New Modes of Lobbying for New Modes of Governance. Interest Representation and Experimentalist Governance in the EU

Programme group PETGOV

This project investigates how interest groups respond to complex and uncertain circumstances in the European Union that provide different types of opportunities for accessing the policy process. Focusing on the role of interest representation in EU policy-making, the aim is to investigate how experimentalist governance arrangements affect lobby groups’ strategies for influencing policy outcomes.

Research question

This research addresses  whether and how interest groups adjust their strategies to influence policy when operating in this mode of governance. Since the functioning of policymaking processes in the EU is highly dependent upon non-state actors’ input, the changed behaviour of interest groups may be considered an important driving force for the efficacy of experimentalist governance.

Approach

This project follows three lines of research. The first concerns the effect of new opportunities for access and influence deriving from new governance structures.

The second line of inquiry follows from the finding that in the less developed, more recently introduced case of experimentalism in the 2011 Combating the Sexual Abuse of Children Directive some interest groups had adapted to the new and emerging regime while others had not. This points to the issue of understanding new policy structures and the process of learning: how (quickly) do interest groups learn about the new governance structures in which they operate and how (quickly) can and do they adapt their activities to them?

The third focus concerns the reciprocal relationship between lobbying actors’ activities and the governance regime. On the one hand, learning to adapt to new circumstances is crucial for the development and improvement of any particular experimentalist regime, and thus forms one focus in this research line. As regards cross-sectional learning, on the other hand, interest groups can play a central role in extending experimentalism within the EU. Understanding the functioning and benefits of experimentalist governance processes in one field might cause a bottom-up spill-over to other policy areas through the lobbying efforts of interest groups. The learning process of interest groups thus constitutes an important causal factor both in the implementation and in the extension of experimentalist governance in the EU. 

Funding: NWO Research Talent

Published by  AISSR

29 October 2014