Interest Organization Demography Research in Europe

European population ecological studies of interest organizations are rare. The concern about the Schattschneiderian upper-class accent motivating such studies in the United States never gained much traction in European ‘organized’ interest systems. There have been, however, several large-n studies that seek to describe or explain the numbers and types of interest organizations. These fall under several theoretical headings that have some affiliation with ‘population ecological’ interests such as resource dependency or complex associations theory. Such studies tend to focus on a specific sector or organizational type, such as social movement organizations or business interest associations, rather than a system-level behavioral focus on what Jordan et al. (2004) label ‘pressure participants’. Only very recently, scholars in several European countries have initiated system-wide population ecological studies (e.g. Halpin & Jordan 2012, Messer et al. 2010) or have started data collection on such populations of interest organizations (e.g. Fisker 2012, Klüver 2015, Naurin & Borang 2012). In this review I assess the longer running research traditions of large-n studies, recently published ecological studies and some projects that are still ongoing.