Achieving Democracy Through Interest Representation

Patrycja Rozbicka is Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at Aston University, UK. Her main research interests include participation of interest groups in the EU’s political system; coalitions and network studies; and the regulation of the music industry.Paweł Kamiński is Adjunct Professor in the Institute of Political Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences. His main research interests include political parties and civil society in Central Eastern Europe; and the relationships between political parties and interest groups.Meta Novak is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a researcher at the Centre for Political Science Research in the same faculty. Her research interests include interest groups; lobbying; civil society; political knowledge and opinion gaps.Vaida Jankauskaitė is a researcher in the Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities at Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania. Her main research interests include interest groups; lobbying; party-interest group relationship; and political financing.

• Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Interest organizations in Central and Eastern Europe – evaluating population ecology.- Chapter 3: Organized interest in the policy-making process.- Chapter 4: Drivers behind relations between interest organizations and political parties in the CEE countries.- Chapter 5: The organizational development of non-governmental organizations in CEE.- Chapter 6: Significance of trade unions in the CEE counties - beyond corporatism and pluralism?.- Chapter 7: Seeking access to policy stakeholders: business ‘lobbying’ vs others.- Chapter 8: Interest organizations in CEE and European policy process.- Chapter 9: Conclusions. The future of  ‘lobbying’ in the CEE countries.