Interest Groups’ Recruitment of Incumbent Parliamentarians to Their Boards

Abstract Interest groups (IGs) recruit incumbent parliamentarians to their boards to influence policy, improve their resources and signal political connectedness. To detect parliamentarians’ characteristics that drive recruitment, this study analyses three decades of annual data (1985–2016) of 903 S...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Parliamentary affairs 2022-07, Vol.75 (3), p.634-654
Main Author: Huwyler, Oliver
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Associations, institutions, etc
Influence
Legislative bodies
Legislators
Officials and employees
Political capital
Pressure groups
Recruiting
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Abstract Interest groups (IGs) recruit incumbent parliamentarians to their boards to influence policy, improve their resources and signal political connectedness. To detect parliamentarians’ characteristics that drive recruitment, this study analyses three decades of annual data (1985–2016) of 903 Swiss parliamentarians and their board seats. It compares 5249 cases of parliamentarians’ successful recruitment by 3291 different organisations to counterfactual cases where no recruitment took place. The results show that IGs recruit parliamentarians for both knowledge and networks (professions, other board seats) and influence (committee seats) in IGs’ policy areas. Moreover, recruited parliamentarians are more likely newcomers, ideologically proximate to IGs, moderate and from the same district as them.
ISSN:0031-2290
1460-2482
DOI:10.1093/pa/gsab031