EUROPE
Norwegian political parties reuse interest group language in their policies
Will this attract or repel voters?
Interest groups’ input on technical and political aspects of public policy proposals is valuable to political parties. Parties don’t know how proposals will affect different constituencies and input from specialized interest groups can enlighten them in this regard. Adopting interest group input furthermore allows parties to signal sympathy with the interest groups’ constituents. This can positively affect their vote shares. Listening to interest groups can, however, also repel voters who disagree with the groups’ stances.
In a recent article in the journal Party Politics, I examine when the benefits of adopting interest group input is likely to exceed the costs for parties.
To do this, I investigate Norwegian parties’ legislative speeches and committee amendments on 88 policy proposals from 2005 to 2015. These proposals concern both traditional and newer issues such as education and research, law and order, market regulation and competition, the environment, and immigration.
The proposals have been subject to written government consultations that are open to the public, and I use a text reuse algorithm to examine whether parties adopt input from interest groups’ responses to these consultations.
Across the proposals, there are 698 instances where parties reuse substantive ideas and arguments submitted by interest groups. There is at least one instance of reuse for 59% of the proposals. All eight Norwegian parties reuse interest group input — from the larger mainstream parties on the left and right, to the smaller centrist and more extreme parties.
Parties are more likely to adopt interest group input under certain circumstances. For example, when the public is paying close attention to an issue, this seems to increase the chance of reuse. There are fewer instances of reuse on the more salient proposals in the sample, such as a large-scale police reform, and one reason for this may be that parties are more likely to be held electorally accountable by voters at large here.
When input is submitted by larger and more coordinated interest group coalitions, on the other hand, the chances of appealing to larger groups of voters may be greater. The findings show that parties reuse more input from such coalitions.
Parties also tend to adopt more input when proposals concern policy issues they emphasize more than other parties. Here, it can be important to signal responsiveness to specific groups to continue to stay ahead of their competitors. Parties are, however, seemingly wary of adopting input from ideologically dissimilar interest groups in these cases.
These findings overall indicate that interest groups can be a relevant source of information for parties. This means that interest groups in certain cases function as intermediators between voters and parties — they can increase the probability that parties cater to their constituents and sympathizers. Both actors moreover likely achieve some of what they seek and mutually benefit from each other. Interest groups gain political traction for their views while parties bolster their positions on policy proposals and appeal to voters to maintain or improve their vote shares.
