Lobbying for the people: Interest groups and public pressure in EU politics.

Opinion leaders often criticize EU lobbying as a 'disease for democracy'. The lobbying scandals that make it to the news headlines typically involve business lobbyists that influence or bribe corrupted policymakers in smoky backrooms. The public image of EU lobbying is very negative. This negative image, however, might not provide an accurate picture of what lobbying and interest group politics in Brussels entails. Interest groups – such as business groups, NGOs and labor unions – may serve as key transmission belts between citizens and EU policymakers. Organized interests can make EU policymakers more responsive by informing them about how much support a specific policy issue enjoys among citizens. However, the intermediary role of interest groups in elucidating public pressure remains largely neglected in both public responsiveness and interest group studies. Clarifying this role will precisely be the focus of my research project. The main research question I aim to answer is: To what extent and under which conditions do interest groups facilitate or distort the public responsiveness of EU policy outcomes?Empirically, the project departs from a sample of 43 policy issues on which public opinion data is available. For each issue, I will identify – by triangulating multiple data-sources – the entire set of stakeholders that sought to influence the legislative outcome, the lobbying strategies they developed and how this affected the public responsiveness of EU policy decisions.

Keywords:INTEREST REPRESENTATION, EUROPEAN UNION, PUBLIC OPINION

Disciplines:Other economics and business, Citizenship, immigration and political inequality, International and comparative politics, Multilevel governance, National politics, Political behaviour, Political organisations and institutions, Political theory and methodology, Public administration, Other political science