Grant Jordan

• University of Aberdeen

This introductory chapter raises issues that are central to populationlevel studies of organized interests, interest groups, and associations. In draft form the text served as a reference point for the contributors to this volume, which seeks both to report on conclusions drawn from recent studies and to reflect on problems (theoretical, definition...

The original intention underpinning this book was to address both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of researching numbers and groups: to set out conclusions from recent research but, just as importantly, to provide something of a manual anticipating practical issues that will need to be faced in future research. In scholarly enterprises, one can easily sta...

This discussion acknowledges that interest group ‐ governmental relations deserve further study, but argues that the corporatist literature of the last decade has failed to give useful guidance to the research. One major complaint concerns the hostility in many of the sources to pluralist analysis. As critiques, these attacks have been too shallow...

Much discussion of the role of groups has a caricature feel. On the one hand, there is celebration of the democratic merits of old-fashioned, cosy (bottom—up) organizations where, in theory at least, there is policymaking initiative at the local level and meaningful accountability of leaders to members. This is seen as ‘good’, as is the comparative...

Following the discussion of the growing professionalization in groups, this chapter presents two new sorts of evidence from surveys. First, it documents responses from group managers giving a top—down insider perspective on joining. Secondly, it reports on a survey of (environmental) non-members. This work matches group members with nonmembers (who...

Over the past few decades conflicting theories have emerged in the social sciences with regard to the bases of public opinion. This chapter discusses the phenomenon of the creation of opinions through examining the case of the environment, but the issue is broad. It questions the commonplace Truman (1951)1 assumption that group membership relates t...

organizations are most effective in persuading their members to support the group financially when they match incentive offerings with the members’ incentive demands. Incongruence between supply and demand provokes the withdrawal of contributions from members of all kinds of associations (Knoke, 1990: 140).

As established in Chapter 1 there is a widespread concern about a decline in political and civic activity (Putnam, 1993, 1995a, b, 2000). However, this volume has been indirectly commenting on a broadly held view that group activity has ameliorated the adverse consequences of party decline. For example, Farrell and Webb (2000: 123) note that ‘Fewer...

Beyond ‘direct’ democracy lies an infinite wealth of possible forms in which the ‘people’ may partake in the business of ruling or influence or control those who actually do the ruling (Schumpeter, 1943: 247).

Two neighbours may agree to drain a meadow, which they possess in common; because ‘tis easy for them to know each other’s mind; and each must perceive, that the immediate consequence of his failing in his part, is, the abandoning of the whole project. But ‘tis very difficult, and indeed impossible, that a thousand persons shou’d agree in any such a...

This paper confirms the existence of public interest groups as a theoretical puzzle for an Olson type (economicaily-driven) rational choice explanation. it systematically reviews different theoretical approaches that challenge this appearance of paradox. The paper also introduces some British survey data. It concludes that rational choice analysis...

This article contributes to the discussion of one component of the “crisis” in political participation by looking at (non‐) participation in groups. The starting point is that political science has a heavy gauge tool for accounting for such low inactivity – Olson’s (196516. Olson , M. 1965, 1971. The Logic of Collective Action, Cambridge, MA: Harv...

The case was selected as being (reportedly) one of successful implementation: the interest was in the preconditions of success. To meet a forecast shortage of housing for oil-related construction workers, the Scottish Development Department convened a working party on which it, eight local authorities, a representative of the local industrial lobby...

It is not hard to find the complaint that a group of policies are incoherent, operate in silos or are unintegrated. The aspiration to coherence is widespread across all political systems: it is today's idea in good currency. Scholarship has identified conditions that support coherence: a strong constituency with a shared policy image. This article...

This article notes the systemic lack of conceptual clarity in the social sciences and attempts to illustrate the adverse consequences by closer examination of the particular example of the interest group field. It indicates the significant ambiguities implicit in the term. Not all policy-influencing organisations are interest groups as normally und...

This article looks at the emergence and maintenance of interest groups. We systematically identify a range of membership incentives that underpin mobilisation and apply them to a case study, the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), focusing on the recruitment literature rather than the special niche literature on trade associations. The FSB was cr...

This case study charts the classic transformation of a small business organisation from being a vehicle of protest that attracted a reasonable but transient membership into a much larger group with a more stable membership and a group with an effective insider policy style. The paper asserts that the change in style and the change in recruiting suc...

This article examines those public interest groups that have grown through heavy advertising expenditure and sophisticated marketing techniques, most particularly direct mail solicitations. It suggests that an Olson-style rational choice understanding of this 'mail order' membership must be supplemented by a recognition of the importance of group a...

This article discusses the occupation of an oil-related structure called the Brent Spar in the British sector of the North Sea by Greenpeace protesters in 1995. Shell intended to ‘dump’ the buoy in the deep North Atlantic. The aftermath of the occupation and associated publicity was a change of policy about the disposal of the Spar by Shell, Europe...

The article begins by comparing the use of terms such as policy community and sub government by different authors and in different (JS. and UK) political science traditions. Although accepting the major body of work that points to the erosion of sub governments, the authors argue that too much emphasis on the complexity and volatility of policy mak...

This article examines the contemporary agricultural policy-making environment in Britain and suggests that the growing complexity of interest articulation and policy making has eroded NFU dominance as a peak association. We would suggest that it is this clientelistic attitude to agriculture rather than a specific relationship with one interest grou...

This paper examines the place of groups in the consultative process in British policymaking. It stresses the importance of consultation even under the Thatcher government and distinguishes between consultation, bargaining and negotiation. The paper identifies the important divide between the relatively few groups with privileged status and the grea...

A paper prepared for the Britain After Blair conference, British Politics Group of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Il., 29 th August 2007.