategies.
Key publications
- Beyers, Jan and Caelesta Braun (2014) Ties that count. Explaining interest group access to policymakers. Journal of Public Policy 34(1): 93-112.
- Hanegraaff, Marcel, Caelesta Braun, Dirk De Bièvre, and Jan Beyers (2015) The Domestic and Global Origins of Transnational Advocacy: Explaining Lobbying Presence during WTO Ministerial Conferences. Comparative Political Studies 15(1): forthcoming.
- Beyers, Jan, Iskander De Bruycker and Inger Baller (2015) The alignment of political parties and interest groups in EU legislative politics. A tale of two different worlds? Journal of European Public Policy forthcoming in the INTEREURO Special Issue.