Interest groups’ access in new democracies: evidence from North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia

Abstract

This article examines the interactions of interest groups and political institutions in three post-communist countries, at present EU-acceding states. Based on representative surveys of interest groups, it shows that interactions of interest groups with political institutions are more frequent than usually assumed. Nevertheless, they significantly vary across political institutions and types of groups. The direction of lobbying is somewhat different than in established democracies because of the predominance of the executive and weak legislative institutions. Group type differences demonstrate strong business dominance which might be even greater than in established democracies. Ordinal regression analyses confirm these results. However, the findings suggest that provision of political and technical information also accounts for interest groups’ access, which sheds light on the important functions that these organizations perform even in unconsolidated democracies.