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

Andreas  Dür; Patrick Bernhagen; David Marshall

doi:10.1177/0010414014565890

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

Andreas Dür, Patrick Bernhagen, David Marshall

Politics

University of Salzburg

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

145 Citations (Scopus)

307 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Business lobbying is widespread in the European Union (EU). But because not all lobbying is successful, the 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 dataset on the positions of more than one thousand 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.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	951-983
Number of pages	33
Journal	Comparative Political Studies
Volume	48
Issue number	8
Early online date	20 Jan 2015
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414014565890
Publication status	Published - 1 Jul 2015

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgments
We thank Joost Berkhout, Jan Beyers, Michael Blauberger, John Constantelos, Heike Klüver, Sven-Oliver Proksch, and Kevin Young for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Dominic Pakull offered helpful research assistance. Without the many respondents in the European Commission who were willing to be interviewed, this research would not have been possible.

Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article: Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Project Number I 576-G16.

Keywords

business and politics
European Union
interest groups
lobbying success

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10.1177/0010414014565890

When (and why) does business lose_091114
This is the author's version of an article accepted for publication in Comparative Political Studies.
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Cite this

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

abstract = "Business lobbying is widespread in the European Union (EU). But because not all lobbying is successful, the 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 Europeanpolicy process. However, they can protect their interests if interest group conflict is low or the role of the European Parliament is restricted. A new dataset on the positions of more than one thousand 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.",

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

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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