Is the EU different? Comparing the diversity of national and EU-level systems of interest organisations

Figures & data

Table 1. Variables, operationalisation and measurement.

Variable	Variable description	Details
Dependent variables
Business bias	Proportion of business interests in policy domain	Based on membership variable (see below)
Representational capacity 1 – policy interest dimension	Policy interest: the extent to which an organisation is involved in policy-making	1 to 6 scale that indicates no policy interest at all (1) and full policy interest (6). (see Appendix for full coding-scheme)
Representational capacity 2 – membership dimension	Membership involvement: the extent to which an organisation involves its membership in decision-making	1 to 6 scale that indicates membership involvement ranging from: involvement at all (1) to fully run by members (6) (see Appendix)
Representational capacity 3 – ‘ideal type transmission belt’	Combination of policy interest and membership dimension	Variable based on policy interest and membership involvement scales.
		Dummy variable: 1 = organisations with a score higher than 4 on both scales; 0 = organisations with lower scores on both scales
Independent variable
Institutional effect (H1 and H2)	Effect of different governance levels	Dummy variables that represent variation between: the Netherlands, the UK, France, Germany and the EU level
Control variables
Density	Number of interest groups per policy domain in member state/EU level	Proportions per policy domain based on the COFOG classification (see http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cr/registry/regcst.asp?Cl=4; and below)
Policy competence	Extent to which a policy domain is an EU competency; conversion table of COFOG coding into EU or national competencies	EU competency: 05: Environmental protection; 0.42: Agriculture
		Shared competency: 01: General public services; 02: Defence; 04: Economic affairs; 0.43: Energy; 0.44: Manufacturing and construction; 0.54: Landscape protection; 0.45: Transport
		National competency: 03: Public order and safety; 06: Housing and community amenities; 07: Health; 08: Recreation, culture and religion; 09: Education; 10: Social protection; 0.73: Hospital services; 0.82: Culture; 10.4: Family; 10.7: Social exclusion
Group type	Business vs other groups; based on type of members	Dummy variable: 1 = Members are commercial firms, 0 = Members are not firms. In Table 3: additional category used: members are individuals as professional
Membership structure	Presence of decentralised organisational units, such as geographical or functional chapters, or sub-associations	Does the organisation have an ‘indirect’ membership structure?
		1 = Yes, 0 = No
Social/leisure focus	Organisations that are predominantly focused on social or leisure goals	Domain of membership according to the International Classification of Non-Profit Organizations is:
		1) Group 1 ‘Culture and recreation’ or Group 10 ‘Religion’ 2) Not in any of these

Figure 1. Proportion of business interests per political system.

Table 2. OLS regression on the proportion of business interest associations per policy domain, n = 90 policy domains in four countries.

Country	The Netherlands	−0.15
Reference category: European Union		(‒1.27)
	France	0.18
		(1.53)
	United Kingdom	−0.15
		(‒1.33)
	Germany	0.10
		(0.88)
Density	Proportion of organisations in policy field	0.089
		(0.93)
Policy competence	National competence	−0.53^***
		(‒4.12)
	Mixed national/EU competence	−0.16
		(‒1.24)
	R^2	0.32

Standardised beta coefficients; t statistics in parentheses; n = 90.

* p < 0.10

** p < 0.05

*** p < 0.01.

Figure 2. Organisational orientation per political system: frequency distributions of scores on policy interest.

Figure 3. Organisational orientation per political system: frequency distributions of scores on membership involvement.

Table 3. OLS and logistic regression on the policy interest, membership involvement and combined policy/membership scores (logistic regression on indicator when both scores are greater than 4: ‘Representative capacity’).

		Model 1			Model 2			Model 3
		(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)	(9)
		Policy interest	Membership involvement	Representative capacity	Policy interest	Membership involvement	Representative capacity	Policy interest	Membership involvement	Representative capacity
Country	The Netherlands	−1.69^**	0.30^*	−0.87^**	−1.46^**	0.35^**	−0.67^**	−1.44^**	0.57^**	−0.24
reference category: European Union
		(‒12.42)	(2.27)	(‒5.01)	(‒10.52)	(2.62)	(‒3.71)	(‒8.50)	(3.47)	(‒1.08)
	France	−1.55^**	0.68^**	−0.80^**	−1.58^**	0.65^**	−0.82^**	−1.55^**	0.90^**	−0.31
		(‒11.89)	(5.45)	(‒4.89)	(‒12.23)	(5.16)	(‒4.93)	(‒9.10)	(5.42)	(‒1.40)
	United Kingdom	−1.92^**	1.03^**	−1.07^**	−1.66^**	1.04^**	−0.88^**	−1.63^**	1.26^**	−0.42
		(‒15.23)	(8.48)	(‒6.57)	(‒12.86)	(8.28)	(‒5.17)	(‒10.01)	(7.96)	(‒1.92)
	Germany	−1.54^**	1.19^**	−0.65^**	−1.49^**	1.14^**	−0.63^**	−1.46^**	1.38^**	−0.14
		(‒11.75)	(9.42)	(‒4.03)	(‒11.46)	(9.04)	(‒3.79)	(‒8.73)	(8.48)	(‒0.66)
Interest	Culture and social clubs	−1.43^**	0.22^*	−1.29^**	−1.39^**	0.34^**	−1.22^**	−1.39^**	0.33^**	−1.21^**
		(‒13.57)	(2.16)	(‒7.18)	(‒13.10)	(3.25)	(‒6.64)	(‒13.10)	(3.24)	(‒6.63)
Members	Members are professionals				−0.012	0.46^**	0.21	−0.014	0.44^**	0.17
					(‒0.12)	(4.56)	(1.49)	(‒0.13)	(4.40)	(1.19)
	Members are firms				0.31^**	0.33^**	0.43^**	0.29^**	0.21^*	0.18
					(3.17)	(3.47)	(3.34)	(2.71)	(2.04)	(1.22)
	Multi-level membership structure				0.61^**	0.081	0.43^**	0.61^**	0.11	0.49^**
					(6.72)	(0.92)	(3.60)	(6.70)	(1.21)	(4.06)
Interaction	EU*Members are firms							0.054	0.48^*	0.97^**
								(0.25)	(2.31)	(3.47)
	Constant	4.94^**	3.75^**	0.15	4.55^**	3.49^**	−0.29	4.53^**	3.29^**	−0.68^**
		(51.96)	(40.93)	(1.27)	(39.55)	(31.22)	(−1.96)	(31.16)	(23.36)	(−3.61)
	Observations	1783	1777	1777	1771	1766	1766	1771	1766	1766
	R^2	0.23	0.072		0.26	0.084		0.26	0.087

t statistics in parentheses, OLS regressions, Models 1(3), 2(6) and 3(9) logistic regressions.

* p < 0.05

** p < 0.01.

Figure 4. Predicted probabilities of the representative capacity of business interest associations versus other associations in the EU and four member states, adapted version of Model 3(9) from Table 3.

Table

Representational capacity	1. No mention of interest representation before government or through creating broader awareness
- Policy-interest scale	2. Interest representation is mentioned in mission statement or somewhere else on website, but no mention of policy-oriented activities
	3. Minimal policy-oriented activities reported, such as: ‘the association land owners find sustainable forest management important’
	4. One or two concrete policy-oriented activities found, including monitoring and information-oriented activities
	5. A separate section of the website reports on policy campaigns and positions, or throughout the website one finds references to public policy, including indirect strategies such as creating awareness
	6. The policy section is substantial and includes several different types of documents (policy statement, public campaigns, etc.)
Representational capacity	1. The members only transfer money (e.g. called ‘donors’ or ‘supporters’)
- Membership involvement scale	2. Members may have some official rights but there is no explicit reference to this
	3. Members are called ‘members’, and seem formally to have voting rights
	4. Members have some opportunity to participate in the organisation, such as through volunteering
	5. Members have several ways to participate and decision-makers have a track-record within the organisation/cause
	6. Members fully run the organisation, also paid staff seem to be selected primarily on the basis of their loyalty to the cause rather than management experience (e.g. association of doctors is managed by a doctor)