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 language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 599-616 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | Journal of Common Market Studies |
Volume | 54 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - May 2016 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- interest groups
- lobbying
- European Union politics
- political communication
- EUROPEAN-UNION
- ACCESS
- BUSINESS
- INSTITUTIONS
- STRATEGIES
- PLURALISM
- SALIENCE