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A key issue for interest groups and policymakers is the ways through which organized interests voice their interests and influence public policy. This article combines two perspectives on interest group representation to explain patterns of interest group access to different political arenas. From a resource exchange perspective, it argues that access to different political arenas is discrete as it is determined by the match between the supply and demands of interest groups and gatekeepers-politicians, bureaucrats, and reporters. From a partly competing perspective, it is argued that access is cumulative and converges around wealthy and professionalized groups. Based on a large-scale investigation of group presence in Danish political arenas, the analyses show a pattern of privileged pluralism. This describes a system where multiple political arenas provide opportunities for multiple interests but where unequally distributed resources produce cumulative effects (i.e., the same groups have high levels of arena access). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest groups may approach political decision makers in two phases of the legislative process: the pre-parliamentary, administrative phase, in which bills are prepared by bureaucrats; and the parliamentary phase, in which bills are discussed and possibly revised by parliamentary committees. The article investigates the factors that lead groups to engage in these phases based on group proceedings for 225 bills presented to the Danish parliament in the 2009/2010 session. We conclude that resourceful groups are clearly more active in both arenas, but the parliamentary arena is also a venue for voicing discontent and defending gains achieved in the administrative arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A prominent presence in the news media is important for interest groups. This article investigates the development in the diversity of interest group media attention over time. The analysis draws on a dataset of 19,000 group appearances in the Danish news media in the period 1984-2003. It demonstrates how diversity has risen continually over time, leading to a media agenda less dominated by labour and business and more by public interest groups and sectional groups. This development is related to the increasing political importance of the news media and the decline in group integration in public decision-making processes. The article also shows how the development of group appearances is closely related to changes in media attention towards different policy areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the effect of incentive to the improvement of public sector management. It states that reform on the public management that is based on principal agent theory and private management recommends pay-for-performance. It says that the hypothesis was applied in the performance management system that was introduced to the central government of Denmark. It says that based on the system, heads of the government agencies are given bonus based on their performance of their agency. It concludes that reform is not possible based on the private sector experience and bureaucratic theory.