Institutional Context, Organizational Resources and Strategic Choices

Rainer Eising

European Union Politics, 2007, vol. 8, issue 3, 329-362

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: access; and; influence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1465116507079542 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:8:y:2007:i:3:p:329-362

DOI: 10.1177/1465116507079542

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in European Union Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().