Kosovo: The development of interest groups in a fragile democracy

Kosovo offers a unique opportunity to study interest groups in both a transitional political system and a new country. As the youngest of the Balkan countries, both its pluralist democracy and its interest group system are in the early stages of development. The most significant influence on this development was Kosovo's grueling fight for independence from Serbia in the 1990s. This produced a particular form of interest and interest group activity quite different from most political systems in transition to democracy. As in all such systems, however, Kosovo's group system has also been shaped by its political culture, socioeconomic, including religious, factors, and particularly the international community. This article explains the various factors that shaped early interest group activity, its characteristics, and how it has evolved into a more traditional group system but one that remains bifurcated.     

Interest group dynamics in a weak and transitional state: the case of Bolivia

Bolivia's political development has been characterized by elitist control set in an environment of political instability and a weak decentralized state. Since the 1980s and Bolivia's transition to a limited form of democracy, this elitist control has been successfully challenged from the left and, since the early 2000s, particularly by the indigenous population. In fact, Bolivian contemporary politics and interest group activity have been shaped mainly by the rise in political power of the left and indigenous interests. This rise, given a weak state transitioning to limited democracy, has had several consequences for interest group activity that add increasing complexity to the group system. One consequence of Bolivia's course of political development is that, although it exhibits many common elements of interest group activity explained by existing group theories, aspects of its group development are not adequately accounted for by these theories. In addition, there are questions about whether the new configuration of interest groups promotes or undermines democracy. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interest groups in Brazil: a new era and its challenges

This article provides general and specific insights into Brazil's developing interest group system. In doing so, it presents a theoretical foundation for understanding this group activity, past and present. The general insights of the role of interest groups under limited political participation and authoritarian regimes down to the 1980s plus the period of democracy since then, provide background for the specific insights of the article. The specifics focus on three aspects of Brazil's contemporary interest group activity: (1) utilization of a neo-institutional analytical approach for understanding the interest group environment; (2) an analysis of the types of lobbying activity that takes place in Brazil today, including a case study; and (3) an assessment of the level of development of the group system by placing it in a comparative perspective with both advanced liberal democracies and other Latin American countries. The findings show that Brazil is, indeed, taking on many of the characteristics of a developed interest group system; but its past, its political culture, its political economy, and, paradoxically, its new-found status as an international power, work to present several challenges to its group system and thus to a full democratization of the country. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interest groups in Croatia: Institutional development,strategies, and influence

As it transitions to democracy from a history of authoritarianism, Croatia's interest group system is a work in progress. It is slowly moving from a fluid, informal, and behind the scenes group system to one more institutionalized, with wider participation, and some transparency of group activity. In this article, we explain the evolution of Croatia's interest group system. The main argument is that specific features of institutional design and structures have very much influenced political advocacy behaviour and lobbying strategies of both informal and organized interests.     

A New Phase of European Integration: Organised Capitalisms in Post-Ricardian Europe

In the past, economic integration in Europe was largely compatible with the preservation of different national varieties of capitalism. While product market integration intensified competition, member states could build on and foster their respective comparative advantage. Today, this no longer unequivocally holds true. This article contends that a new, ‘post-Ricardian’ phase of European integration has emerged in which the Commission's and the European Court of Justice's (ECJ's) attempts to promote economic integration systematically challenge the institutions of organised capitalism. It demonstrates this by discussing recent disputes over the Services Directive, the Takeover Directive, and company law. In the current phase of European integration, the Commission's and the ECJ's liberalisation attempts either transform the institutional foundations on which some of the member states' economic systems rely or they create political resistance to an extent that challenges the viability of the European project.     

Serbia: Interest groups in an unconsolidated pluralist democracy

Like Serbian politics in general, informal ways of conducting political business also characterize the country's contemporary interest group system. This is largely due to decades of authoritarian rule and less than 30 years' experience with pluralist democracy. Added to this, the period following the end of socialist Yugoslavia, particularly the authoritarian rule of Slobodan Milo?evi? and Serbia's involvement in war, undermined the development of a pluralist group system. Despite these setbacks, and in the face of continuing constraints, several elements of a modern group system have begun to emerge. This development has contributed to the advancement of Serbia's brand of majoritarian democracy.     

The changing politics of lobbying: private sector organizations in Mexico

This article analyzes how the relations between Mexico's private sector, particularly that of business power groups and interest groups, and the political elite changed as a result of processes of neo-liberalization and democratization from the early 1980s through the presidency of Vicente Fox (2000–2006). The analysis provides several insights into Mexico's developing interest group system during these years and particularly that of business interests. On the one hand, the changes increased political pluralism, the number of groups operating, and their lobbying options and helped move Mexico toward liberal democracy. On the other hand, with its major resources and political connections, big business was able to maintain, in fact enhance, its political status, whereas small business was less politically successful. Moreover, many old political practices used by big business to influence government persist as well as skepticism among the public regarding democratic institutions. As a consequence, this article argues that despite the new developments in political advocacy, the continuation of traditional political practices presents obstacles to the development of interest group activity resulting in a plutocratic element to Mexico's emerging democracy. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploring Transnational Civil Society: A Comparative Study of Colombian,Dominican and Mexican Immigrant Organizations in the USA

ABSTRACT

European integration has added an extra dimension to the perceived crisis of contemporary democracy. Many observers argue that the allocation of decision-making powers beyond the nation state bears the risk of hollowing out the institutional mechanisms of democratic accountability. In EU governance, the Commission has emerged as a particularly active and imaginative actor promoting EU–society relations, and it has done so with the explicit desire to improve the democratic legitimacy of the EU. However, assumptions concerning the societal prerequisites of a working democracy differ with the normative theory of democracy employed. Therefore, expectations concerning the beneficial effect of institutional reforms such as the European Commission's new governance strategy, which was launched at the beginning of the century, vary according to normative standards set by different theories of democracy on the one hand and to the confidence in the malleability of society on the other. Our contribution seeks to pave a way for the systematic assessment of the democratic potential of the European Commission's consultation regime. To this purpose, two alternative theoretical conceptions that link participation to democracy will be presented. A list of criteria for both conceptions that enable us to empirically assess the democratic potential of the EU Commission's participatory strategy will then be presented.     

Balkan rumblings

Although rumours of war in the Balkans are overblown, the region has acquired greater strategic resonance recently, due mainly to Russia's intensifying interest and secondarily to jihadist activity. But the countries' central challenges are the erosion of democracy and poor governance, which may be tolerated to secure the order and stability needed for admission into the European Union.     

Constituency Opinion and PAC Contributions: A Case of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League

To test whether interest group politics doharm to a representative democracy, thispaper simulates congressionaldistrict-level constituency opinion onabortion. Analyzing the relationshipbetween the constituency opinion andNARAL's contributions in the 102nd and103rd Congresses, this paper presentsempirical evidence that NARAL'scontribution decision is influenced byconstituency opinion. The evidence,however, is mixed. Constituency opinioninfluences NARAL's decision on who will getits money. Constituency opinion, however,does not influence NARAL's decision on whowill get more money. According to theseresults, financial representation byinterest groups does not seriously causeharm to a representative democracy, but itcan still bias the representativeness tosome extent. An interest group may selectlegislators whose districts support itsposition less strongly and contribute agreater amount of money to the legislators.     

‘Illiberal Democracy’ after Post-Democracy: Revisiting the Case of Hungary

In taking stock of the ruling Fidesz party's project of ‘illiberal democracy’ in Hungary, this article first develops considerations based on Claude Lefort's democratic theory for critiquing ‘illiberal democracy’ and post-democracy alike, situating the former in an early 2010s post-democratic moment characterised by the emergence of a neoliberal crisis management regime in the Eurozone. ‘Illiberal democracy’ and ‘market-conforming democracy’ are both problematic from this standpoint insofar as they subordinate the key Lefortian dimension of democratic contestation to either the primacy of the markets or a reified conception of the ‘national interest’ as represented by a single party. The analysis then traces the development of ‘illiberal democracy’ and its construction of key signifiers such as the ‘national interest’ in programmatic speeches made by Viktor Orbán, from its beginnings in the post-democratic moment to subsequent crisis conjunctures in which it has redefined itself against ever newer threats.     

A mirror of the ethnic divide: Interest group pillarization and elite dominance in Bosnia and Herzegovina

To date, there is no comprehensive treatment of interests and interest groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). This article seeks to fill that gap. It does so by explaining that interest groups reflect the country's complex political system with multiple levels of power sharing along societal cleavages. Political parties are the major power centers, and the link between ethnicity and party allegiance is most significant in defining the role of interest groups. The result is a pillarized (separate, intragroup) and bifurcated group system with 3 separate interest group subsystems with little interchange between them. This fragmentation has been challenged by international institutional organizations promoting multiethnic interests. Nevertheless, with the persistence of many informal interests, the group system is stymied in moving toward an integrated system, a development that is key to strengthening BiH's consociational democracy.     

Between continuity and change: The EU's mechanism of differentiated value integration

How does the European Union integrate new values into the text of its treaties? A growing body of literature indicates that, in the past three decades, new norms and values have entered the EU's discourse, resulting in what is usually termed ‘normative power Europe’. Yet the research and knowledge to‐date about the EU's discursive assimilation of new values and norms is surprisingly poor. As any institutional change, such integration has the potential to undermine the coherence of the EU's identity and thus also its objective to ‘speak with one voice’. This article explores the EU's discursive management of the continuity‐versus‐change imperative by analysing the integration of new values into the text of its treaties. This issue is addressed based on a quantitative content analysis on the full texts of European founding treaties between the 1950s and 2009. Findings show that the distribution of the EU's values in the text is not uniform: while the language of market economy and democracy is pervasive, the values of peace, European identity, rights and social justice are mentioned less frequently and in restricted linguistic environments. To account for the differences in the integration of values into the EU's treaty discourse, the article develops the notion of a discursive mechanism of differentiated value integration (MDVI). This rationale echoes the logic of differentiation in policy implementation employed by the EU. It is claimed here that, applied in the European discursive arena, MDVI allows radically different readings of the same text. This helps the EU to maintain a coherent value identity while at the same time enabling change.     

Power groups,interests and interest groups in consolidated and transitional democracies: comparing Uruguay and Costa Rica with Paraguay and Haiti

Drawing on a representative sample of four countries, this article compares two related aspects of interest group activity across Latin America. First, it identifies the elements that determine the level of interest group system development and types of group activity across the region; and second it provides insights into the relationship of the level of institutionalization of a group system to the extent of the consolidation of democracy. The representative sample is composed of Uruguay and Costa Rica in comparison with Paraguay and Haiti. These are four countries with small populations that cover the spectrum of levels of socioeconomic and political development across Latin America, from Uruguay, one of the most developed, to Haiti one of the least developed. The article argues that across a spectrum of group development in Latin America, advanced systems have more or less integrated characteristics, whereas less developed ones manifest a dual or bifurcated group activity. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

EU Democracy Assistance Discourse in Its New Response to a Changing Neighbourhood

Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis, this article compares the structure of key policy documents on European Union (EU) democracy promotion in the Southern Neighborhood before and after the “Arab Uprisings.” With reference to the key document presenting the EU's revised conception of democracy and strategic vision in the Southern Neighborhood, this article argues that, despite assertions of a paradigmatic shift in the EU's approach to democracy, the conceptual structure of these documents maintains unaltered the substantively liberal model for both development and democratization. This is likely to leave the EU's pre-Uprisings reputational deficit concerning democracy promotion unaltered.     

Interest groups in Venezuela: lessons from the failure of a ‘Model Democracy’ and the rise of a Bolivarian democracy

This article uses the Venezuelan case to shed light on the potential role of interest-group systems in discrediting liberal democracies and to identify challenges that the region's democracies are likely to confront in constructing effective and fair interest-group systems. It first analyzes the role Venezuela's interest groups played in discrediting its 40-year two-party democracy. It argues that the discrediting of a system heralded by many as the region's ‘model democracy’ cannot be understood by merely assessing how the structure of the group system excluded certain groups. The study shows that the inclusion of certain business interests in visible positions of power also helped discredit the two-party democracy. The article then compares the above system with the new group system which has emerged since 1998 as part of a new democratic system inspired by Latin America's 19th century Liberator, Simón Bolívar. This comparison reveals that the current system inverts the former system of inclusion and exclusion, even as it has retained a number of the old system's less virtuous features. The implications of the Venezuelan case for the region's democracies are elaborated in the conclusion. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Europe's could‐be demos: Recasting the debate

‘A great democratic revolution is taking place in our midst. ... Some think it a new thing and, supposing it an accident, hope that they can still check it; others think it irresistible, because it seems to them the most continuous, ancient, and permanent tendency known to history’.1 Thus wrote de Tocqueville in his much‐celebrated Democracy in America on the extension of democratic ideas across borders. This article is about a similar revolution which unfolds against the background of an ever‐more complex and sophisticated framework of political interactions: the European Union. Both processes point to the same desirable state of affairs ‐ democracy. The difference now is that we are witnessing the qualitative transformation of a system of democracies into a democratic system. Or, alternatively, of a plurality of detnoi into a pluralistic demos. It is to Europe's could‐be demos that we now turn, in an attempt to recast the debate of democracy and integration in the European Union of the 1990s.     

The regulatory style of environmental governance in China: the case of EIA regulation in Shanghai*

The body of literature that examines how institutional contexts affect environmental governance in advanced industrial countries finds that style of environmental regulation is country‐specific. In the pluralist form of democracy like the United States, environmental policy formulation involves bargaining and compromises among interest groups and regulation enforcement through relatively formal and legalistic means. In the corporatist form of democracy like Sweden and Great Britain, in contrast, environmental policies are more accommodating to divergent societal interests and tend to be less formal in their enforcement. These variations in regulatory style have been attributed to differences in basic constitutional structures, regime types and cultures. How do institutional contexts affect the style of environmental regulation in China, which is both a non‐democratic and developing country? This article examines China's regulatory style by focusing on environmental impact assessment (EIA) regulation in Shanghai. The Shanghai EIA system is analyzed in terms of policy ideology, policy content, regulatory process, public participation and policy consequences. It is shown that China's being a single‐party regime with a ‘rule of persons’ tradition has heavily shaped its environmental governance. Based on Shanghai experience, China's style can be characterized as formal in requirement, agency‐dominated in the regulatory process, legalistic in enforcement, and informal politics as the substance of regulation. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Re-conceptualizing China's rise as a global power: a neo-tributary perspective

Two analytical perspectives – conventional wisdom derived from warlordism and European colonialism, and soft-power concepts drawn from post-Cold-War American international relations – are prevalent lenses for analysing China's global rise. However, neither considers the role of the past in shaping China's contemporary diplomacy. This paper fills the gap of this under-researched area by providing an alternative perspective featuring analytic categories rooted in China's tributary tradition. It proposes a neo-tributary framework for systematically interpreting historical Chinese mentalities and strategies embedded in China's contemporary power strategy.     

Direct Democracy and its Critics: Support for Direct Democracy and ‘Stealth’ Democracy in Finland

In this article support for direct democracy and for stealth democracy in Finland is analysed. Stealth democracy represents a step towards a democracy in which there would be even less citizen involvement than in the representative form of today's democracy. The authors found that both options gained significant support among the Finnish electorate. Additionally, they found that it is mostly the same variables that contribute to the probability of citizens being supporters of either direct democracy or stealth democracy. It is the people with less education, who do not know much about politics and who feel that the current system does not respond to citizens' needs, that want change. The direction of change appears to be a matter of secondary interest. Political ideology affects which of the two options respondents favour. Right-wing citizens are more likely to favour stealth democracy. Citizens leaning to the left are more interested in direct democracy.