Rainer Eising

Researching Interest Group Politics in Europe and Elsewhere: Much We Study, Little We Know?

While understanding interest group systems remains crucial to understanding the functioning of advanced democracies, the study of interest groups remains a somewhat niche field within political science. Nevertheless, during the last 15 years, the academic interest in group politics has grown and we reflect on the state of the current literature. The main objective is to take stock, consider the main empirical and theoretical/conceptual achievements, but most importantly, to reflect upon potential fertile future research avenues. In our view interest group studies would be reinvigorated and would benefit from being reintegrated within the broader field of political science, and more particularly, the comparative study of government.

Institutional Context, Organizational Resources and Strategic Choices

Drawing on a survey of 800 business associations, the article seeks to explain why interest groups lobby the EU institutions and what groups maintain contacts with them. Rooted in organizational theory, it argues that four main dimensions influence access patterns — institutional context, resource dependencies, interest group organization, and strategic choices. The empirical analysis demonstrates that all dimensions are relevant. Nonetheless, contacts between EU policy-makers and interest groups display only a few general traits: they are shaped by the political mobilization of groups in response to EU regulation, the division of labour among EU and national associations and the importance of organizational resources. Beyond these general influences, the interactions vary profoundly in the segmented institutional context.

The access of business interests to EU institutions: towards élite pluralism?

Abstract It has often been suggested that bias in the access of interest organizations to policy-makers leads to biased policies. The paper analyses the access of interest organizations to the EU institutions drawing on data from 800 business interest associations and 34 large firms. Exploring the proposition that some form of élite pluralism may emerge in the EU, it argues that the contact patterns derive from resource dependencies among the political actors and the interest groups, institutional opportunities in the EU, and the characteristics of the interest organizations. The study identifies imbalances in the access of EU associations, large firms, and national associations to the EU institutions, with large firms being in the forefront. Nonetheless, the evidence does not hint at the emergence of élite pluralism in the EU but points to important variations across the EU institutions and among the working level and their political leadership in each institution.

Policy Learning in Embedded Negotiations: Explaining EU Electricity Liberalization

Taking the example of the liberalization of the electricity supply industry, I analyze member-state negotiations in the European Union (EU). Confronting central tenets of the intergovernmental approach, I suggest that member-state executives act within the limits of bounded rationality and do not always hold clear and fixed preferences. I focus on the large member states Germany, France, and the United Kingdom and identify four institutional mechanisms that support outcomes above the least common denominator: (1) the role of norms that constrain strategic action and frame the negotiations, (2) the empowerment of supranational actors, (3) the decision routines of the Council of the European Union that provide standardized mechanisms for resolving conflicts and induce policy learning and preference changes, and (4) the vertical differentiation within the Council system that can unblock issue-specific controversies. Even if as a result of these techniques EU legal acts contain several flexibilization elements, they can trigger behavioral changes that clearly surpass their regulatory content.

Interest Groups and Social Movements

This chapter analyzes the Europeanization of interest organizations and social movements. Emphasis will be placed on the strategies these collective actors have adopted to represent their interests in the European Union (EU), on their influence in EU policy making, and on the EU effects on domestic interest intermediation. Even though organized interests have been steady companions of European integration, the bulk of attention has always been devoted to EU-level interest groups and interest intermediation (see Greenwood 2003a). Singling out the EU’s impact on domestic interests has only recently began to receive attention so that the analysis of this topic is characterized by notable research gaps and important areas of controversy and ambiguity.

Inflation und Zerfaserung: Trends der Interessenvermittlung in der Europäischen Gemeinschaft

Das Binnenmarkt-Projekt hat nach ubereinstimmender Einschatzung eine Dynamisierung des europaischen Integrationsprozesses ausgelost, der uber die Stufen Einheitliche Europaische Akte, Maastrichter Vertrag und Wirtschafts- und Wahrungsunion umfassender und direkter als je zuvor alle wirtschaftlichen Akteure betrifft. Die vorbehaltlose Offnung der Markte und mehr noch die zunehmende Verlagerung staatlicher Steuerungskompetenz auf die Gemeinschaft hat private Unternehmen und Verbande, aber auch offentliche Einrichtungen, Kommunen und Regionen bewogen, ihre Kenntnisse uber und Einflusmoglicheiten auf EG-Politik zu starken.1 Seit Mitte der 80er Jahre ist eine Veranderung der Organisation privater Interessen, v.a. eine Pluralisierung der Akteurslandschaft und eine verstarkte sektorielle Ausdifferenzierung zu beobachten.2 Nationale Verbande, Grosunternehmen und substaatliche offentliche Akteure haben eine Vielzahl direkter Interessenvertretungen eingerichtet. Die Vertretung von Interessen wird zunehmend professionellen Lobbyisten ubertragen. Aber auch etablierte Interessenorganisationen haben ihre Lobbyarbeit professionalisiert und zudem versucht, die Verselbstandigungstendenzen von Grosunternehmen dadurch aufzufangen, das sie ihnen uber Organisationsreformen erhohten Einflus eingeraumt haben. Der Lobby-Stil auf der EG-Ebene scheint sich mit diesen Entwicklungen ebenfalls gewandelt zu haben. In den Beziehungen zwischen Politik und Wirtschaft wird verstarkt auf individualisierte Verbindungen mit einzelnen Unternehmen und allenfalls sektoriellen Verbanden gesetzt, wahrend die Bedeutung der sektorubergreifenden Euroverbande weiter sinkt.

Europäisierung und Integration. Konzepte in der EU-Forschung

Dieser Aufsatz untersucht zwei zentrale Konzepte der EU-Forschung: Europaisierung und Integration. Wahrend sich die Politikwissenschaft bislang vornehmlich mit der „Europaischen Integration“ befasst hat und auch der Titel dieses Bandes Zeugnis uber die Bedeutung dieses Konzeptes ablegt, beschaftigt sie sich seit einigen Jahren verstarkt mit der „Europaisierung“. Nach einem halben Jahrhundert Europaischer Integration soll diese begriffliche Veranderung nicht so sehr die Entwicklungen von der Europaischen Gemeinschaft fur Kohle und Stahl zur Europaischen Union (EU), als vielmehr die profunden Ruckwirkungen dieser Entwicklungen auf die Mitgliedstaaten widerspiegeln. Nach Ansicht einiger Autoren druckt dieser Wechsel auch grundlegende theoretische Neuerungen und Veranderungen der Fragestellungen aus (Radaelli 2000: 6).

Clientelism, Committees, Pluralism and Protests in the European Union: Matching Patterns?

Many efforts have been made to identify general patterns of interest intermediation in the EU, ranging from early studies about clientela relations to recent depictions of protest politics. This review covers studies that aim at cross-sectoral generalisations as well as analyses that are confined to specific sectors, policy areas, and issues. While many analyses are rooted in the debate on corporatism and pluralism, since the 1990s the conceptual range has extended to the study of policy networks and communities. More recent studies identify a simultaneous trend towards greater politicisation and institutionalisation of EU interest intermediation. Altogether, this literature has yielded inconclusive results. It is unclear whether the EU is marked by cross-sectoral patterns or whether it is more meaningful to focus on policy areas or sectors as units of observation. The discussion suggests that part of the controversy surrounding these findings stems from problems inherent in the typological logic that frames these analyses. It is also argued that the explanatory aspects of this literature need to be strengthened and linked more explicitly to studies examining the democratic stability and economic performance of the EU.

Institutions, policies, and arguments: context and strategy in EU policy framing

ABSTRACT Studies of framing in the EU political system are still a rarity and they suffer from a lack of systematic empirical analysis. Addressing this gap, we ask if institutional and policy contexts intertwined with the strategic side of framing can explain the number and types of frames employed by different stakeholders. We use a computer-assisted manual content analysis and develop a fourfold typology of frames to study the frames that were prevalent in the debates on four EU policy proposals within financial market regulation and environmental policy at the EU level and in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The main empirical finding is that both contexts and strategies exert a significant impact on the number and types of frames in EU policy debates. In conceptual terms, the article contributes to developing more fine-grained tools for studying frames and their underlying dimensions.

Conclusion: Embedding Interest Group Research

All the contributors to this volume share a belief that the study of interest groups will be advanced through an interactive process that conjoins empirical research with the systematic constructio...