Exploring populations of organized interests in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe

What explains the formation rates of interest organizations in post-communist democracies over time? This chapter provides a bird’s eye view of the size and scope of the interest group populations in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia. To what extent did pre-communist organizations survive the transformation process and how radically was the interest group population transformed by the transition to a market economy, democracy and in some cases nation-building? The authors tackle these issues by exploring the formation and dissolution rates of organized interests in three non-related, yet critical policy areas for the viability of post-communist democracies – energy, healthcare and higher education. In doing so, they focus on a series of factors which might accelerate or decelerate the formation of organized interests. Besides the collapse of the communist regime and introduction of the market economy, the interest group landscape may also be profoundly affected by European Union accession, but also by key national legislation. Based on population ecology datasets which they compiled, the authors assess the volatility and continuity of each different interest group system from a cross-country and cross-policy perspective, while also comparatively exploring changes regarding the types of organizations (e.g. patients vs. medical profession, students vs. academic profession, energy producers vs. consumers, clean vs. dirty energy)