The responsiveness of local politicians to citizen interest groups
Project description
There is a large literature that assumes that political elites respond differentially to interest groups depending on the status of the lobbyist/organisation and of the lobbying strategy adopted. A decisive variable in effectiveness of informational lobbying is the nature and quality of information a lobbying group can offer. Studies in the field of interest group responsiveness and lobbying are very largely non-experimental (e.g. see overview of fifteen quantitative lobbying studies in Baumgartner and Leech). The aims of our citizen interest group experiment are:
- Overall, to test out the level of responsiveness of local elected representatives to lobbying by the citizen interest groups from the voluntary, community and third sectors.
- To measure the level of impact of different types of lobbying.
Each citizen interest group is seen as an individual ‘mini-experiment’ within a series. Each deals with a different issue relevant to that group, but with a standardised approach to the intervention and randomisation, and a standard measurement instrument. We would therefore be able to aggregate results across all the mini-experiments. We would aim for 200 councillors per each of the two treatment group (but we need to do some calculations of effect sizes based on the results of the pilots).
Progress to date and preliminary findings
- Agreed by ethics committee (positive response to ‘mystery shopping’ idea so far)
- Initial light touch recruitment based on existing contacts to get small number of pilot groups
- Potential groups include a faith organisation, a community network, a refugee/new migrant organisation as well as refugee advocacy organisations.
- Pilots going ahead in early 2009
- Common issues so far: quality and management of communal green spaces; public service responses to refugees, asylum seekers and new migrants.
- All groups complaining about lack of response from or engagement with elected members, but see the potential to do more in co-operation.
Next steps
We have prepared draft letters, based on evidence from existing literature. We now need to finalise these with the groups, and send them out for our pilots. This will take place in January, after which we can refine and adapt as necessary.
Outputs
- Link to APSA Conference September 2009 Paper - 'Is lobbying really effective? A field experiment of local interest group strategies to influence elected representatives in the UK'
- Link to ECPR Joint Sessions In Lisbon April 2009 Paper
- Final report of project and results to be produce Autumn 2009.
- Other dissemination to be agreed.
Liz Richardson and Peter John
The University of Manchester
January 2009
