Since 2007 a growing group of scholars in the US and Europe has been active in studying various aspects of civil society, lobbying, and interest-group politics in Europe.
Two major initiatives are of note:
The ECPR Standing Group on Interest Groups. Click on the link for more information.
INTEREURO - A systematic comparative research project on interest-group politics in Europe
This project develops a comprehensive empirical and theoretical understanding of the role of interest groups in democratic politics in the EU and national political systems. Systematic collaboration among European and US researchers is needed in order to build mid-range theories of interest representation, to collect comparable large-n data-sets and nuanced contextualized qualitative data to better understand the influence production process in Europe. We are convinced that only a large-scale, systematic, collaborative project can begin answering many of the open questions in interest-group research; questions that cannot be addressed by individual researchers alone.
The research team of 20 European and American scholars will pursue this goal with a mixed research strategy studying the mobilization, argumentation, and advocacy strategies surrounding 120 policy issues, at the EU level and the national level in six member states – France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. We will also be studying the composition, structure and professionalization of the interest-group populations in those member states and at the EU level. Finally, we will draw linkages between those interest-group environments and interest-group mobilization patterns. Data collected in one module as a dependent variable becomes an independent variable for scholars running analysis on other modules. All document collections, coding and data will be shared among the collaborative research team, and will ultimately be made available on-line for other scholars to use.
The project’s findings will lead to a more comprehensive understanding of European Civil Society and interest-group politics in European policy making and eventually allow for comparisons with civil society and interest-group politics in the US. Moreover interest-group politics in the EU have a direct impact on transatlantic political relationship. This is, for example, true of transatlantic trade relationships where EU member states have delegated all competences to the EU which is directly negotiating with the US. Given the high stakes in transatlantic trade between the EU and the US, interest groups have been highly engaged in trade debates. Moreover, given the size of the EU market, US interest groups and businesses are common players in EU interest-group politics when it comes to regulation in fields like environmental policies, GMOs and consumer protection. Finally, interest groups in the EU as well as in the US contribute significantly to the quality of political life and political contestation. Thus, EU interest-group politics is of practical and scientific relevance for citizens and researchers from the US, as well as citizens and researchers from EU countries. Bringing together European and US scholars with expertise in the field and strong empirical knowledge in their respective countries, thus promises to significantly increase our knowledge and understanding of interest-group politics.
These research modules will consider how EU-level interest groups interact with EU-level institutions, their strategies and tactics as well as how they impact upon and shape EU politics. We will also study activity at the member state level, and delve deeper into the complex interactions between domestic, EU-level and eventually international arenas. The project focuses on five different aspects of interest groups and interest-group politics in the EU’s multi-level political system:
I. The study of interest-group populations: Here we focus on the development of interest-group populations, their density and their diversity, within different political systems. At this moment we have almost no systematic knowledge about different national interest-group populations and their structure; we even lack basic knowledge on the number of groups that exist within different European countries. Basic information on this issue is needed in order to arrive at proper characterizations of interest-group systems (for instance as being pluralist, neo-corporatist, statist etc.). Moreover, empirical knowledge on interest-group population shall, in later stages of our project, be linked to our study group’s research on interest-group strategies and influence by investigating if and how population characteristics affect interest-group strategies and success in gaining preferred policy outcomes. Members of our group are currently carrying out empirical research on the EU-level interest-group population and are planning to extend this research on interest-group populations in a number of EU member states.
II. Internal organizational dynamics and professionalization: Interest-group strategies are not only a result of the policy issue or the institutional environment with which they are confronted. Internal organizational dynamics (e.g., the search for members and other funding sources) are crucial as well. Interest groups are increasingly professionalized and the question of the extent to which members or supporters are still relevant for interest representation is thus central to investigating interest-group politics. Other basic questions that our group will address in this regard concern the relationship between Europeanization, i.e. the organizational adaptation of interest groups to be fit to play the EU politics game, as well as professionalization of interest groups and the extent to which groups contribute to democratic or legitimate governance.
III. Framing of interest-group positions: Our empirical knowledge on framing, i.e. the way in which interest groups try to present a political issue with special emphasis on a particular aspect, is quite fragmented. Interest-group research needs to pay attention to when and how groups employ different frames, how often they attempt to re-frame issues, the importance of initial frame setting and the relation of framing with other variables such as issue salience, influence and policy change.
IV. Interest-group strategies and policy issues: Some members of our study group concentrate on explaining the occurrence of different policy strategies and how they vary with the nature of policy issues. Strategies within a multi-level system such as the EU concern the nature of collective action, alliance building and coalition formation, seeking access (inside lobbying) at different levels of government (sub-national, national, EU) and strategic venue-shopping. Increasingly, outside strategies, such as public manifestations or press campaigns, are part of the action repertoire of EU interest groups and need to be taken into account. A proper conceptualization of policy issues and their relation to political strategies is an important point of attention.
V. Interest-group influence: There is little systematic knowledge on interest-group influence, especially in multi-level political systems. To develop proper conceptualizations as well as empirical measurement instruments in order to investigate influence and the impact on policy outcomes is an important focus of attention. Our focus will be on which groups gain the outcomes they desire as well as to inform normative theories of EU policy-making by assessing whether and to what extent EU policy outcomes are biased towards particularistic interests.
Research Collaboration
In contrast to other areas of political science research, there are currently no large cross-national research projects that aim to develop a cumulative body of knowledge of interest groups in a multilevel governance system. Most of what we have are isolated case-studies and some large-N studies that remain restricted to one political system.
The momentum for establishing this collaborative project emanated from a network of scholars developed within the framework of Connex, a research network that was financed by the Sixth Framework Program of the EU (priority 7). Connex has been an especially fruitful vehicle to bring together researchers from Europe and the US in the field of research on civil society and interest-group participation in European governance. This collaboration led to three special issues on interest-group politics in leading journals: the Journal of European Public Policy (Vol. 14(3)), Journal of Public Policy (Vol. 27(1)) and West European Politics (Vol. 31(6)), and to a range of workshops within Europe as well as in the US, intensifying transatlantic cooperation on interest-group research. Thus, the members of the team have been in communication for a number of years, sharing writing and research findings, we now begin to work together on a truly collaborative project which is larger in scale than any research to date. Prof. David Lowery took the lead in submitting a large proposal to the European Science Foundation in 2008.
The members of the team include: