Comparative Interest Group Research

There are challenges to the development of explanatory models of interest group behavior that are valid across a wide range of countries. The position of interest groups in between the policy process and the society and the economy means that a lot of potentially important explanatory factors cannot be theoretically isolated. This creates a fundamental tension between the aspiration to maximize the external, cross-system validity of research findings and the meaningful embedding in country-specific histories, economic structures and societies. This theoretical challenge is conceptually acknowledged in many contemporary studies but still limits the theoretical progress in the field. This contribution discusses the distinct ways in which interest group research has historically dealt with inherent challenges of comparative research designs.