Cultural capital and the density of organised interests lobbying the European Parliament

West European Politics (WEP) covers political and social issues in Western Europe. It has a substantial reviews section and coverage of all national elections in Western Europe.

Its comprehensive scope, embracing all the major political and social developments in all West European countries, including the European Union, makes it important reading for both political practitioners and academics.This article forms part of a special issue: Multilevel Interest Representation in the European Union: The Role of National Interest Organisations

Abstract:

Drawing on a new dataset the article investigates a case study of the population of interest representatives lobbying the European Parliament. It examines the role of economic and cultural resources to account for the representation of organised interests from different EU member states.

It adds to the existing literature on the density of organised interests by showing that in addition to economic resources, cultural capital plays a significant role in stimulating the activity of organised interests. Whether countries have a high number of organised interests in the parliament’s interest group community depends on both whether they are economically prosperous and how large a share of their citizens participate in associational life. In addition, the findings demonstrate how the ranking of countries in the population of organised interests lobbying the parliament depends on the benchmark used to measure density.