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The Drivers Behind Relations Between Interest Organizations and Political Parties in the CEE Countries

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Achieving Democracy Through Interest Representation

Part of the book series: Interest Groups, Advocacy and Democracy Series ((IGAD))

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Abstract

The chapter analyzes factors informing relations between interest organizations and political parties in three post-Communist countries: Poland, Slovenia and Lithuania. The base of comparison are responses to the comparative survey conducted among organizations at the national level. The fundamental question of the chapter is whether these young democracies, using Western democracies as established benchmarks, have been able to develop complex linkages involving parties and interest organizations. The chapter finds that interest organizations and political parties in Central and Eastern Europe live rather separate lives, contrary to the requirements of participatory democracy. However, if organizations express interest in contacting political parties, it is mostly explained by organizations’ financial means (i.e. the larger the funding available for the groups, the more likely they are to contact parties).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It is worth mentioning here research on Slovenia (Fink-Hafner 1998; Fink-Hafner and Krasovec 2005), Czechia (Císař and Vráblíková 2013), and Lithuania ​Hrebenar et al. (2008).

  2. 2.

    http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?reference=EPRS_BRI(2016)595848.

  3. 3.

    For example, the V-Dem data (https://www.v-dem.net) shows that in ‘the core civil society index’, which measures on a 0–1 scale the autonomy of civil society and how citizens freely and actively pursue their political and civic goals, however conceived, Lithuania scores 0.80, Poland 0.72 and Slovenia 0.92.

  4. 4.

    The quote comes originally from Thomas, C. S., & Hrebenar, R. (1999). Interest Groups in the States. In V. Gray, R. L. Hanson, & H. Iacob (Eds.), Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.

  5. 5.

    For comparative analysis of Commission funding (see Mahoney and Beckstrand 2011; also see Císař and Vráblíková 2013).

  6. 6.

    See for example: Rzeczpospolita (22 February 2018), ‘W Sejmie już nie ma lobbystów’ (translation: There are no more lobbyists in Parliament). Available at https://www.rp.pl/Polityka/302219907-W-Sejmie-juz-nie-ma-lobbystow.html. Last accessed 5 October 2019.

  7. 7.

    To keep it comparable with other countries in the project, the currency was EUR even though in Poland it is Polish Zloty. To keep the numbers balanced, we recoded the variable into three categories: (1) <10,000 EUR to 10,000–50,000 EUR, (2) 50,000–100,000 EUR to 100,001–-500,000 EUR and (3) >500,001 EUR.

  8. 8.

    Country reports could be found at http://www.cigsurvey.eu/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

    Patrycja Rozbicka

  2. Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Political Studies, Warsaw, Poland

    Paweł Kamiński

  3. Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Meta Novak

  4. Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas, Lithuania

    Vaida Jankauskaitė

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  1. Patrycja Rozbicka
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Correspondence to Patrycja Rozbicka .

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Rozbicka, P., Kamiński, P., Novak, M., Jankauskaitė, V. (2021). The Drivers Behind Relations Between Interest Organizations and Political Parties in the CEE Countries. In: Achieving Democracy Through Interest Representation. Interest Groups, Advocacy and Democracy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55521-4_4

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