Welcome to the ECPR Standing Group on Interest Groups

The ECPR Standing Group on Interest Groups promotes and supports research on group politics, civil society, social movement organizations and political advocacy. Membership of the SG is open to everyone who is interested in cumulative research on interest group politics. The SG functions largely as a forum and an exchange network for interest group researchers.

It provides updates on its activities via regular social media channels and anyone interested can subscribe to its newsletter via: https://listserv.uni-stuttgart.de/mailman/listinfo/ecpr-interest-groups

Upcoming events: Summer School and Workshop in Dubrovnik

We are excited to announce that the Summer School of the Standing Group on Interest Groups will be held from June 24th to June 29th, 2024, in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

The event is set against the stunning backdrop of Dubrovnik, a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its breathtaking architecture and vibrant academic community. This presents a great opportunity to learn, network, and draw inspiration in one of Europe’s most captivating destinations.

Applications open on February 19th, 2024, with a deadline of March 29th, 2024. For more information about the preliminary agenda and additional details, please visit the Summer School website at https://ecpr.eu/Events/270.

Should you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to igor.vidacak@fpzg.hr.

The Summer School is hosted at the Inter-University Centre (IUC) Dubrovnik, in collaboration with the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Zagreb, as a member of the IUC and local partner.

The Standing Group also organises as Workshop in parallel to the Summer School: see here 

Previous events

Interest Groups Section at the Annual Conference in Prague 2023

Please find the powerpoint slides of the Members Meeting here

Section at the ECPR General Conference in Innsbruck

Ellis Aizenberg and Adria Albareda convened the Standing Group-endorsed section of eight panels (+ two panels supported in the open section). 

Winners of the 2022 paper prizes:

The panel chairs and discussants in our standing group’s section of the 2022 ECPR General Conference put forward nominations for the best junior and senior papers. This was followed by an evaluation and discussion among three jury members. We are very grateful to Ellis Aizenberg; Adrià Albareda and Rafael Pablo Labanino for putting time and effort in evaluating the shortlisted papers.

The jury unanimously chose the paper titled “Is Virtue Its Own Reward? Corporate Social Responsibility and Access to British Policymakers”  by Alvise Favotto, Kelly Kollman and Fraser McMillan for best paper award. The jury praises the paper’s innovative and impressive examination of the role that businesses and trade associations play in UK policymaking processes and the effect of organizational reputation and CSR in the relations between business and policymakers. The authors use a rich quantitative data-set complemented with qualitative interviews, strengthening the validity and reliability of their findings. Overall, the paper adds a novel interdisciplinary view to the literature which is at the frontiers of the interest group field.

The jury unanimously chose the paper titled “Citizens as Stakeholders in Consultations: Understanding the Amount of Citizen Participation in the European Commission’s Consultation Regime” by Idunn Nørbech for Junior prize. The jury praises the paper’s carefully designed quantitative analysis and interdisciplinary approach by bringing together the literature on citizen’s and interest group participation in EU policymaking.

Standing Group Business Meeting

At the ECPR General Conference in Innsbruck, we will organize a business meeting for members: more details will follow. There will also be a reception after the meeting; Our 2022 presentation can be downloaded here. During the meeting, Rafael Labanino, Michael Dobbins and Brigitte Horvath received the prize for the best paper presented at the 2021 General Conference.

Our previous standing group meeting was held at the Virtual ECPR General Conference in September 2021. Here we presented an overview of the activities the last year and discussed future activities with the standing group members. Our presentation can be downloaded here.

Presentations of earlier meetings can be found here.