The tip of the iceberg

Public consultations are used by regulatory agencies for input into their decisions and provide an opportunity for interest groups to voice their concerns. However, researchers emphasised that interest groups are also active before consultations, when drafting regulatory rules. Public consultations might be the tip of the iceberg, with influence during early rule drafting stages looming beneath the surface. This paper looks into interest group behaviour during rulemaking by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Combining datasets on interest group access to rule drafting workshops (N = 538) and interest group behaviour in consultations (N = 42,595), the paper assesses what those that help draft rules do during public consultations. Strikingly, only a minority of these groups participate in consultations afterwards. Those that do participate, howev

Persuading the independent

What motivates interest groups to engage with European Union (EU) agencies? Authors have recently looked into the interaction between interest groups and these European regulators. This article sets out to discover new explanations for interest group behaviour and to add mechanisms to established explanatory factors by looking at this novel context for interest group literature. It employs an in-depth qualitative study using interviews with high-level interest group representatives that interact with the European Food Safety Authority. A novel finding is that interest groups, specifically business actors, are motivated by preventing reputational threats to the agency. This article, therefore, extends insights from bureaucratic reputation literature to interest group scholarship. Furthermore, interest groups are motivated by factors found in interest group literature such as influence on regulatory policy, gaining access to venues and appeasing their members. This article aids future research efforts in unravelling why interest groups engage with EU regulatory agencies

How do supranational regulators keep companies in line?: An analysis of the enforcement styles of EU agencies

National governments have increasingly transferred enforcement powers to EU agencies that monitor and penalize non-compliance by private actors. How do EU agencies apply enforcement competences in practice? Based on the Eurolegalism thesis, pressures for deeper integration have led to the emergence of a more adversarial enforcement style in Europe. Consequently, supranational regulators are expected to employ formal and coercive enforcement instruments. Conversely, studies of EU enforcement suggest that EU agencies may be reluctant to antagonize national governments by prosecuting private actors. In this study, we analyze the enforcement practices of supranational agencies with direct enforcement powers: the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and European Medicines Agency (EMA). We find that EU agencies apply a legalistic approach, but they vary in coerciveness of enforcement. Whereas EU agencies tend to apply more coercive measures against non-conform products, they are generally not adversarial toward non-compliant organizations.The politics and administration of institutional chang

Nuclear Weapons in the Tweede Kamer: analysis of nuclear motions in the Dutch House of Representatives in times of contestation

Past research project

Psychometric analysis of the Dutch language Facilitative Interpersonal Skills (FIS) video clips

Stress and Psychopatholog

Generation of human induced pluripotent stem cell lines (LUMCi051-A,B and LUMCi052-A,B,C) of two patients with Spinocerebellar ataxia type 7

Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 7 (SCA7) is an autosomal dominantly inherited disorder, primarily characterized by cerebellar ataxia and visual loss. SCA7 is caused by a CAG repeat expansion in exon 3 of the ATXN7 gene. We generated human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from peripheral blood-derived erythroblasts from two SCA7 patients (LUMCi051-A,B and LUMCi052-A,B,C) using integration-free episomal vectors. All hiPSC clones express pluripotency factors, show a normal karyotype, and can differentiate into the three germ layers. These lines can be used for in vitro disease modeling and therapy testing.</p

Cognitive Mapping Coding Manual : Deliverable 3.1 for the TRANSCRISIS Horizon2020 Project

This coding manual provides a practical methodological guideline that explains how to use the method of cogntiive mapping to uncover ideas and discourses. The manual offers valuable insights for other scholars resulting from our years of experience in using the technique. However, the practices described in the manual will be inspired by the research question central to Work Package 3 of the Transcrisis project on the role of leaders in managing the Euro crisis (funded by the Horizon2020 scheme) in particular. It will serve a a guide to study the role and changes in the ideas and discourses that pertain to the management of the Euro crisis