Institutional Context, Organizational Resources and Strategic Choices: Explaining Interest Group Access in the European Union

Drawing on a survey of 800 business associations, the article seeks to explain why interest groups lobby the EU institutions and what groups maintain contacts with them. Rooted in organizational theory, it argues that four main dimensions influence access patterns — institutional context, resource dependencies, interest group organization, and strategic choices. The empirical analysis demonstrates that all dimensions are relevant. Nonetheless, contacts between EU policy-makers and interest groups display only a few general traits: they are shaped by the political mobilization of groups in response to EU regulation, the division of labour among EU and national associations and the importance of organizational resources. Beyond these general influences, the interactions vary profoundly in the segmented institutional context

Bounded Rationality and Policy Learning in EU Negotiations: the Liberalization of the Electricity Supply Industry

Europeanization; liberalization; electricity; national interest; regulation

Woher stammt das Wasser in der Summengleichung der Photosynthese?

Die Summengleichung der Photosynthese wird in Schulbüchern generell um 6 mol Wasser erweitert, um die Herkunft des Sauerstoffgases aus dem Wasser zu verdeutlichen. Bei den Erklärungen, auf welchem Wege die 6 mol Wasser auf der rechten Seite der Gleichung in der Pflanze entstehen, kommt es jedoch fast immer zu ungenauen, unverständlichen oder sachlich falschen Darstellungen und Schlussfolgerungen. Die hier vorgestellte Zusammenfassung von Wasserbildung und -verbrauch erlaubt eine widerspruchsfreie Darstellung der Wasserumsätze in der Photosynthese höherer Pflanzen

Wenn die Lichtreaktion im Dunkeln bleibt : Zur Behandlung der photosynthetischen Primärprozesse im Unterricht der Sekundarstufe II (Teil 2)

Der in Teil 1 dieses Beitrags (EISING et al., 1998) vorgestellte molekular-strukturelle Ansatz zur Behandlung der photosynthetischen Primärreaktionen in der Sekundarstufe II wird mit einer schrittweisen Bilanzierung der Energieausbeuten vervollständigt. Dazu werden die Primärreaktionen so unterteilt, dass die Effektivität aller Arten von Energieumformungen deutlich wird. Die Zwischenstufen der Bilanz sind konkreten Strukturen und Funktionszuständen der Thylakoidmembran zugeordnet, wodurch die Bilanzierung zwanglos in den molekular- strukturellen Ansatz integriert und die Effektivität der Molekular-Strukturen für ihre Funktion deutlich wird. Als Übergang von der molekular-zellulären auf die organismische Betrachtungsebene werden die Energieträger der Photosynthese nach ihrer Verfügbarkeit für den Organismus klassifiziert. Hieraus ergibt sich ein geeigneter Ansatzpunkt für die Behandlung der Frage nach dem „Sinn“ der zahlreichen Energieumformungen in der Photosynthese

Wenn die Lichtreaktion im Dunkeln bleibt : Zur Behandlung der photosynthetischen Primärprozesse im Unterricht der Sekundarstufe II (Teil 1)

Die Primärprozesse der Photosynthese stellen im Unterricht der Sekundarstufe II für Schüler ein schwieriges Thema dar. In diesem Beitrag werden Vorschläge unterbreitet, wie durch Einbezug aktueller fachwissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse zur Molekular-Struktur der Thylakoidmembran das Thema für Schüler sachlogisch zugänglicher und weniger abstrakt als bisher gestaltet werden kann. Die komplexen Reaktionen und Energieumformungen können mit Hilfe dieses molekular-strukturellen Ansatzes nach dem Prinzip der Struktur- Funktionsbeziehungen dargestellt werden. Dadurch werden die Primärprozesse als biologisches Ereignis und nicht nur als Abfolge physiko-chemischer Reaktionen verständlich

Giants and dwarfs:the multilevel lobbying strategies of national interest organizations

The article addresses the bias in interest representation within the EU by examining the lobbying strategies of national interest organisations within the EU’s multilevel political system. Both our theoretical framework, which includes the determinants of a national interest organisation's decision to act at the EU level, and the data analysis from the INTEREURO Multi-Level Governance Module (MLG) (www.intereuro.eu) reveal three main findings. Firstly, the greatest differentiation among interest organisations (IOs) appears to be between those IOs from the older member states (Germany, the UK and the Netherlands), which exhibit above-average levels of activity, and those from the newer EU member states (Sweden, Slovenia), which exhibit below-average levels of activity. Secondly, the variations in IO activity levels are much greater from country to country than from one policy field to another. Thirdly, although the IOs from all five countries in our study are more likely to employ media and publishing strategies (information politics) than to mobilise their members and supporters (protest politics), we can still observe national patterns in their selection of strategies and in the intensity of their instrumentalisation

National interest organisations in EU policy-making

Comparative and EU interest group studies are marked by a progression towards theory-driven, large-N empirical studies in the past 20 years. With the study of national interest organisations in EU policy-making, this special issue puts centre stage a theoretically and empirically neglected topic in this research field. The individual contributions include interest group characteristics, institutional contexts as well as issue contexts as explanatory factors in their empirical analyses of multilevel interest representation. They present novel developments in the study of political alignments among interest groups and political institutions, the Europeanisation of domestic interest organisations, and the question of bias in interest group populations. Thereby, they not only contribute to the comparative study of interest groups, but also to the analysis of policy-making, multilevel governance, and political representation in the EU

Who says what to whom? Alignments and arguments in EU policy-making

In the EU multilevel polity, domestic interest groups seek to shape EU legislation by accessing both national and EU institutions. Previous studies indicated that institutional and issue contexts, as well as organizational characteristics shape their strategies of interest representation. However, we know much less about how alignments and arguments impact on their participation in EU and national policy consultations. Addressing this gap, we investigate the lobbying strategies of almost 2,900 national interest organizations from five member states (Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) on 20 EU directive proposals bringing also a new empirical scope to the study of multilevel interest representation. The findings indicate that alignments and arguments shape the participation of domestic interest groups in consultations on EU policies. We infer from our study that some general predictions of interest group behaviour are overstretched and outline four variations of interest representation routines

Institutions, policies, and arguments:context and strategy in EU policy framing

Studies of framing in the EU political system are still a rarity and they suffer from a lack of systematic empirical analysis. Addressing this gap, we ask if institutional and policy contexts intertwined with the strategic side of framing can explain the number and types of frames employed by different stakeholders. We use a computer-assisted manual content analysis and develop a fourfold typology of frames to study the frames that were prevalent in the debates on four EU policy proposals within financial market regulation and environmental policy at the EU level and in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The main empirical finding is that both contexts and strategies exert a significant impact on the number and types of frames in EU policy debates. In conceptual terms, the article contributes to developing more fine-grained tools for studying frames and their underlying dimensions