David Marshall

Who to lobby and when: Institutional determinants of interest group strategies in European Parliament committees

This paper explains how institutional conditions in the European Parliament’s committees shape lobbyists’ strategic behaviour. Committees’ informal organization and formal procedures structure both the distribution of legislative influence and the opportunity to obtain advocacy. It is demonstrated how influence and, by implication, lobbying activity are skewed in favour of a committee elite. Here new evidence is provided to highlight the significant impact that open amendments play in a committee’s final report. The theory also emphasizes the role that message quality plays in the decision about who to lobby, and defines the limits to lobbyists’ preference to obtain advocacy from friendly legislators. Analysis is carried out on data obtained from 94 structured interviews combined with a unique data set of committee-stage voting outcomes.

Interest group success in the European Union: When (and why) does business lose?

Business lobbying is widespread in the European Union (EU). But because not all lobbying is successful, the following question arises: When does business win and when does it lose in the context of legislative policy making in the EU? We argue that business actors are, overall, less successful than citizen groups in the European policy process. However, they can protect their interests if interest group conflict is low or the role of the European Parliament is restricted. A new data set on the positions of more than 1,000 non-state actors with respect to 70 legislative acts proposed by the European Commission between 2008 and 2010 allows us to evaluate this argument. Empirical support for our expectations is highly robust. Our findings have implications for the literature on legislative decision-making in the EU and for research on non-state actors in international organizations.

Information or context: what accounts for positional proximity between the European Commission and lobbyists?

ABSTRACT Why are legislative proposals closer to the positions of some organized interests than others? The literature proposes that policy-makers are attentive to the demands of lobbyists that provide relevant information. At the same time, being part of a policy community is also claimed to enable lobbyists to shape policy formulation. We argue that both factors reinforce each other: informational resources are particularly effective in reducing the gap between the Commissions policy position and the position of lobbyists if both actors are part of the same policy community. Analysing data on over 100 policy issues in the European Union, we find that the context of a friendly Directorate-General reinforces the effectiveness of lobbyists’ informational resources. However, on its own, a context of friendly relations between the policy-maker and the lobbyist contributes little to explaining why the European Commissions policy position is closer to some actors than to others.

Explaining Interest Group Interactions with Party Group Members in the European Parliament: Dominant Party Groups and Coalition Formation

This article develops and tests a theory of party group lobbying that demonstrates how the European Parliaments decision-making process shapes interest group interactions with legislators. Interest group behaviour is highly conditional on two motivations: lobby powerful MEPs, and lobby friendly MEPs. Friendliness is based on ideology, with power shaped by institutional rules and seat share. These goals can mutually reinforce each other. However, because these two motivations exist, and because political power is not fully predictable, there are strong incentives for interest groups to lobby party groups that are non-natural allies to ensure that their policy information reaches the winning side. But, when interest groups engage in this behaviour, they retain their preference to lobby the friendliest members. The analysis is carried out on nine policy-related categories of interest group, with MEP data from three parliaments in the period 1999–2011, combined with information on the parliamentary role of 724 respondents.

Government‒business relations in multilevel systems: the effect of conflict perception on venue choice

Abstract In multilevel systems, organised interests, including business firms, can pursue their political goals at different levels. At the same time, national systems of interest representation provide important incentive structures for corporate political behaviour. In this context, corporate political strategy is guided by firms’ perceptions of their relationship with policy-makers. If this relationship is under strain in one venue, firms shift their lobbying effort to alternative venues, subject to constraints reflecting national institutional legacies. Using survey data on 56 large German and British firms, the article investigates empirically how perceptions of government‒business relations and national systems of interest representation interact to shape the political behaviour of large firms in multilevel systems. The analysis shows that perceived conflict with public authorities at the national level leads to increased business lobbying at the EU level. Furthermore, national types of interest representation shape relative business engagement at the EU level as well as the readiness of firms to shift venue.