Wiebke Marie Junk

Interest Representation during the Corona Virus Crisis (InterCov Project)

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The Corona virus crisis has exerted a major social and economic shock in countries worldwide. Both the pandemic itself, as well as the crisis management policies resulting from it, could entail big changes for the representation of different social and economic interests in public policy. The Interest Representation during the Coronavirus Crisis (InterCov) Project was initiated in April 2020 with the aim to assess these effects of Covid-19 on interest representation and political advocacy. 

How did interest groups and companies represent their political interests during the Coronavirus crisis? How has this crisis affected their ability to mobilise, and express their views and needs to decision-makers? 

Our project set out to address such questions by collecting data across active interest groups and companies in ten polities in Europe, namely in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy, France, and at the European Union (EU)-level. From early June to mid-July 2020, a first online survey was conducted among a sample of ca. 6.000 organisations and large firms. In 2021, we conducted interviews with stakeholders in selected countries and implemented the second wave of our survey in a subset of countries.

See below for more information on the surveys, project outputs and events, as well as examples of media coverage of our findings.

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Project team:
Wiebke Marie Junk, Assistant Professor, University of Copenhagen
Michele Crepaz, Assistant Professor, Queen’s University Belfast
Marcel Hanegraaff, Associate Professor, University of Amsterdam
Joost Berkhout, Associate Professor, University of Amsterdam
Ellis Aizenberg, Assistant Professor, Leiden University

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