More crowd, less clout? Competitive environment and venue shopping of CEE organised interests
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Abstract
The existing research on Western Democracies, especially the European Union, concludes that the competitive environment of interest groups’ operations negatively affects their chances of political clout. The Authors aim to explore if such argument is also the case in the post-communist environment, taking into account five countries of the CEE region: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia. Therefore, they examine the relation between interest groups’ competition and perceived density of interests on one hand and their access to various policy-making venues on the other. Additionally, they check whether the type of policy affects the degree of competition and access.
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