Interest Groups in the European Union: How Powerful Are They?

Abstract

The question of interest group influence is central for both scholars interested in studying policy-making in the EU and those concerned with the legitimacy of decision-making in that entity. Many hypotheses exist that stress a series of factors possibly shaping interest group influence. Nevertheless, only few studies have tried empirically to examine these hypotheses for the case of the EU. What is more, existing empirical studies report contradictory findings. To help researchers advance upon this state of the art, three obstacles that impede research dealing with interest group influence in the EU are discussed: defining the terms ‘power’ and ‘influence’; accounting for different pathways to influence; and measuring influence. In addition to this, several ways to address these obstacles are advanced: by taking a pragmatic approach with respect to defining influence and power; by being conscious that actors may use different pathways to influence when drawing conclusions about interest group influence; and by combining different methods when measuring influence.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Jan Beyers, Dirk De Bièvre, Rainer Eising, William Maloney, Richard Sherman, Arndt Wonka, the participants of two workshops in Leiden in April 2005 and in Hagen in March 2006, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on earlier versions of this text.

Notes

1. I accept a broad definition of interest groups including not only the traditional membership-based trade associations, but also firms and other organisations that try to influence policy outcomes in the EU.

2. Similarly, Frank Baumgartner and Beth Leech (1998: 13) single out the question of interest group power and influence in the United States as an area of ‘confusion’ within the broader interest group literature.

3. For reviews of the broader literature on interest group influence in different national settings, which complement my focus on the EU, see for example Smith (1995) and Burstein and Linton (2002). Quantitative studies of interest group influence are reviewed in Potters and Sloof (1996). Van Winden (2003) provides an overview of formal models of interest group influence.

4. Institutions may also shape the chances for mobilisation (see also Lowery et al. 2008). I disregard the question of mobilisation here.