Neglecting results? A critical view of the literature on organised interests in the European Union

Abstract

Much research has been undertaken to cast light on to the role of interest groups in the European Union and elsewhere. However, only a few researchers have focused their energy on the practical effects of involvement—effects on the legal output of the political process. Thus, we have a good knowledge of interest groups as input factors, and we have a language to asses their weight in terms of input legitimacy. However, we do not understand their actual impact on the substance of legislation: does involvement make laws more efficient? This question seems especially relevant in the European Union as this organisation is often said to be much dependent on the effective and efficient functioning of its rules—its output legitimacy. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Repressive Tolerance of Organised Interests: The Eagerness to Not Listen When Consulting

“…However, this literature is preoccupied with the advice of interest groups as an input factor -are representatives of certain interests more powerful than others? -rather than consultation as a potential source of effective and efficient rules and thus potentially of output legitimacy (Pedersen, 2016c). A framing in terms of influence and representation is also found in studies similar to this one (Binderkrantz, Christiansen, & Pedersen, 2014).…”

Back to the Future in EU Social Policy? Endogenous Critical Junctures and the Case of the European Pillar of Social Rights

“…The content analysis of the position papers was further integrated with the outcomes of the semi‐structured interviews, in which respondents were asked about their perceptions in relation to the attainment of their preferences and the responsiveness showed by the European Commission (H2). The possibility of comparing the two versions of the document, before and after the public consultations, and assessing which and whose demands were eventually reflected in the final EPSR proposal, can then be considered as a proxy of the impact of the various policy actors that participated in the consultations, allowing to mitigate the methodological constraints that characterize the analysis of interest groups' influence, such as the measurement of policy actors' preferences and the assessment of their actual impact (see Dür and De Bièvre, 2007; Beyers et al ., 2008; Pederson, 2016). While a direct causal relation of impact cannot be inferred, the decision to re‐write or drop some parts of the document in the same or in the opposite direction indicated by a policy actor can be considered as an indicator at least of the Commission's degree of responsiveness towards that actor, which is what we are interested in verifying.…”

Expecting something special? Developing assumptions of involvement organised interests as a source of regulatory quality in the European Union

“…From classical studies of corporatism (Molina & Rhodes, ; Schmitter, ; Siaroff, ; Streeck, ) to modern day formal modelling of influence (Dür, , ; Klüver, , ), a common trait of studies or organised interests, however, is their preoccupation with the input role of organised interest: What is their role in democratic terms, representation issues, etc. (Pedersen, )? This is not a critique of this vivid and diverse scholarly tradition nor is it an attempt to belittle the relevance of debates of power structures, representation, capture (Laffont & Tirole, ), and the like.…”

“…On that background and reacting to the challenge put forward by Pedersen (), this paper adds to the filling of that gap by asking a seemingly simple and practical question: How to design the involvement of organised interests if regulatory quality is the standard for evaluation? The answer given in this paper may be conceived a one‐sided—that organised interests (can) play an important role in securing regulatory quality—but the objective is to investigate what has not caught interests rather than to tap into existing debates on influence of organised interests.…”