Something New on the Western Front: Twenty Years of Interest Group Research (1999–2018)

Abstract

In a book published in 1998, Baumgartner and Leech argued that interest group research was characterized by “elegant irrelevance.” Ten years later, Beyers and colleagues linked this to a number of conceptual, methodological and disciplinary barriers which render(ed) the accumulation of knowledge in this bulk of literature difficult. Are those same challenges still slowing down the study of interest groups and lobbying? The main aim of this article is to review all interest group scientific articles published in the top 50 political science journals between 1999 and 2018 in order to answer this question. Our results show a growing community focusing on many themes, preferring quantitative approaches, and analyzing more and more case studies. Interest group research has never before been so lively.