Embedded in Brussels: Public agendas and private actors in the European Union

Abstract

In an international institution such as the European Union (EU), what are the roles of private actors (firms, lobbyists, industry associations, NGOs, civil society) and interest groups? What happens when organized international interests lobby bureaucrats in EU institutions? What impact does interest group mobilization have on the institutions, agendas and policies of the EU? The conventional wisdom of EU studies posits that interest group mobilization follows the delegation of authority to the EU. However, a cursory look at many policy domains casts doubt on this direction of causality: interest groups sometimes precede the formal institutionalization of authority at the EU. How does this affect the balance of public-private power in an institutionalizing environment? Lastly, how does the mobilization and concentration of groups affect the content of the agenda emerging from these new institutions? In new, weak, and institutionalizing domains such as internal and external security, is there a tradeoff between the EU\u27s capacity to create and implement an effective agenda and its autonomy over the content of that public agenda? This dissertation research addresses the broader question of agenda setting in a political environment where the institutions and the groups are co-evolving. Specifically, I hypothesize that the activity of mobilized private actors affects (1) the content and direction of policy agendas and (2) the agenda-setting capacity of EU bureaucracies