State of Play On Population Dynamics in Neo - Corporatist Polities.

The study of interest group population characteristics is becoming increasingly popular. This is for good reasons as these studies reveal important insights in population dynamics, such as niche behavior, survival rates, the development of individual groups and bandwagoning. All of these aspects are immensely important to understand skewed interest representation patterns which ultimately may feed into biased policy outcomes. Few interest group population studies, however, have been carried out in neo - corporatist systems. Presumably, population development in these polities differs from the dynamics found in neo - pluralist systems, which represent the focus of most studies on this topic. Our paper aims to contribute to the study of interest group populations by employing a comparative population analysis in two neo - corporatist countries, Belgium and The Netherlands. In addition to examining how a corporatist system affects population dynamics, this comparison also allows for testing the effects of institutional variation. Our paper thereby contributes to the comparative study of interest representation more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]