Lobbying in the European Union (EU) is defined by an exchange of information: well-informed interest groups supply understaffed and pressed-for-time decision-makers with policy-relevant information for legitimate 'access' to the EU policy-making process. While we know quite a bit about the informational needs of decision-makers, an interest group's capacity to meet these needs remains relatively uncharted territory. This analysis examines the informational determinants of interest group access to the EU from a supply-side perspective; namely, how do different types of information and different tactics used to provide this information buy access to different EU decision-makers? Results from an empirical analysis indicate that information tactics are, on balance, more significant determinants of access than information types. The medium, in other words, is more important than the message. I also find that largely discredited 'outside' tactics, like organizing public events and launching media campaigns, are very important in granting interest groups access to EU decision-makers.KEY WORDS Access; European Union; information; interest groups; lobbying.The currency of lobbying in the European Union (EU) is information. Information plays an important role in shaping an interest group's organization and behaviour, its day-to-day activities, and even the extent to which it can affect decisions in its own favour. At root, information defines how interest groups interact with EU decision-makers. Groups are relative experts on the policy issues most affecting their interests and have considerable technical, specialist and politically salient information on these topics. EU decisionmakers, woefully understaffed and pressed for time, find it helpful, if not necessary, to draw on this information in order to reduce uncertainties about potential policy outcomes. Importantly, interest groups find themselves in a good position to take advantage of this informational asymmetry. They thus tend to supply information to decision-makers in exchange for legitimate access to the policy-making process with the goal of having their voices heard at the EU level and, ultimately, steering the EU policy-making process.
General rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. AbstractThe number of interest organizations (density) varies across policy domains, political issues and economic sectors. This shapes the nature and outcomes of interest representation. In this paper, we explain the density of interest organizations per economic sector in the European Union on the basis of political and economic institutional factors. Focusing on business interest representation, we show that economic institutions structure the 'supply' of interest organizations by affecting the number of potential constituents, the resources available for lobbying and the geographical level of collective action of businesses. In contrast, we do not find consistent evidence that political institutions produce 'demand' for interest organizations by making laws, developing public policy or spending money. This is in contrast to the extensive evidence that such factors affect lobbying practices. The EU interest system is (partially) shaped by economic factors, relatively independent from public policy or institutions.
The interest group concept is defined in many different ways in the existing literature and a range of different classification schemes are employed. This complicates comparisons between different studies and their findings. One of the important tasks faced by interest group scholars engaged in large-N studies is therefore to define the concept of an interest group and to determine which classification scheme to use for different group types. After reviewing the existing literature, this article sets out to compare different approaches to defining and classifying interest groups with a sample of lobbying actors coded according to different coding schemes. We systematically assess the performance of different schemes by comparing how actor types in the different schemes differ with respect to a number of background characteristics. This is done in a two-stage approach where we first cluster actors according to a number of key background characteristics and second assess how the categories of the different interest group typologies relate to these clusters. We demonstrate that background characteristics do align to a certain extent with certain interest group types but also find important differences in the organizational attributes of specific interest group types. As expected, our comparison of coding schemes reveals a closer link between group attributes and group type in narrower classification schemes based on group organizational characteristics than those based on a behavioral definition of lobbying.
This article contributes to existing debates on public opinion towards European integration by examining when and why fiscal transfers and public support are systematically related. Drawing on economic and identity-related theories, we develop and test hypotheses about the links between EU fiscal transfers among countries and subnational jurisdictions, and citizens' support for European integration. Using a three-level analysis of residents in 143 regions in 16 EU member states, we find a positive effect of EU transfers among both countries and subnational jurisdictions on support for European integration among those with a European communal identity. We also find that this effect increases the more politically aware individuals are. The article sketches the broader implications of our findings for public opinion research on regional integration beyond the European Union.
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