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Political parties and major economic interest groups often used to be closely linked, but over recent decades they seem to have become more and more detached. Until now, this process has primarily been described in almost deterministic structural models that tell us little about how this detachment takes place and imply that it affects all players at around the same time. The article analyses this development with a simple exchange model that explains changes in organizational integration between political parties and interest groups from its effect on their respective goal-seeking as collective actors. The model is tested on four sets of political parties and interest groups in Denmark in a longitudinal analysis covering developments since 1920. The variation found largely confirms the expectations of the model that the timing of the detachment across party families depends on the strength of resources both sides can derive from the other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]