Pursuing Change or Pursuing Credit? Litigation and Credit Claiming on Social Media

Social media provides an inexpensive way for interest groups to inform and mobilize large audiences, but it is puzzling why organizations would spend time posting about activities like litigation that do not depend on public opinion or mobilization. We argue there are two reasons interest groups post about judicial advocacy on social media. First, organizations provide information about the courts on social media to build credibility and recognition as a trusted source of information. We hypothesize that membership groups will be less likely to use social media in this way than non-membership public interest organizations. Second, organizations use social media to claim credit for activity in the courts in order to increase their public and financial support. We expect that this strategy will be used most frequently by legal organizations. Using an original dataset of millions of tweets and Facebook posts by interest groups, we find support for these expectations.

EFFICIENCY OF COLLECTIVE ACTIONS OF BEEF CATTLE PRODUCERS IN THE MIDWEST OF BRAZIL

Contrary to common-sense beliefs that beef cattle producers have difficulties in cooperating among themselves, cooperation initiatives can be noticed in Brazil, especially in the Midwest region. Built on a theoretical framework of Collective Actions and Transaction Cost Economics (TCE), this work analyzes the horizontal cooperation pattern of beef cattle producers in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul (MS). We focused on Private Interest Organizations (PIOs) with the purpose of identifying typologies and analyzing beef collective actions efficiency. Case studies with seven PIOs conducted through semi-structured interviews exhibits the efficiency of these organizations regarding the ability to provide collective goods, which vary according to their organizational aspects and typology. Results points out that PIOs were founded to contribute in technology and professionalization, increasing competitiveness and access to new markets, coordinating productive systems, reducing transaction costs among agents, modifying the institutional environment, and, finally, altering the behavior of bovine meat consumers.

Political Organizations and Participation

This chapter introduces four core dimensions of contemporary research on political organizations and participation to argue that this is a vibrant area of research within the study of Australian politics. First, there has been a productive debate between traditional understandings of participation—underpinned by dutiful, government-centred norms—and research focused on the emergence of newer forms of participation characterized by individualization, project identities, and issue-based mobilizations. Together, these areas of research show how citizens’ involvement with politics has changed over time. Second, digital communication technologies have provided new avenues for political action and for research, compounding processes of individualization and personalization. Third, in pioneering research, Australian interest organizations have been found to play a central role in Australian political life, particularly as participation preferences shift to project- and issue-based advocacy. Finally, these intersecting processes of normative, technological, and organizational change are evident in the arrival of new hybrid campaigning organizations like GetUp.

Citizens and the European Union since 1950

The article covers the relationship of the citizens with the European Union and its predecessors since the beginnings of the European integration in the 1950s. It dis­tinguishes the period of the unquestioned citizen during the 1950s and 1960s, the period of the questioned and mobilized citizen since the 1970s and the period of the active citizen since around the turn the of century, in looking at European elec­tions, referendums, European movements, interest organizations, regular European opinion polls, complaints by citizens at the European Parliament, at the European Commission and at the European ombudsman and legal proceedings by citizens at the European Court in Luxemburg. In addition, the article looks at the change be­tween periods of trust and periods of distrust by citizens in the European institu­tions since the 1950s. It argues that the trend towards the mobilized and active citi­zen includes an eventual strong rise of distrust in periods of crisis, but also by a return of trust by the citizens even in difficult periods such as the recent Covid19 pandemic.

Informational demand across the globe: toward a comparative understanding of information exchange

This study examines the information demands of decision-makers from across the globe in their exchanges with interest organizations. It proposes two explanatory factors that drive these information demands: democracy and development. We argue that decision-makers’ information demands vary depending on whether they hail from developed countries or developing countries, as well as the extent to which their political systems are democratically accountable. We test our expectations based on interviews with 297 decision-makers from 107 different countries who were active during transnational trade and climate change negotiations. Our findings demonstrate that decision-makers from less developed countries exhibit a higher preference for interactions with organizations that provide them with technical information. Decision-makers from democratically accountable countries, by contrast, tend to place relatively greater value on political information provided by interest groups.

Incentives for Organizational Participation: A Recruitment Experiment in Mexico

While the presence of a strong civil society is recognized as desirable for democracies, an important question is what motivates citizens to join organizations. This article presents novel experimental evidence on the conditions under which citizens join interest organizations. We presented 1,400 citizens in two Mexican states with fliers promoting a new local interest organization. These fliers contain one of four randomly selected recruitment appeals. We find evidence that both brokerage of state patronage and demand-making for local public goods are effective recruitment appeals. The effect for patronage brokerage is especially pronounced among respondents with prior organizational contact, supporting our hypothesis of a “particularistic socialization” effect wherein organizational experience is associated with greater response to selective material benefits. Our findings suggest that under some conditions, rather than generating norms of other-regarding, interest organizations can reinforce members’ individualistic tendencies.