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Political Organisation in Transformation? the Impact of State Regulation on Parties, Interest Groups and Ngos in Advanced Democracies

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Political Organisation in Transformation? the Impact of State Regulation on Parties, Interest Groups and Ngos in Advanced Democracies 1 Political Organisation in Transformation? The Impact of State Regulation on Parties, Interest Groups and NGOs in Advanced Democracies Nicole Bolleyer, University of Exeter and Darren Halpin, Australian National University Workshop Abstract This workshop will explore the apparent convergence in how democratic states regulate the organisational form and capabilities of parties, interest groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). More particularly, it is interested in a) the comparative study of regulatory frameworks governing these membership-based, voluntary organisations including how these frameworks have changed over time and in b) the comparative study of similarities and differences in how these different organisational types respond to regulatory frameworks within and across countries. Various literatures have pointed to an increasing state regulation of voluntary organisations, inviting their professionalisation, centralisation and increasing dependency on state funds. More particularly, party research highlights parties’ transformation into ‘state institutions’ or ‘semi-public agencies’ (Epstein 1989; Katz and Mair 2009; Biezen 2012), while interest group scholars show how citizen groups turn into ‘protest businesses’, more interested in institutional funding than member support (Jordan & Maloney 1997; Bosso 2005; Halpin 2010). Finally, voluntary sector and civil society research have argued that volunteer associations turn into staff-driven ‘voluntary agencies’ delivering state services (DiMaggio & Anheier 1990; Hasenfeld & Gidron 2005; Billis 2010). These tendencies are problematic for democracy since they supposedly go hand in hand with the weakening of these organisations’ accountability towards citizens. Due to disciplinary divides, existing parallels in how the state tries to influence voluntary organisations such as parties, interest groups and welfare-providing NGOs and parallels in how these organisational types respond to state regulation have received only little attention so far (Bolleyer 2013). To bridge those divides, we aim at bringing scholars from the relevant subfields together to map out a) changes in state regulation across different organisational types and across democracies and b) assess regulations’ impact on organisations’ internal and external operations. This proposal is endorsed by both the ECPR Standing Group on Political Parties and the Standing Group on Interest Groups. The Workshop’s Focus, its Foundations in Existing Research and its Relevance This workshop targets two closely-tied questions that cut across several sub-disciplines and are highly salient: First, which regulatory frameworks are in place in advanced democracies to steer the behaviour of membership-based, voluntary organisations such as parties, interest groups and welfare-providing non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and how have these frameworks evolved over time and second, how do these regulatory frameworks affect voluntary organisations in their internal and external operations? Following Salamon and Anheier, this workshop focuses on organisations with a formalised infrastructure, that are private (separate from government), non-profit-distributing, self-governing and membership-based (1998: 216). To gain a broad perspective on state-voluntary relations, which enables us to integrate knowledge generated in different subfields, it covers interest groups, political parties and welfare-providing NGOs, three types of organisations that interact with the state at crucial stages of the political process: policy formulation, decision-making and policy delivery. 2 It has been highlighted in the literatures on these different types of organisations that state control over organised civil society is at odds with pluralist values, since it is supposed to weaken organisational linkages and accountability to citizens and thereby to reduce organisations’ beneficial effects for democracy. At the same time, the same literatures point to ‘their’ organisations’ increasing entanglement with or even control by the state. More particularly, party scholars argue that parties as organisations transform from voluntary associations into ‘public utilities’ (Epstein 1989; Biezen 2012) or even ‘institutions’ regulated and financed by the state (Katz & Mair 2009). Interest group experts observe the transformation of environmental groups into ‘protest businesses’ interested in institutional resources more than member contributions (Jordan and Maloney 1997 & 2007; Bosso 2005; Halpin 2010) and a new literature is exploring the way groups adapt their organisational form to such circumstances (Halpin & Jordan 2009; Halpin & Nownes 2011). Public policy scholars, welfare state experts and civil society scholars discuss the transformation of voluntary associations driven by citizens into staff-driven ‘voluntary agencies’ working for the state (Billis 2010; DiMaggio & Anheier 1990; Hasenfeld & Gidron 2005). Looking into comparative law, O’Halloran (2011) observed in reforms of charity law that governments increasingly specify which organisations ought to receive and how those ought to use public funds, strengthening organisational accountability to the state. The frameworks governing voluntary organisations have undergone change in many democracies (or reforms are discussed), reflecting on-going controversies around welfare reform, the capacity of organisations engaged in lobbying or religious activities to qualify for state support or the regulation of entitlements for party representatives taking over public office. In times of austerity, government cuts increase pressures on the voluntary sector to compensate for gaps in welfare provision (Bode 2011), while trust in parties and elected institutions and their capacity to represent citizens declines (Dalton 2003). Facing such changes, only an up-to-date overview of the current nature of these regulatory frameworks allows us to examine the wide-spread claim that the entanglement between voluntary organisations and the state compromises the latter’s autonomy and weakens their capacity to represent citizens. Due to disciplinary divides, insights on organisations’ relationships to the state have so far remained disconnected, although they provide an ideal foundation for encompassing assessment of state-voluntary relations and their consequences for organisational life in advanced democracies (Bolleyer 2013a). This is a promising avenue for future research not least because the same phenomenon – intensifying state-voluntary relations - triggers opposite concerns across different subfields: Public policy and legal scholars worry about ‘mission drift’, i.e. governments’ limited capacity to assure that organisations use public funds as intended (e.g. Gazley & Brundney 2007; Hopt & van Hippel 2010). Civil society, voluntary sector and party scholars, in contrast, tend to worry about whether, when state-voluntary interpenetration is intense, citizens are still able to hold organisations accountable (e.g. Salamon 1987; Hasenfeld & Gidron 2005; Mair 2007). Bringing together scholars working on interest groups, parties and NGOs, this workshop aims at an encompassing, systematic exploration of how democratic states try to influence organisational life, whether and how the state can assure organisational compliance and whether and how voluntary organisations can maintain their autonomy exposed to such pressures. Whatever concerns the papers contributed to such a workshop – if approved - substantiated, the repercussions would be considerable. 3 Core Questions Addressed in the Workshop The workshop targets the following conceptual, theoretical and empirical issues, which cross-cut several sub-disciplines in political science and can be systematised from two perspectives, a state- centred perspective that focuses on the nature of state regulation of organisational life in advanced democracies and an organisational-centred perspective that focuses on the comparative study of organisational responses to distinct regulatory environments instead. Starting with a state-centred perspective, leading party scholars have argued that parties have become ‘legitimate objects of state regulation to a degree far exceeding what would normally be acceptable for private associations in a liberal society’ (Katz 2002: 90). Voluntary sector studies, in contrast, imply that the level of government control over welfare-providers is stronger than over other organisations (Kuhnle & Selle 1998). Without comparing the regulatory frameworks that apply to different organisational types, we will be unable to resolve such contradictions. More fundamentally, we will be unable to clarify whether democratic states take a coherent approach towards regulating different types or organisations (e.g. are generally more or less intrusive in terms of organisational regulation) or whether regulation is driven by the function of the particular organisation in the political process (e.g. party regulation is more intense than those of welfare-providing NGOs). While studies on corporate governance have developed cross-nationally applicable indices capturing the intensity of for-profit regulation (La Porta et al 2006; Djankov et al 2008), we still lack cross-national data and the analytical tools to capture the scope and intensity of regulation that apply to voluntary organisations. The comparative study of the corporative governance of nonprofits is still in its infancy (Hoppt & von Hippel 2010). At the same time, various specialist literatures refer
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