Engaging firms : The global organisational field for corporate social responsibility and national varieties of capitalism

This paper is the outcome of a workshop ‘The Causes and Consequences of Private Governance: The Changing Roles of State and Private Actors’ held on 6/7 November 2014 at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) and funded by the COST Action IS1309 ‘Innovations in Climate Governance: Sources, Patterns and Effects’ (INOGOV), MZES, and the Lorenz von Stein Foundation. The research on which the paper is based was funded by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council in the United Kingdom (RES-062-23-3258). In addition to the participants of the Mannheim workshop, we would like to thank Jale Tosun, Sebastian Koos, Jennifer Shore, Lukas Giessen, Sarah Burns, Tim Werner, Karen Wright and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article. The remaining faults are all our own.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Contrary to popular opinion, business actors are less successful than citizen groups at lobbying EU legislators

How powerful are business interests in lobbying for changes to EU legislative proposals? Andreas Dür, Patrick Bernhagen and David Marshall present findings from an analysis of 70 legislative proposals introduced by the European Commission between 2008 and 2010. They note that contrary to popular opinion, business actors proved far less successful than citizen groups at achieving their desired outcomes in EU legislative decisions. They reason that this may be because with the single market completed in most areas, the contemporary European legislative agenda tends to be dominated by proposals aimed at protecting consumers or the environment

Shop till you drop? Venue choices of business and non-business interests in the European Union

The EU offers a variety of access points through which interest groups can attempt to influence policy-making. In this paper, we analyze differences in the use of these access points, or venues, by interest groups. Considering the roles played by different EU institutions along the policy cycle, we argue that the venues differ by the extent to which they encourage lobbying from different interest groups. Analyzing survey responses by more than 700 European interest associations, we find that the distribution of access-seeking by business and non-business actors differs across venues. Reflecting its pivotal role at the pre-proposal stage, the Commission encourages non-business organizations to spend much of their finite lobbying resources. In the context of the European Parliament, non-business groups are not only interested in influencing its decisions, but also in connecting to ordinary Members of the European Parliament. Business groups, for their part, apply greater resources to the rapporteurs. Finally, we show that business groups also allocate their resources to regulatory agencies at the implementation stage in the policy process, where incomplete legislative contracts are finalized and non-business groups’ resources are depleted

Elections to the European Parliament: what if more people voted?

Can the rise of Eurosceptic and extremist parties be blamed on the mobilisation of people who previously had abstained from the polls? An analysis of the 2009 and 2014 elections to the European Parliament suggests that support for Eurosceptic parties would be largely unaffected by changes in voter turnout, write Uwe Remer-Bollow, Patrick Bernhagen and Richard Rose. Extremist parties would even have lost vote shares if turnout had reached the higher levels observed at national general elections

Economic voting through boom and bust : information and choice at Irish General Elections, 2002–2011

A considerable body of research exists on the economic and informational determinants of voting behaviour. However, unresolved questions remain about the relationship between these two factors. While economic voting is generally understood as a matter of prospective evaluation carried out on the basis of retrospective cues available to voters, the extent to which prospective information matters for vote choice remains unclear, in particular if it conflicts with retrospective experience. How do different sources of information compete to affect vote choice and evaluations of incumbents? Specifically, how do voters evaluate incumbents if past economic performance has been good but predictions about the near future are bleak? In this chapter we address this question by analysing the economic and informational determinants of vote choice at three successive Irish elections: the last two general elections before the fiscal and economic collapse and the first election following the meltdown. Jointly, these elections form a quasi-experimental case study of economic votingthatenablesustoinvestigatewhethertheextenttowhichvotersreward the government for facilitating an economic boom is affected by warnings about precarious foundations and predictions of economic decline. To analyse this potentially contingent relationship we link media content data in the context of the elections with survey data from the Irish National Election Study (INES). The three election campaigns are marked by significant variation in the amount (and, for two elections, in the tone) of economi

Government‒business relations in multilevel systems: the effect of conflict perception on venue choice

In multilevel systems, organised interests, including business firms, can pursue their political goals at different levels. At the same time, national systems of interest representation provide important incentive structures for corporate political behaviour. In this context, corporate political strategy is guided by firms’ perceptions of their relationship with policy-makers. If this relationship is under strain in one venue, firms shift their lobbying effort to alternative venues, subject to constraints reflecting national institutional legacies. Using survey data on 56 large German and British firms, the article investigates empirically how perceptions of government‒business relations and national systems of interest representation interact to shape the political behaviour of large firms in multilevel systems. The analysis shows that perceived conflict with public authorities at the national level leads to increased business lobbying at the EU level. Furthermore, national types of interest representation shape relative business engagement at the EU level as well as the readiness of firms to shift venue

Government‒business relations in multilevel systems: the effect of conflict perception on venue choice

In multilevel systems, organised interests, including business firms, can pursue their political goals at different levels. At the same time, national systems of interest representation provide important incentive structures for corporate political behaviour. In this context, corporate political strategy is guided by firms’ perceptions of their relationship with policy-makers. If this relationship is under strain in one venue, firms shift their lobbying effort to alternative venues, subject to constraints reflecting national institutional legacies. Using survey data on 56 large German and British firms, the article investigates empirically how perceptions of government‒business relations and national systems of interest representation interact to shape the political behaviour of large firms in multilevel systems. The analysis shows that perceived conflict with public authorities at the national level leads to increased business lobbying at the EU level. Furthermore, national types of interest representation shape relative business engagement at the EU level as well as the readiness of firms to shift venue