Interest organizations across economic sectors: explaining interest group density in the European Union

Abstract

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.

Legislative lobbying in context: towards a conceptual framework of interest group lobbying in the European Union

“…Studying EU interest groups is not a matter of one-size-fits-all theories, but rather involves the careful development of midrange theories that are attentive to the contextual nature of each of the different stages of the influence production process (Lowery et al 2008). This collection presents seven substantive contributions, all of which offer novel theory-guided empirical work and analyse the effect of these contextual factors on three aspects of EU interest group politics: interest group density (Berkhout et al 2015); (framing) strategies employed by interest groups (Beyers et al 2015;Boräng and Naurin 2015;Eising et al 2015;Klüver et al 2015); and lobbying success (Bernhagen et al, 2015;Binderkrantz and Rasmussen, 2015). It is clear from all contributions that a contextualized approach of interest group politics leads to a more precise and valid understanding of lobbying in the EU.…”

“…Berkhout et al (2015) show that so-called supply side factors, such as the number of potential constituents and the level of market integration affect interest group density in the EU. They thereby demonstrate that the structure of economic sectors and the organizational environment of interest groups are important contextual variables, next to policy-related and institutional factors, to explain interest group mobilization.…”

“…For instance, the individual actor properties we often observe are themselves a result of contextual variables. The emergence of some interests groups, their resources and organizational properties can often be attributed to environmental conditions such as government or institutional patronage (Baumgartner et al 2011;Berkhout et al 2015;Leech et al 2005;Mahoney and Beckstrand 2011). Also salience and conflict, which we defined as contextual factors, are not just exogenous and entirely unmalleable conditions, but can, to some extent, be the result of interest group lobbying (see also Beyers et al [2015]).…”

“…5 First, a set of 125 legislative proposals submitted by the EC between 2008 and 2010 was sampled, for which the project draws on a sophisticated and innovative policy-centred sample of interest group mobilization, which allows for considerable variation with regard to policy-related and institutional characteristics so that we are able to systematically analyse how policy-specific and institutional context factors shape mobilization, strategies and influence of interest groups in the EU (Beyers et al 2014;De Bruycker and Beyers forthcoming). Second, this sample was complemented by an organization-centred sampling technique that draws on registries to compile a general overview of all stakeholders in the EU to better understand mobilization biases on specific issues (Baroni et al 2014;Berkhout et al 2015).…”

Comparing Populations of Interest Organizations: Skating on Thin Ice?

“…For instance, Leech et al (2005, 23) demonstrate that fifty-six of seventy-four specific issue areas in which US lobbyists are required to register their activities, could be linked to the topic coding system used in the Policy Agendas Project, covering about 85 percent of the lobbying reports (Also see: Baumgartner et al 2011 5). Berkhout et al (2013), as another example, point to the substantial challenges in linking economic sectors to policy sectors. This only works for economic sectors that are closely connected to government policies, such as agriculture, health, education, and energy.…”