Interest group survival: Explaining sources of mortality anxiety

In order to engage in public policy, interest groups need to survive and thrive as organizations. What factors shape perceptions of group entrepreneurs as to the future prospects for their groups’ survival? The careful and ambitious work of Gray and Lowery (and others working in the population ecology paradigm) has drawn attention to that fact that not all groups that are born survive. This observation raises the question: what leads groups to ‘feel’ anxiety about their organizational mortality? In their 1997 article, utilizing survey data on the organizational characteristics and situational dynamics of a sample of groups lobbying in several US states, Gray and Lowery asked just that question: what are the levels of ‘mortality anxiety’ among groups still alive? In this article, we revisit this question using similar data, but with some additional variables, and for a non-US case (namely, post-devolution Scottish public policy). In sorting out what factors are associated with anxiety, our analysis seeks to weigh up the existing ecological emphasis on broad shifts in population-level forces (that is, competition) with group-level variables reflecting adaptive changes (that is, identity, uniqueness, changes).