Interest Groups and Advocacy

Scope

This journal records and analyzes the multitude of ways that advocacy by groups, movements and lobbying professionals can work to influence policy. It also provides a focal point for significant current discussions about how these specialized interests are mobilized and maintained. Interest Groups & Advocacy ranges widely across the international landscape of politics and society, identifying the forces, strategies, and tactics that determine policy change. The articles published here reflect a diversity of methodologies. The coverage includes studies that address theoretical issues, reports rigorous empirical work, and presents insight on change agents, their behavior and their impact. In a field long dominated by American political science, the journal reflects the widening geographical footprint of advocacy. Lobbyists have proliferated, and advocacy spending has increased in Europe, as well as in states, provinces and localities around the world. The journal synthesizes this territorial expansion with broadened interest in the number and type of advocacy organizations. Also noted is the changing nature of advocates, including multi-national corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and social movements - so divergent from textbook stereotypes of interest groups - that seek to influence public policies. Although the journal is anchored within political science, it publishes research based in such other disciplines as economics, sociology, law, and history. Also covered are social movement scholarship and public affairs, which form important components of the process of competitive advocacy that today often functions as a proxy for democratic contestation. Interest Groups & Advocacy is the official journal of the Political Organizations and Parties section of the American Political Science Association.