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This editorial introduces readers to the thematic issue on organized interests in the context of democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe.

AbstractWhile there has been a veritable boom in literature on organized interests, their lobbying strategies, relationships with decision-makers, and their impact on policymaking, only a few studies have explored internal organizational developments and, specifically, the professionalization of interest groups. The present study focuses on the national and transnational factors driving the professionalization of interest groups in Central and Eastern Europe, a region previously neglected in much of the interest group literature. Based on a sample of more than 400 surveyed organizations operating in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovenia in the healthcare, higher education, and energy sectors, we explore three bundles of factors potentially enhancing the professionalization of interest groups – organizational funding sources, national and transnational intergroup cooperation and organizations' standing in the domestic interest group system. Our statistical analyses show that state subsidies and tight policy coordination with the state are crucial drivers of internal organizational professionalization, suggesting rather patronistic and symbiotic relationships between the state and certain organizations. However, our data also support the notion that interorganizational collaboration, both at the national and international levels, may also be key to organizational professionalization, enabling groups that lack close ties with the state to compensate their disadvantage with intensive domestic and international networking. The study is also among the first to link increasing professionalization with organizational population density.

AbstractThis paper contributes to our understanding of interest intermediation structures in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and, specifically, whether, which, how and to what extent organized interests are incorporated into policy-making processes. Unlike previous studies primarily focusing on patterns of economic coordination (Jahn 2016), we focus on energy policy-making in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. We address the extent to which these energy interest intermediation systems are gravitating towards a more corporatist policy-making paradigm and whether corporatist arrangements have been dismantled in view of the new wave of national conservatism in CEE. We offer a complex operationalization of corporatism based on concrete indicators and present the results of a survey of energy interest groups operating in the region. It covers questions regarding interest intermediation between the organized interests and the government, regulatory authorities as well as the degree of policy coordination and political exchange with the state and between rivalling organizations, enabling us to derive a "corporatism score" for each national institutional setting and discuss them in the light of Jahn's (2016) corporatism rankings for the region. We show that—despite striking differences—at least rudimentary corporatist interest intermediation structures have emerged with some variations of pluralism and statism in all four countries.

AbstractHigher education interest groups remain somewhat understudied from a comparative theory-driven perspective. This is surprising because political decisions regarding higher education must increasingly be legitimized to students, taxpayers, the academic community and society. This article aims to advance our understanding of higher education stakeholders in post-communist Europe. In our view, the region deserves more attention, not least because students and academics were very instrumental in bringing down communism and institutionalizing democracy. First, we draw on Klemenčič's (EJHE 2(1): 2–19, 2012; SHE 39(3):396–411, 2014) distinction between corporatist and pluralist as well as formalized and informal systems of representation in higher education. Looking at survey data from four countries—Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia—we examine to what extent post-communist democracies have established corporatist institutions to facilitate the formal participation of various crucial stakeholder organizations, e.g. students' unions, academic unions, rectors' conferences, etc. Then we address whether higher education organizations enjoy privileged access to policy-makers compared to those from other policy areas, while engaging with the argument that higher education is a particular case of "stakeholder democracy" in a region otherwise characterized by weak civic participation and corporatism. To wrap up, we discuss different "mutations of higher education corporatism" in each country.

This article presents an analysis of the formation of organized interest groups in the post-communist context and organizational populations over time. We test two theories that shed doubt on whether vital rates of interest groups are explained by individual incentives, namely, the political opportunity structure and population ecology theory. Based on an analysis of the energy policy and higher education policy organizations active at the national level in Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia, we find that while the period of democratic and economic transition indeed opened up the opportunity structure for organizational formations, it by no means presented a clean slate. Communist-era successor and splinter organizations survived the collapse of communism, and all three countries entered transition with relatively high density rates in both organizational populations. We also find partial support for the density dependence hypothesis. Surprisingly, the EU integration process, the intensity of legislative activity, and media attention do not seem to have meaningfully influenced founding rates in the two populations.

AbstractThis article familiarizes readers with the international research project 'The Missing Link: Exploring Organized Interests in Post-Communist Policy-Making' (OrgIntCEE). The project team has focused on how populations of organized interests in the region have evolved, how they interact with state institutions as well as the group-specific characteristics driving access to policy-makers. The project also explores how Europeanization has affected post-communist interest groups as well as other factors contributing to their "coming-of-age." We provide a comprehensive overview of the population ecology and survey datasets, while shedding light on the challenges during the data collection process. After a short overview of the project context and structure, we present some country-specific aggregated data on organizational densities and their political activity. We also reflect on potential uses for the data, before wrapping up the article with a self-critical assessment of what could have been done differently as a roadmap for future research.