Lobbying in the EU

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Lobbying in the EU
 

• What we know,
• What we want to know,
• And what we might never know
• (with some observations from my own research)

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Plan of talk

• General discussion
• What we know
• What we want to know
• What we might never know
• My own research
• Trade barriers regulation
• Transatlantic business dialogue

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A first question

• What is lobbying?

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Traditional views

• Political auctions
• Smith, Ricardo
• Political markets
• Schattschneider, Truman
• Political contests
• Tullock, Grossman Helpman

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An emerging consensus

• EU lobbying is a mixture
• But not a mixture of auctions, markets, and
  contests
• Instead, a mixture of
• Policy networks
• Demand by EU actors
• Supply by lobbyists/advocates

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Policy network analysis

• Beyers and Kerremann
• Mapping connections between interest groups and
  EU officials

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The demand for influence

• Christine Mahoney
• Analysis of European interest groups
• Who gets funded who gets access?

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The exchange of information and access

• Pieter Bouwen
• What kind of access goods can different groups
  provide?
• Which groups are most valued by EU institutions?

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What we want to know

• What does this mean for politics?
• Is policy-making improved by lobbying?
• Do competing lobbies simply cancel each others
  effects?
• Is consultation real, or symbolic?

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What we might never know

• Who has influence?
• "...no empirical studies could be found which
  tried to measure directly the efficacy of any
  real world lobbying project. (DG-Research
  Working paper, 2003)
• Influence is very problematic to measure