Searching for 'Tartan' Policy Bandwagons: Mapping the Mobilization of Organized Interests in Public Policy.

The Baumgartner and Leech (2001) study on 'policy bandwagons' prompted a rethink about the pattern of engagement by organized interests in public policy. They found that many issues attract little attention, while a few issues account for the vast majority of interest mobilization. In so doing, they established that the study of engagement by organized interests in public policy ought to encompass an issue niche perspective. But this niche level analysis has not been explored empirically in quantitative studies outside of the US, and certainly not for the UK or Scotland. This paper reports on analysis of Scottish government consultations. The data set spans more than two decades (1982-2007), covering almost 1700 discrete public consultations (issues) and includes more than 18,000 different organized actors engaging in more than 130,000 separate 'influence events'. The broad aim of the research is to empirically map the incidence and mobilization of organized interests in Scotland across these public policy issues. This paper asks two related questions. Firstly, how many issues are bandwagons and how many quiet policy corners? Are there tartan policy bandwagons? Secondly, what types of actors mobilize and in what proportions? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]