EU Lobbying: Empirical and Theoretical studies offers an analysis of large empirical studies of interest group politics and Lobbying in Europe. Recognising the continued European economic integration, globalisation and the changing role of the state, it observs significant adaptations in interest mobilisation and strategic behavour. This book assesses the logic of collective and direct action, the logic of access and influence, the logic of venue-shopping and alliance building. It addresses specific issues such as: the emergence of elite pluralism in EU institutions, the pump priming of political action by EU institutions, and the growing political sophistication of private and public interests in Brussels. Through these issues the book explores how interest groups lobby different European institutions along the policy process and how the nature of policy dictates the style and level of lobbying. This book was previously published as a special issue of Jounal of European Public Policy

Interest organizations have always assumed a prominent place in European politics because they link states with citizens, institutionalize the resolution of social conflicts, regulate important sectors of the economy and society, contribute to workable policy outcomes and socialize members into democratic politics. However, the plethora of interest group studies that exist have not consolidated our understanding of these actors. These analyses have been subject to the vagaries of different theoretical perspectives and vary greatly in their conceptual and methodological frameworks. Consequently, a not always complementary and fragmented series of findings has emerged. This book is a systematic and comprehensive effort at investigating and integrating the state of the art in European interest group research. Combining the analysis of interest group politics in the EU with the comparative study of interest organizations, the book seeks to identify the areas about which there is consolidated knowledge, that are marked by controversies, in which considerable uncertainty exists, that have been omitted from research programs and that ought to be part of future studies. Thereby, it provides a general reflection on how the study of interest group politics can be improved by linking it to the comparative study of governance. This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.

Why can some interest groups influence policy-making while others cannot? Even though this question is central to the study of politics, we know little about the factors explaining interest group influence. Understanding lobbying success should be of particular concern to scholars of European politics since the European Union constitutes a promising political opportunity structure for organized interests. This book sheds light on the impact of interest groups on European policy-making and makes a major contribution to the study of both European Union politics and interest groups more generally. Klüver develops a comprehensive theoretical model for understanding lobbying success and presents an extensive empirical analysis of interest group influence on policy-making in the EU. The book relies on a large, new, and innovative dataset that combines a wide variety of data sources including a quantitative text analysis of European Commission consultations, an online survey of interest groups, information gathered on interest group websites, and legislative data retrieved from EU databases. This book analyzes interest group influence across 56 policy issues and 2,696 interest groups and shows that lobbying is an exchange relationship in which the European institutions trade influence for information, citizen support and economic power. Importantly, this book demonstrates that it is not sufficient to solely focus on individual interest groups, but that it is crucial how interest groups come together in issue-specific lobbying coalitions. Lobbying is a collective enterprise in which information supply, citizen support, and economic power of entire lobbying coalitions are decisive for lobbying success.

EU Lobbying: Empirical and Theoretical studies offers an analysis of large empirical studies of interest group politics and Lobbying in Europe. Recognising the continued European economic integration, globalisation and the changing role of the state, it observs significant adaptations in interest mobilisation and strategic behavour. This book assesses the logic of collective and direct action, the logic of access and influence, the logic of venue-shopping and alliance building. It addresses specific issues such as: the emergence of elite pluralism in EU institutions, the pump priming of political action by EU institutions, and the growing political sophistication of private and public interests in Brussels. Through these issues the book explores how interest groups lobby different European institutions along the policy process and how the nature of policy dictates the style and level of lobbying. This book was previously published as a special issue of Jounal of European Public Policy