Lobbying in the European Union: From sui generis to a comparative perspective

Abstract

This article reviews the literature on lobbying in the European Union. After initial surveys of the landscape of non-governmental actor participation, theoretical investigations have focused on the modes of network governance and later on the phenomenon of Europeanization. Yet studies have increasingly moved away from considering EU lobbying as a sui generis phenomenon. Normalizing the study of interest group participation in the EU and understanding the opportunities and constraints that are characteristic for it has led more and more scholars to adopt a comparative perspective. The most interesting parallels exist between Washington and Brussels, but unfortunately there have been very few attempts to explore the connection between the American literature on lobbying and EU studies. This article makes a first step towards such a comparison and points to concepts common in comparative politics that could provide considerable insight into the study of EU lobbying.

Keywords:

• European Union
• institutional constraints
• interests groups
• lobbying
• opportunity structure
• United States.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Andreas Dür, Berthold Rittberger and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments, and David Coen, Emiliano Grossman and Philip Manow for their detailed feedback on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

1. The literature covers studies of different interest groups in the EU and research on the ways in which private actors affect policy outcomes. Since the term ‘interest groups’ excludes firms and their political influence, I refer to the whole literature as the EU lobbying literature and not just the literature on interest groups in the EU. In the following, ‘lobbying’ will be defined as all activities by private actors which aim at influencing political decision-makers. ‘Interest groups’ refer to formally organized groups who are united by specific political objectives and who try to influence the policy process in the pursuit of these goals. This distinction helps to separate the activities and the actors' formal organization. When talking about private actors that are not just groups, I employ the term ‘non-governmental actors’, while ‘collective action’ refers to all common activities of groups, which are not necessarily aimed at influencing the policy process. For further discussion, see Baumgartner and Leech 1998: 22–43.

2. It is quite probable that institutions are not the only component explaining lobbying behaviour, as Beyers (2005) argues with respect to ideas and their effect on advocacy coalitions.

3. Further information on lobbying styles in the two polities may be found in Milbrath (1963), Rosenthal (1993) and Van Schendelen (1993).

4. Schmitter and Streeck (1999) have termed the reasons for this dual role ‘logic of influence’ and ‘logic of membership’.