Lobbying communities as organizational systems theories and counts of politically active organizations

Any political system nurtures a community of organizations that attempts to influence public policy. The size and scope of this community of organizations importantly affects the which interests get voiced and which economic or social signals are more likely to be attended to politically. The population ecology of interest representation refers to a set of theoretical models that explain the numbers and types of organizations attempting to influence public. Population ecology assumes that the numbers of politically active organizations depends on the ‘energy’ in the policy process such as manifested in budgets and (new) initiatives, and the ‘area’ in society in terms of (potential) members, supporters or economic weight (Gray and Lowery, 1996a). Competitive pressure affects the birth (entry) and death (exit) rates of organizations in and out of politics and, via specialization and partitioning, sets the limits of the number of organizations in a given ‘niche’ environment (Hannan and Freeman, 1989; Gray and Lowery, 1996b). Communities of organizations active in public affairs may either be defined by their collective aims (from the ‘bottom-up’) or on the basis of observed activities in venues of political decision-making (‘top-down’). The map-making approach and the actual ‘maps’ of organizational communities are important ingredients for the study of interest representation and its public policy outcomes.