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This article presents an analysis of the formation of organized interest groups in the post-communist context and organizational populations over time. We test two theories that shed doubt on whether vital rates of interest groups are explained by individual incentives, namely, the political opportunity structure and population ecology theory. Based on an analysis of the energy policy and higher education policy organizations active at the national level in Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia, we find that while the period of democratic and economic transition indeed opened up the opportunity structure for organizational formations, it by no means presented a clean slate. Communist-era successor and splinter organizations survived the collapse of communism, and all three countries entered transition with relatively high density rates in both organizational populations. We also find partial support for the density dependence hypothesis. Surprisingly, the EU integration process, the intensity of legislative activity, and media attention do not seem to have meaningfully influenced founding rates in the two populations

The data on the formations and dissolutions of Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Slovenian national-level healthcare, higher education and energy policy interest groups show that there were relatively large organizational populations in these countries already at the outset of post-communist transition in 1990. In other words, there was no tabula rasa – the evolution of interest organizations did not start completely anew. There was, however, a substantial variation between policy fields and countries in the sizes of these pre-transition populations. What explains this variance? The chapter explores in detail the formation rates across the four countries and three policy fields through time. In their explanation, the authors focus on the nature of the communist regime, its overall repressiveness, the periods of political and economic liberalizations and the political mobilization and fragmentation in the period leading up to regime change. On the basis of the Hungarian sub-sample, where such data are reliably available, the chapter also compares the mortality rates of organizations founded before and after transition. The findings shed new light on the debates on civil society development and democratization in post-communist societies. The chapter also draws attention to the importance of the proper operationalization of fundamental political changes to the polity in population ecology theory in general, and in the energy–stability–area model of organizational density in particular.

Englisch: The article tests the energy–stability–area (ESA) model of interest group population density on a sample of different 2018 Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Slovenian energy, higher education and health care interest organisation populations. The unique context of recent simultaneous political, economic and in the cases of Czechia and Slovenia, national transitions present a hard test for population ecology theory. Besides the area (constituency size) and energy (resources, issue certainty) terms, the article brings the stability term back into the center of analysis. The stability term, that is, the effect of a profound change or shock to the polity is operationalised as Communist-era population densities. As all three policy domains are heavily state controlled and tightly regulated, the effect of neocorporatist interest intermediation is also tested. The article finds strong support for the energy and neocorporatism hypotheses and provides evidence for the effect of communist-era organisational population density on post-transition densities: The size of 2018 organisational populations is found to be dependent on pre-transition densities. The relationship is, however, not linear but curvilinear. Nevertheless, the analysis indicates that the effect of pre-transition population size is moderated by other environmental level factors. Deutsch: Der Artikel testet das Energie-Stabilitäts-Gebietsmodell (ESA) der Bevölkerungsdichte von Interessengruppen an einer Stichprobe verschiedener tschechischer, ungarischer, polnischer und slowenischer Bevölkerungen von Energie-, Hochschul- und Gesundheitsorganisationen aus dem Jahr 2018. Der einzigartige Kontext der jüngsten gleichzeitigen politischen, wirtschaftlichen und im Falle Tschechiens und Sloweniens nationaler Übergänge stellt die Theorie der Populationsökologie auf eine harte Probe. Neben den Begriffen Flächen (Wahlkreisgröße) und Energie (Ressourcen, Themensicherheit) rückt der Artikel den Stabilitätsbegriff wieder in den Mittelpunkt der Analyse. Der Stabilitätsbegriff, dh die Auswirkung einer tiefgreifenden Veränderung oder eines Schocks auf das Gemeinwesen, wird als Bevölkerungsdichte der kommunistischen Ära operationalisiert. Da alle drei Politikbereiche stark staatlich kontrolliert und streng reguliert sind, wird auch die Wirkung neokorporatistischer Interessenvermittlung getestet. Der Artikel findet starke Unterstützung für die Energie- und Neokorporatismus-Hypothesen und liefert Belege für den Effekt der organisationalen Bevölkerungsdichte der kommunistischen Ära auf die Dichte nach dem Übergang: Die Größe der Organisationsbevölkerung im Jahr 2018 hängt von der Dichte vor dem Übergang ab. Der Zusammenhang ist jedoch nicht linear, sondern krummlinig. Dennoch zeigt die Analyse, dass der Effekt der Bevölkerungsgröße vor dem Übergang durch andere Umweltfaktoren gemildert wird.