Welcome

Welcome to the website of the Comparative Interest Group-survey project (CIG-Survey Project). The project’s objective is to develop systematic knowledge about the organizational development as well as the political strategies of civil society organizations, interest groups, lobby groups and advocacy organizations. What kind of challenges do these organizations face and how do they manage them? Our aim is to achieve a better understanding of the daily operations of civil society organizations across different national settings. These kind of organizations face many challenges, budget constraints, severe time pressure and operate in an increasingly complex legal and institutional environment. How does all this affect their organizational structure and what kind of strategies do these organization use to cope with these challenges? The major goal is to develop sound comparative and in-depth empirically grounded knowledge on these matters.

For this purpose, the project involves various surveys and the systematic mapping of the interest group populations in different European countries, including the EU-level. Large surveys were conducted in Slovenia, Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and the EU-level. 

A collection of all data can be found here.