In his new book published by Springer VS Dr. Benedikt Bender examines the position organized interests take in the controversial socio-political reform debates. He finds that trade unions and business associations can act alongside structural and strategic interests: they can either assume similar positions or they could clash in accordance with the classic “worker vs. capital” antagonism. Only through the combination of those theoretical expectations we arrive at a sufficient explanation for the position of organized interest and in further research more attention should be paid to the rational self-interest of each organisation.

Further in the book: a new concept called the ‘degree of limited diversity’ and the suggestion on how to empirically measure the influence of the organized interest on the political process.

.A detailed summary can be found here.