Pressure and expertise: Explaining the information supply of interest groups in EU legislative lobbying

Iskander De Bruycker*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

EU politics has long been portrayed as an elite affair in which technocratic deliberation prevails. As a consequence, information supply by interest groups has typically been viewed as part of an expertise-based exchange with policy-makers. Less attention has been devoted to whether the supply of information is also used to exert political pressure. In addition to expertise-based exchanges between interest groups and policy-makers, can we identify the prevalence of information supply that aims to put pressure on EU policy-makers? And under what conditions are different modes of information supply likely to occur? My analysis relies on interviews with 143 lobbyists who were active on a set of 78 legislative proposals submitted by the European Commission between 2008 and 2010. The results demonstrate that expertise-based exchanges are dominant in interactions with civil servants, while political information is predominantly communicated to political officials and often the key substance in outside lobbying tactics.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)599-616
Number of pages18
JournalJournal of Common Market Studies
Volume54
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2016
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • interest groups
  • lobbying
  • European Union politics
  • political communication
  • EUROPEAN-UNION
  • ACCESS
  • BUSINESS
  • INSTITUTIONS
  • STRATEGIES
  • PLURALISM
  • SALIENCE

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