Entering the Brussels arena: Slovenian interest groups and the pursuit of a dual strategy

ABSTRACT

In order to have a bigger impact on European Union public policy processes, national interest groups might choose to pursue a ‘dual strategy’ and promote their interests before national and EU institutions. However, being present at both levels is not necessarily the dominant strategy such groups follow. Relying on a survey of 97 Slovenian interest groups active in 11 different policy fields, this article analyses: (1) which factors determine use of a dual strategy; and (2) which groups have an advantage in representing their interests. Several factors in particular contribute to the pursuit of a dual strategy: (a) the interest group is economically-focussed; (b) it has a higher number of employees and (c) a higher level of activity; (d) the interest group is active in a policy sector falling within the EU’s competency and (e) is young.

KEYWORDS:

• Interest groups
• dual strategy
• EU-level lobbying
• democratic deficit
• Slovenia
• national advocacy

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Adriana Bunea and the participants of the panel Grassroots and National Civil Society Organisations in the EU at the ECPR General Conference 2016 in Prague for all their useful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Transparency Register. 2018. http://ec.europa.eu/transparencyregister/public/homePage.do?redir=false&locale=en.

2. By national level we do not exclude policies and decisions that are formed at the country’s subnational level.

3. We define economically-focused interest groups as those active in the business sector, such as business associations, employers’ associations as well as trade unions and professional associations, while noneconomic interest groups are those not active in the business sector, but instead are cause-based, identity or leisure groups.

4. Due to the data limitation with no available data on openness of other decision-makers to interest groups, we constrained our analysis to the openness of ministries to interest groups and did not include other decision-makers in the analysis.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Slovenian Research Agency under Grants N5-0014 and P5-0136.

Notes on contributors

Meta Novak

Meta Novak, PhD, is assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, and a researcher at the Centre for Political Science Research at the same faculty. She has worked on two international research projects, been an assistant to the academic coordinator of three Jean Monnet projects and is currently an academic coordinator of a Jean Monnet project. Her research interests include interest groups, lobbying, civil society, political knowledge and opinion gaps.

Damjan Lajh

Damjan Lajh, PhD, is associate professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, and Head of the Centre for Political Science Research at the same faculty, as well as a Jean Monnet professor. He has led many EU-related projects, including the University of Ljubljana Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence and the Jean Monnet Chair. His research interests encompass public policies and policymaking processes in the national and EU context, Europeanization processes, interest groups and lobbying, and new forms of governance in the EU.