National Interest Groups and Lobbying on European Union
Legislation: The Case of Ireland
Andreas Dür
University of Salzburg
[email protected]
Gemma Mateo
University of Salzburg
[email protected]
Abstract
What explains variation across national interest groups in their amount of lobbying on
legislative proposals in the European Union (EU)? We present an argument that leads
to the expectation that resource-rich associations and associations that are active in
policy fields in which the EU has large competences engage in more lobbying on EU
legislation than other associations. Moreover, business associations are expected to
have privileged access to the European Commission and national governments; and
citizens’ groups to parliaments. Using original data from a survey of interest groups in
Ireland, we find support for these expectations. We conclude that national associations
are heavily involved in EU lobbying, but that this lobbying is biased in favour of wellendowed business associations.
Introduction
For some time, scholars and the public alike have discussed both the democratic
legitimacy and quality of European Union (EU) decision-making. Interest group
participation in the making of EU legislation may enhance the legitimacy and quality
of decisions by allowing for different voices to be heard and expertise to be
transmitted to decision-makers (Greenwood, 2007b). The involvement of interest
groups, however, may also have the opposite effect, for example if civil society’s
access to decision-makers is biased and the information that decision-makers receive
from lobbyists is incomplete or even misleading. Any normative evaluation of the role
of interest groups thus first requires an empirical assessment of which groups manage
to gain access and be heard in EU decision-making.
We approach this broad topic through an analysis of the lobbying activity by
national-level interest groups (as opposed to European federations) on EU legislation.
Many national-level associations such as chambers of commerce or citizens’ groups
engage in lobbying not only on national but also EU-level decisions (Streeck and
Schmitter, 1991: 137; Eising, 2009: 92).1 To analyze a potential bias in EU lobbying,
we ask whether there is any variation in the amount of lobbying undertaken on EU
legislation by these national associations. We develop an argument that leads to the
expectation that resource-rich associations are disproportionally active with respect to
advocacy on EU legislation. Moreover, our argument suggests a bias in favour of
national-level business associations as compared to citizens’ groups and other types of
associations in access to the European Commission and national governments, but not
in access to parliaments. Furthermore, associations that are active in policy fields with
a lot of EU legislation, such as agriculture and trade, should dedicate a larger share of
their lobbying resources to the EU legislative process.
2
Data that originate from a survey of Irish associations that we carried out in
late 2008 and early 2009 allow us to test these expectations. In our survey, we
contacted 402 Irish associations, including agricultural associations, business
associations, labour unions, nongovernmental organizations, and professional
associations. Using a combination of online survey and hardcopy questionnaire, we
received responses from 165 associations, amounting to a response rate of 41 percent.
The quantitative analysis of the resulting data provides support for our hypotheses.
Our overall findings suggest that contrary to the “compensation hypothesis” (for this
term, see Beyers 2002), the possibility to lobby on EU legislation does not
compensate for biases in access that may exist with respect to national legislation.
The study nicely complements previous studies in the field. While in recent
years an increasing number of studies has been written on the EU lobbying activities
of national associations (Feld, 1966; Pappi and Henning, 1999; Richardson, 2000;
Beyers, 2002; Constantelos, 2007; Geer et al., 2008; Eising, 2009; Klüver, 2010;
Beyers and Kerremans, 2011), only a fraction of these studies address the question of
variation across national associations in the amount of EU lobbying. The studies that
come closest to our analysis focus on associations in Belgium, a small corporatist
country (Beyers, 2002); firms and business associations in three large EU member
states (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) (Eising 2009); large professional
associations in the health sector across the EU (Greer et al. 2008); agricultural
associations from France and Germany (Klüver 2010); and groups aiming at
influencing the EU’s external trade policy (Beyers and Kerremans, 2011).
By looking at associations of all types and across all sectors in a small country
with a pluralist system of interest intermediation, our study expands the empirical
reach of this literature. Moreover, since our data is from 2008 and 2009, our analysis
3
allows for an update of findings reported in Beyers (2002) and Eising (2009), both of
whom rely on data from the late 1990s. A further important difference to existing
studies is that we are not solely interested in EU-level lobbying, but in lobbying on
EU legislation, whether this takes place at the national or at the European level. The
paper’s theoretical contribution lies in the integration of a series of hypotheses from
the relevant literature in a coherent theoretical argument whose assumptions are
clearly spelled out.
The paper’s argument and evidence contribute to the broader debate on the
role of civil society in international institutions and governance beyond the nation
state. It allows for answers to questions such as: how do interest groups behave in a
system of multiple levels of governance? What explains the extent to which interest
groups from one level engage in lobbying at another level of governance? Our
analysis suggests that interest groups are able to move beyond the level of governance
at which they are predominantly organized to engage in lobbying at a higher level of
governance, but that in this process pre-existing biases in favour of some groups are
reproduced.
Explaining EU Lobbying by National Associations
The EU has an increasingly large impact on the chances of societal actors to achieve
political outcomes in line with their preferences. The EU’s policy output has major
implications for actors as diverse as import-competing companies that want to receive
protection
against
foreign
imports,
chemical
producers
concerned
about
environmental standards, and development groups interested in the provision of aid to
developing countries. Given the importance of the EU for these societal actors, the
expectation is for a large number of them to try to influence EU legislation. These
influence attempts can take place through at least three channels: through national
4
political actors who then may defend the lobbyists’ interests in the Council of
Ministers and vis-à-vis the European Commission and the European Parliament;
through EU federations that mainly interact with the EU institutions; and directly with
the EU-level institutions, in particular the European Commission and the European
Parliament.
While thus many national-level associations have a stake in EU legislation, in
line with the existing literature we expect there to be systematic variation across
associations in the amount of EU lobbying. Our argument starts with the assumption
that each association has a fixed and limited amount of resources, where the overall
endowment with resources varies across associations, that is, some associations have
many resources and others few. Relevant resources are not only financial means, but
also legitimacy and representativeness, knowledge, and expertise and information
(Dür 2008: 1214). Such resources are necessary for influencing policy outcomes for
several reasons: associations need resources to be informed about relevant policy
developments, to organise lobbying activities such as manifestations and press
conferences, and to use as currency in exchange for access and influence from
decision-makers.
Associations can decide to allocate a larger or a smaller amount of their
resources to lobbying on EU legislation, but they cannot (in the short run) increase
their overall amount of resources. The fact that the overall resources are limited
introduces opportunity costs: the more an association invests on lobbying on national
legislation, the less it can spend on EU legislation, and vice versa. A further
assumption of the argument is that associations act with the aim of maximising their
benefits from influencing legislation. These benefits concern both the direct gains
from achieving a specific policy output that is in line with their interests (the logic of
5
influence, in the terminology of Schmitter and Streeck, 1981) and the indirect gains
that arise if influencing policy allows them to increase their number of members
and/or financial contributions (the logic of membership).
Following on from these assumptions, we conjecture that the larger the share
of overall resources that an association dedicates to EU legislation, the larger the
gains it derives from EU legislation (and the lower the gains from national legislation,
since fewer resources will be spent there). This strictly positive relationship between
resources spent and gains can be understood in two different (but complementary)
ways. On the one hand, it can be assumed that benefit is a continuous variable and the
investment of resources on lobbying leads to an incremental increase in the value of
this variable (that is, as an association increases the lobbying effort on a piece of
legislation, it can expect an increasingly favourable policy output). On the other hand,
such a strictly positive relationship also arises if lobbying (even if not always
successful) increases the probability of getting a discrete benefit. At the same time,
starting with a certain level of lobbying, there are diminishing returns to investing
ever more resources on a specific piece of legislation.2 This is so because policy
makers will find it unattractive completely to give in to the pressures from one interest
group. By contrast, they will find it easy to give a small concession to a group that
was heavily disadvantaged in an earlier proposal.
Given these assumptions, variation in the resource endowments of associations
should lead to variation in the level of lobbying on EU legislation (see also Klüver,
2010). We expect that there are many relatively small associations that find it difficult
to get politically active independent of the level at which authority is located in a
multi-level system. Others, by contrast, should be well organised internally and have
the necessary resources to monitor and try to influence legislation at all relevant levels
6
of governance. Consequently, those associations that are well-endowed with resources
should do more lobbying on EU legislation than poor associations. In form of a
hypothesis, the more resources that an association has, the more active it is with
respect to lobbying on EU legislation (Hypothesis 1).
In line with the existing literature on lobbying in the EU, we also expect
differences across types of associations in the amount of EU lobbying (see, for
example, Schneider and Baltz, 2003; Coen, 2007: 335). This is so because business
associations are more likely to possess information and expertise than other types of
associations. Business associations have a much more well-defined constituency with
concentrated material gains or losses from a specific piece of legislation than citizens’
groups (or professional associations that are composed of a large number of
individuals). Collective action problems should therefore be less severe for business
associations that protect the material interests of a relatively small number of
members than for other groups that often defend a diffuse interest (Olson, 1965; Dür
and De Bièvre, 2007). Collective action problems should hinder resource acquisition
by diffuse groups that find it difficult to galvanize their members or followers in
opposition to or in support of a specific legislative proposal. Activating members
should be particularly difficult for citizens’ groups with respect to EU legislation,
which tends to receive less public attention in the media than national legislation
(Peter et al., 2003; Meyer, 2005).
Business associations’ ability to supply information and expertise should
provide them with access to political institutions that require these types of resources.
With respect to EU legislation, the Commission and the national governments are
generally considered to be most in need of these types of resources (Bouwen 2004). A
first hypothesis with respect to differences between types of groups hence is that
7
national business associations have more contacts with the Commission and national
governments with respect to EU legislation than other types of associations
(Hypothesis 2a). At the same time, business associations should be at a disadvantage
relative to citizens’ groups in supplying resources such as representativeness and
legitimacy that are in relatively higher demand as compared to specialized expertise in
the European and national parliaments. We thus also expect that citizens’ groups have
more contacts with the European and national parliaments with respect to EU
legislation than other types of associations (Hypothesis 2b).
With citizens’ groups at a disadvantage compared to business associations
with respect to inside lobbying, we expect them to engage in more outside lobbying.
Inside lobbying refers to the process of establishing direct contacts with decisionmakers with the aim of influencing policy output, while outside lobbying refers to any
activity that aims at either changing public opinion or mobilising latent public support
for a position with the aim of influencing policy output (Kollman, 1998). In form of a
hypothesis, citizens’ groups are more active in outside lobbying with respect to EU
legislation than business associations (Hypothesis 2c).
Finally, we expect variation across policy fields in the amount of EU lobbying
(see also Mazey and Richardson, 2006). In fields with substantial EU authority, the
potential gains from lobbying (and the potential costs from failing to lobby) on EU
legislation should be higher than in other fields, therefore providing an incentive for
associations to concentrate their lobbying effort on EU legislation. This is in line with
V.O. Key’s (1956: 168) adage that “where power rests, there influence is brought to
bear.” Our third hypothesis hence is that associations that are active in policy fields
with high EU competencies are relatively more involved in EU legislative lobbying
than other associations (Hypothesis 3).
8
The Data
We rely on a survey of Irish associations that we carried out in late 2008 and early
2009 to test these expectations. As with any study that relies on data from only one
country, generalizations to other countries have to be made with much caution.
Nevertheless, the single country approach seems less problematic in our case than in
other studies, as with few exceptions, the causal relationships postulated in our
hypotheses should not be influenced by variables that differ across countries, such as
domestic political institutions. While some studies have suggested that the type of
interest group system (pluralist, corporatist or statist) influences the ease with which
national associations adapt to the challenge of Europeanization (for example, Cowles,
2001; Klüver, 2010; but see Eising 2009: 168), it is far less obvious that this variable
impacts on the variation across associations that we tackle in this paper.
For our survey, we asked 402 Irish associations to respond to a questionnaire
on their lobbying activity (for a more detailed discussion of our approach, see
authors). The population that we considered were all Republic of Ireland-based
associations included in the Administration Yearbook & Diary 2008 (Institute of
Public Administration, 2008), except sporting associations, political parties, and
learned societies. We are confident that the yearbook’s listings are reasonably
comprehensive and that our panel is a good representation of the population of
associations that potentially engage in lobbying. What we did not consider were firms
that may engage in lobbying independent of and in addition to (business) associations.
Broken down by type of association, we contacted 155 business associations (38
percent of the total), 115 citizens’ groups (29 percent), 86 professional associations
(21 percent), 17 agricultural associations (4 percent), 17 labour unions (4 percent),
9
and 12 (single-issue) associations that we could not classify in this typology (3
percent).
We contacted all associations by e-mail, asking representatives of the
associations to complete an online questionnaire.3 To maximise the response rate, we
also sent hardcopies of the questionnaire to associations that did not respond to two email invitations. In the end, we achieved a response rate of 41 percent. This response
rate, which we consider to be relatively high, should ensure that our findings are
representative of the population of nationally-visible Irish associations in the
categories distinguished above, even though it seems plausible that there is a slight
bias in favour of responses from associations that are politically active. By type of
associations, the response rates are as follows: 53 percent for labour unions, 47
percent for professional associations, 42 percent for citizens’ groups, 35 percent for
agricultural associations, and 34 percent for business associations. The responding
associations have a mean number of staff of 13 (when excluding one outlier with
more than 1000 employees) and a mean number of staff working on advocacy of 2. In
the sample, 86 percent of associations are membership based and 49 percent form part
of a European federation such as the European Banking Federation.
The survey data allow us to define two sets of dependent variables: one
capturing the frequency of contacts between associations and a series of political
institutions at the national and the EU level with respect to EU legislation and the
other capturing the frequency of use of a series of lobbying tactics with respect to EU
legislation (see Table 1). The data for the first set of dependent variables stem from
the following questions: “How often have you been in contact with the following Irish
[in a further question, replaced with “EU”] institutions with respect to EU legislative
proposals over the last two years?” The Irish institutions that we listed were the top
10
level of government (ministers etc.), the government bureaucracy (officials in
ministries etc.), Irish regulatory agencies, deputies in the Dáil (the lower chamber of
the Irish parliament), deputies in the Seanad Éireann (the higher chamber of the Irish
parliament), political parties, and committees of the Oireachtas (the Irish parliament).
The EU-level institutions that we listed were the top level of the European
Commission, desk officers (or equivalent) in the European Commission, EU
regulatory agencies, national representatives in the COREPER, the Irish Permanent
Representation in Brussels, members of the European Parliament, European
Parliament committees, the European Commission representation in Ireland, and the
European Parliament office in Ireland. Respondents could indicate that they had no,
one, 2-5, 6-9, 10-19, or 20 and more contacts with these institutions over the last two
years. For the following analysis, we recoded the variable to four levels, ranging from
no contact to six or more, as only very few associations reported very high levels of
contact.
TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE
The data for the second set of dependent variables result from a question on
the frequency of use of various actions to influence EU legislation (“Please indicate
how often your organisation uses the following actions to influence EU legislation”).
The tactics that we listed were direct contacts with policymakers and/or public
officials, participating in meetings organised by political institutions, preparing a
detailed position paper, distributing folders and brochures, organising or participating
in demonstrations and/or street actions, distributing a press release, organising a press
conference, initiating a public debate on the internet, trying to mobilise other
11
associations/interest groups, and hiring a consultant. Respondents could indicate that
they use these tactics never, less than yearly, once a year, about 2-5 times a year,
about 6-9 times a year, about 10 to 15 times a year, approximately biweekly, or on a
weekly basis. Again, we recoded the variable, this time using five levels, ranging from
never to six or more times a year.
Hypothesis 1 stresses variation in the resource endowment of associations. We
use the number of staff working in public affairs and advocacy to operationalize this
variable. In the absence of reliable information on the financial resources of
associations, this operationalization seems preferable to one relying on the overall
number of staff working for the association, as some associations (especially citizens’
groups and professional associations) have a large number of staff working on the
provision of services to members or the broader community (for example, health
groups that are active in the provision of specific health services). In fact, the
association with the largest number of employees among our respondents is a citizens
group providing health services. The distinction between types of association, relevant
for hypotheses 2a-2c, is based on our own coding of associations. In some cases, this
coding proved difficult. Especially the distinction between business and professional
associations was not always clear-cut. For the purpose of this paper, we defined
professional associations as groups for which membership is linked to a specific
training, and where most members are individuals. Business associations, by contrast,
mainly have companies as members.
Finally, Hypothesis 3 refers to variation in EU competencies across policy
fields. What we are interested in is a measure of “the relative importance of
Community decision-making processes as compared with national processes”
(Lindberg and Scheingold, 1970: 68). After considering several measures of the extent
12
of EU policy competencies by policy field, we relied on Tanja Börzel’s (2005) coding
of the level and scope of European integration, using provisions as set down in the
Treaty of Nice (which entered into force in 2003 and remained the relevant treaty
basis until November 2009). Börzel applied a five-point scale ranging from exclusive
national competencies (score of 1) to exclusive European competencies (score of 5)
for level of authority and a six-point scale ranging from no coordination at EU level
(score of 0) to supranational centralization (score of 5) for scope of authority.4 We
multiplied scope with level to get a single measure of the EU’s competencies by
policy field. A potential drawback of this measure is that it only captures formal
competencies, but not whether the EU institutions actually make use of these
competencies. As a robustness check, we thus also used the number of policy
proposals, recommendations and consultations for which a Directorate General had
primary responsibility in 2007 and 2008.5 One problem that we faced in elaborating
this measure was to map directorates to policy fields.6 Nevertheless, the resulting
values are intuitive and largely coincide with the values using the EU’s formal
competencies: trade, transport, environment, and agriculture turn out to be the policy
fields with most EU authority, whereas the EU has least competence for cultural,
health, and research policy.
For the analysis, we used this classification of policy fields in combination
with data from the survey in which we asked associations to specify the importance of
thirteen policy fields for them. Associations could indicate that a policy field was very
important, important, somehow important, little important, or not at all important in
their work. Combining the classification of policy fields with this data allowed us to
calculate two variables: the first adds the values for each association across the four
policy fields with the highest degree of EU competencies (giving a score of 0 to
13
associations that responded that all four policy areas were not at all important in their
work and a score of 16 to associations that considered all of them very important) and
the second sums the values for the three policy fields with the lowest degree of EU
competencies (for a variable that varies from 0 to 12).
The Findings
Having discussed data sources and operationalization, we first present bivariate tests
of our hypotheses, before examining the hypotheses by way of regression analysis.
Bivariate analysis
In the first hypothesis, we have suggested that those associations that are well
endowed with resources should be particularly active on EU legislation. For this
bivariate test, we recoded the variable number of staff working on public relations
into four levels: no staff working in the area of public relations; up to and including
one full-time staff; more than one but no more than two; and more than two full-time
staff (we had asked respondents to report staff that only partially work on advocacy in
decimals, for example 0.5 if a person dedicates 50 percent of her time to public
relations). This categorization makes sense given that the minimum value on this
variable is 0, the median 1, the mean 1.9, and the maximum 18. For each of the four
levels, we then calculated the mean frequencies of contact on EU legislation with six
political institutions. The results, which are shown in Figures 1a through 1f, clearly
support our expectation: an increase in the number of staff working in the field of
public relations boosts an association’s activity on EU legislation. The patterns are
very similar across political institutions.7
FIGURES 1a-1f ABOUT HERE
14
Hypotheses 2a and 2b suggest that national business associations have an
advantage over other national associations in getting access to executive institutions
and citizens’ groups over other national associations in getting access to parliaments
with respect to EU legislation. We again calculate mean frequencies of contact, this
time for three types of associations: business associations, citizens’ groups, and
professional associations.8 As before, the results are in line with our expectations (see
Figures 2a through 2f). Business associations clearly have better access to executive
institutions than other associations. By contrast, citizens’ groups have more contacts
than business associations with both members of the European Parliament and
deputies in the lower chamber of the Irish parliament. The finding of little lobbying on
EU legislation by professional associations is in line with existing research that
suggests that professional associations engage in less EU lobbying than both business
associations and citizens’ groups (Greenwood, 2007a).
FIGURES 2a-2f ABOUT HERE
Hypothesis 2c distinguishes between inside and outside lobbying tactics. In
Figures 3a-3f we show by type of association the mean use of six different tactics,
three of which can be considered inside (direct contacts, participation in meetings, and
preparation of position papers) and three outside (press releases, launching of an
internet debate and participating in a demonstration). While the differences between
business associations and citizens’ groups are small with respect to direct contacts and
participation in meetings, Figures 3d-3f provide support for our expectation that
citizens’ groups engage in more outside lobbying on EU legislation than other types
of associations.
15
FIGURES 3a-3f ABOUT HERE
Finally, in hypothesis 3 we link activity in policy fields with large EU
competencies with associations’ amount of EU lobbying. For this bivariate test, we
distinguished four levels of activity in these four policy fields (agriculture,
environment, trade, and transport): no activity (these policy fields are not at all
important for an association), low activity, medium activity, and high activity (an
association considers the four policy fields at least important on average). Again, the
results provide support for our hypothesis (Figures 4a to 4f). The effect is weakest,
however, for contacts on EU legislation with the top level of the European
Commission. Overall, the bivariate analysis has corroborated our hypotheses. In the
following regression analysis, we assess whether these results are robust in a
multivariate setting.
FIGURES 4a-4f ABOUT HERE
Regression Analysis
To test the hypotheses proposed above in a multivariate setting, we use ordinal
logistic regression.9 This is the appropriate approach given the ordinal nature of our
dependent variables (from 1=no contact to 4=six or more contacts in the last two years
and from 0=does not use a tactic to 4=uses the tactic six or more times a year). An
assumption underlying ordinal logistic regression is that one set of coefficients can
capture the relationship between any category and all other categories. This means,
for example, that the same coefficients have to apply to the difference between no
16
contact and one or more contacts and to the difference between six or more contacts
and fewer than six contacts. We checked that this proportional odds assumption holds
in our models by running a series of binary logistic regressions and comparing
differences in coefficients across levels (for this approach, see Harrell 2001: 331-44).
The independent variables included in the model are those described above and
summarized in Table 1. A dummy variable for sub-national chambers of commerce
(of which there are seven in the database) serves as control variable, as such
associations can be expected to do less lobbying on EU legislation than other business
associations. Because of missing values, the number of cases slightly varies across the
four models that we estimate.
In Models I to VI, the dependent variable is the frequency of contact with a
series of EU and national-level political institutions with respect to EU legislation.
The models’ findings are supportive of our hypotheses (see Table 2). Looking at
Hypothesis 1 first, the coefficients for number of staff working in public relations are
statistically significant at the 95 percent level in four of the six models and at the 90
percent level in a further model. As we standardized all inputs to the regression (by
subtracting the mean and dividing by two standard deviations), the size of the
coefficients can be directly compared across models. This comparison shows that the
effects are strongest for deputies in the Dáil and members of the European Parliament.
By contrast, the effect is weakest (and not statistically significant) in the case of
contacts with the top levels of the Irish government.
TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE
17
The data also back our expectations with respect to variation across types of
associations. In support of Hypothesis 2a, business associations engage in more
lobbying on EU legislation with executive institutions than other types of associations
even when controlling for other variables. Business associations’ advantage is slightly
larger with respect to contacts with the Irish government (both the top level and the
administration) than with the European Commission. As expected by Hypothesis 2b,
business associations do not have more contacts with members of parliament. While
our reasoning leads us to the expectation that agricultural associations should also
engage in more lobbying of executive institutions than other associations, the data
only weakly back this expectation. The reason for the lack of statistical significance of
the coefficients for this variable, however, is most likely to be found in the low
number of agricultural associations in the sample (only six). The final variable related
to the type of association, namely sub-national chamber of commerce, has the
expected sign in all models and is statistically significant in five of the six models.
The models also provide support for Hypothesis 3, namely that associations
that are active in policy fields with large EU competencies engage in more lobbying
on EU legislation than other associations. The coefficients for the variable capturing
activity in highly integrated policies have the right sign and are statistically significant
in all of the models (though weakly so in Model VI). The effect of this variable is
stronger for the EU institutions than for the national ones. The mirror variable
capturing activity in three policy fields with low EU competencies (culture, health and
research), by contrast, is not statistically significant in any of the models. Across all
models, the pseudo R2 varies between 0.15 and 0.22, indicating that the fit is decent,
but that also many factors not captured in the models influence groups’ decisions on
how much to lobby on EU legislation.
18
The substantive effect of the key variables is large. Table 3 shows the changes
in probabilities of an association falling into a specific category of the dependent
variable for a change in the business variable from 0 (not a business association) to 1
(a business association) and in the advocacy staff variable from 0 (the minimum) to
18 (the maximum). For the case of the top level of the European Commission,
business associations have a predicted probability of 33 percent of having had two or
more contacts in the last two years, while an association with the same characteristics
that is not a business association only has a predicted probability of 18 percent of
having had as many contacts. The difference is even larger for the desk level in the
Commission, with the predicted probabilities being 27 percent and 45 percent
respectively. The effect of the number of staff working on advocacy variable is even
stronger: for the top level of the Commission, for example, the probability of having
had two or more contacts increases from 16 to 54 percent when moving from the
minimum to the maximum on this variable. The probability of such a resource-rich
association having had two or more contacts on EU legislation with the top level of
the Irish government is even 76 percent (as compared to 46 percent for an equivalent
association without staff working on advocacy).
TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE
To check the robustness of these findings and to provide a test of Hypothesis
2c, we rely on a second dependent variable, capturing associations’ frequency of use
of a series of tactics to influence EU legislation. The tactics that we look at are those
mentioned before (three inside tactics, namely direct contacts, participation in
meetings, and preparation of position papers, and three outside tactics, namely press
19
releases, launching of an internet debate and participating in a demonstration). The
results are encouraging.10 As before, Hypothesis 1 receives considerable support
across five of the six models (see Models VI to XII in Table 4). In support of
Hypothesis 2c, business associations are less likely to participate in demonstrations or
engage in internet debates than citizens’ groups and professional associations. By
contrast, business associations are more active with respect to position papers than
other types of associations (and here the effect is only weakly statistically significant).
The type of association does not have an effect on the frequency of use of direct
contacts and the participation in meetings to influence EU legislation.11 In support of
Hypothesis 3, the coefficient for activity in highly integrated policy areas is positive
and (at least weakly) statistically significant in three of the six models. In the other
three models, we cannot reject the null hypothesis of no difference between groups
active in highly integrated policy areas and other groups.
TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE
Conclusion
We have assessed Irish associations’ lobbying activity on EU legislation. The analysis
has demonstrated that there is a substantial amount of lobbying on EU legislation by
Irish associations. Lobbying on EU issues clearly has not been fully outsourced to EU
federations, a finding that potentially has far-reaching consequences for the
assessment of the democratic legitimacy of EU policies. The large number and variety
of groups that engage in lobbying on EU legislation may allow the EU to claim input
legitimacy. The detailed analysis of the data, however, paints a less benign picture of
the EU’s democratic legitimacy, at least as far as access by organized groups is
20
concerned. In particular, we see our findings about variation in the amount of
lobbying across associations as a confirmation of the view that sees the EU’s system
of interest intermediation as a form of elite pluralism (Coen, 1997). Since wellendowed groups find it easier than other groups to advocate their interests, and
business groups have better access to the Commission and national governments, we
expect there to be a bias in the views heard by political decision-makers.
Two potential caveats to these broader interpretations of our findings are
important to note. First, access does not necessarily translate into influence (Dür,
2008). It is possible that when assessing influence, the findings reported above are
inverted. We do not think that this is plausible, however. In fact, we rather suspect
that assessing influence would expose an even greater bias in favour of resource-rich
business associations. This conjecture is backed by a previous study of trade policy
lobbying that found that citizens’ groups have relatively good access to EU policymakers, but that they had little impact on outcomes (Dür and De Bièvre, 2007).
Second, we neglected firm lobbying in our analysis (for lobbying by firms in the EU,
see for example McLaughlin et al., 1993; Coen, 1997; Bennett, 1999; Bernhagen and
Mitchell, 2009). Again, however, we would argue that when also considering
lobbying by firms, the difference between business associations and citizens’ groups
is largely to appear even larger than in this study. Overall, therefore, it seems
plausible that the current system of interest group representation is not a panacea for
the EU’s democratic deficit.
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25
1
We use the term citizens groups to refer to groups whose members or supporters do not have a direct
and concentrated material stake in the policies advocated by the association.
2
Initially, however, there may be increasing returns to investing more on a piece of legislation, as an
association has to achieve a certain amount of visibility to effectively defend a stance.
3
For this online survey, we used an open-source tool called LimeSurvey.
4
For four policy field mentioned in our questionnaire (development cooperation, health, migration, and
transport) we had to do the coding ourselves (relying on the same criteria as those used in the original
study). The values that we assigned for these policy fields are 3, 1, 3, and 3 (level) and 2.5, 2, 2, and
4.5 (scope).
5
The data for this measure are from the register of Commission documents available at
http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/recherche.cfm?CL=en (as of October 2009).
6
In particular, where a Directorate General (DG) has competencies for several of the policy fields
distinguished here (for example, consumers and health), we manually coded the proposals as belonging
to a specific policy field. For migration, we looked at the proposals listed as emanating from the DG
Justice, Freedom and Security, and selected only proposals dealing with migration, defined broadly as
covering immigration, asylum, human trafficking, and border control.
7
The pattern is also similar when using tactics as dependent variable (not shown for space reasons). A
positive relationship with the number of advocacy staff exists for all tactics.
8
Because of the small number of agricultural associations and labour unions in our dataset, making
claims about these types of groups is not meaningful.
9
We used R Version 2.12.0 for the statistical analysis.
10
In Models XI and XII we had to exclude the dummy variable for sub-national chambers of
commerce, as these chambers did not show any variation on the dependent variable, making the models
unstable.
11
This finding is not astonishing considering the results presented above: business associations have
more contacts with the European Commission and government actors, but fewer contacts with
members of parliament. In the question on frequency of use of tactics, these two effects offset each
other, leading to a zero effect.
26
Table 1: The data
Dependent variable I
(institutions)
Dependent variable II
(tactics)
Staff
Type (Agricultural,
business, labour union,
citizens group,
professional, and other)
Sub-national chambers
Highly integrated policies
Little integrated policies
Frequency of contacts on EU legislation across a series
of EU and Irish institutions (ranges from 1=never to
4=more than 6 times in the last two years)
Values across a list of tactics used on EU legislation
(ranges from 0=never to 4=more than 6 times a year)
Number of staff working on advocacy in an association
Dummy variables based on our own coding of
associations.
Takes the value 1 for sub-national chambers of
commerce; 0 otherwise.
Sum of values an association gives to the policy fields
agriculture, environment, trade and transport (policy
fields based on Börzel 2005 and number of legislative
acts per directorate) [ranges from 0=none of the four
policy areas of any importance to 16=all four policy
areas very important].
Sum of values an association gives to the policy fields
culture, health and research (policy fields based on
Börzel 2005 and number of legislative acts per
directorate) [ranges from 0=none of the three policy
areas of any importance to 12=all three policy areas very
important].
27
Table 2: Explaining variation in EU lobbying across associations, by institution
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
Comm.
Comm.
European
Irish
Irish
Dáil
Predictor
top
desk
Parliament government admin.
Staff
0.55*
0.63**
0.83**
0.39
0.78**
1.01***
(0.29)
(0.32)
(0.34)
(0.33)
(0.37)
(0.37)
Business
0.77**
0.78**
0.12
0.96***
0.91***
-0.06
associations
(0.34)
(0.34)
(0.32)
(0.34)
(0.35)
(0.33)
Agricultural
0.57*
0.60*
0.41
0.41
0.27
0.15
associations
(0.30)
(0.31)
(0.31)
(0.29)
(0.30)
(0.28)
Subnational
-0.97**
-1.19**
-0.36
-0.81**
-0.72**
-0.82**
chambers
(0.49)
(0.49)
(0.34)
(0.34)
(0.36)
(0.39)
Active in highly
0.83**
1.12***
1.14***
0.73**
0.79**
0.68*
integrated policies
(0.40)
(0.40)
(0.36)
(0.36)
(0.37)
(0.36)
Active in little
-0.17
0.13
-0.26
0.01
-0.26
0.14
integrated policies
(0.40)
(0.38)
(0.36)
(0.36)
(0.37)
(0.35)
Intercept 1
-0.41**
-0.13
0.72***
1.01***
1.49*** 0.85***
(0.18)
(0.18)
(0.18)
(0.19)
(0.21)
(0.18)
Intercept 2
-1.3***
-0.81***
-0.06
0.28
1.06***
0.5***
(0.21)
(0.20)
(0.17)
(0.17)
(0.19)
(0.18)
Intercept 3
-3.74*** -1.88***
-1.57***
-1.78*** -0.56*** -1.05***
(0.19)
(0.48)
(0.25)
(0.22)
(0.23)
(0.18)
N
152
148
142
153
152
154
2
Pseudo R
0.16
0.22
0.15
0.15
0.16
0.15
Note: ordinal logistic regression coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. All input
variables are standardized.
*** p<0.01; ** p<0.05; * p<0.1 (two-tailed tests)
Table 3: Prediced probabilites of contact frequencies for selected institutions
No
One
2-5
6 or more
contacts
contact
contacts
contacts
Commission Business=0
65
17
16
2
top
Business=1
45
21
29
4
Advocacy staff=0
69
15
14
2
Advocacy staff=18
26
20
45
9
Commission Business=0
58
15
16
11
desk
Business=1
37
17
23
22
Advocacy staff=0
63
14
14
9
Advocacy staff=18
17
12
25
46
Irish top
Business=0
33
18
39
11
Business=1
15
12
47
26
Advocacy staff=0
36
18
36
10
Advocacy staff=18
13
11
47
29
Note: the table reports predicted probabilities (in percent) for an association falling
into one of the levels of the dependent variable. The probabilities are calculated while
keeping all other variables constant (continuous variables at the mean and nominal
ones at 0).
28
Table 4: Explaining variation in EU lobbying across associations, by tactics
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
Predictor
Direct Meetings Position
Press
Internet Demonlobbying
papers releases debate
strations
Staff
0.88*** 1.10*** 1.18*** 0.97***
0.30
0.70**
(0.31)
(0.30)
(0.35)
(0.33)
0.34
0.34
Business
0.00
-0.01
0.56*
-0.22
-0.74* -1.62***
associations
(0.32)
(0.32)
(0.32)
(0.32)
0.42
0.62
Agricultural
0.36
0.42
0.53*
0.21
-0.26
-0.06
associations
(0.32)
(0.31)
(0.30)
(0.28)
0.44
0.44
Sub-national
-0.36
0.13
-0.57*
-0.22
chambers
(0.30)
(0.31)
(0.32)
(0.31)
Active in highly
1.01***
0.50
0.63*
0.81**
-0.13
-0.03
integrated policies
(0.35)
(0.35)
(0.34)
(0.34)
0.42
0.50
Active in little
0.04
-0.09
0.21
0.01
0.83*
0.06
integrated policies
(0.33)
(0.34)
(0.34)
(0.35)
0.43
0.48
Intercept 1
1.51*** 0.61*** 1.53*** 1.03*** -1.07*** -1.71***
(0.21)
(0.17)
(0.21)
(0.19)
0.19
0.26
Intercept 2
0.16
-0.30*
-0.07
0.05
-2.20*** -2.71***
(0.17)
(0.17)
(0.17)
(0.17)
0.27
0.34
Intercept 3
-0.46*** -1.08*** -0.68*** -0.62*** -2.86*** -3.11***
(0.17)
(0.19)
(0.18)
(0.18)
0.34
0.38
Intercept 4
-1.80*** -2.51*** -2.39*** -1.60*** -3.84*** -4.66***
(0.23)
(0.29)
(0.28)
(0.22)
0.52
0.73
N
160
159
158
157
156
155
2
0.16
0.14
0.18
0.13
0.08
0.12
Pseudo R
Note: ordinal logistic regression coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. All
input variables are standardized.
*** p<0.01; ** p<0.05; * p<0.1 (two-tailed tests)
29
Figure 1: Resource endowment and extent of EU lobbying
>0<=1
>1<=2
>2
4
3
2
0
1
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
0
1
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
1
0
>0<=1
>1<=2
>2
0
>0<=1
>1<=2
1d.) Irish government
1e.) Irish administration
1f.) Dáil
>1<=2
>2
3
2
0
0
>0<=1
0
Number of staff in advocacy
1
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
1
0
0
>2
4
Number of staff in advocacy
4
Number of staff in advocacy
4
Number of staff in advocacy
1
Frequ. of contacts
0
0
Frequ. of contacts
1c.) European Parliament
4
1b.) Commission desk
4
1a.) Commission top
>0<=1
>1<=2
>2
0
Number of staff in advocacy
>0<=1
>1<=2
>2
Number of staff in advocacy
Figure 2: Type of association and extent of EU lobbying
Citizens
Professional
4
3
2
0
1
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
0
1
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
1
Business
Citizens
Professional
Business
Citizens
Professional
2d.) Irish government
2e.) Irish administration
2f.) Dáil
Citizens
Professional
Type of association
3
2
0
0
Business
1
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
1
0
4
Type of association
4
Type of association
4
Type of association
1
Frequ. of contacts
0
Business
Frequ. of contacts
2c.) European Parliament
4
2b.) Commission desk
4
2a.) Commission top
Business
Citizens
Professional
Type of association
30
Business
Citizens
Professional
Type of association
Figure 3: Type of association and use of inside and outside tactics
Citizens
Professional
4
3
2
0
1
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
0
1
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
1
Business
Citizens
Professional
Business
Citizens
Professional
3d.) Press releases
3e.) Internet debate
3f.) Demonstrations
Citizens
Professional
3
2
0
0
Business
1
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
1
0
4
Type of association
4
Type of association
4
Type of association
1
Frequ. of contacts
0
Business
Frequ. of contacts
3c.) Position papers
4
3b.) Meetings
4
3a.) Direct contacts
Business
Type of association
Citizens
Professional
Business
Type of association
Citizens
Professional
Type of association
Figure 4: Activity in highly integrated policy fields and extent of EU lobbying
Low
Medium
High
4
3
2
0
1
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
0
1
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
1
None
Low
Medium
High
None
Low
Medium
High
4d.) Irish government
4e.) Irish administration
4f.) Dáil
Low
Medium
High
Activity in integrated policy fields
3
2
0
0
None
1
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
Frequ. of contacts
3
2
1
0
4
Activity in integrated policy fields
4
Activity in integrated policy fields
4
Activity in integrated policy fields
1
Frequ. of contacts
0
None
Frequ. of contacts
4c.) European Parliament
4
4b.) Commission desk
4
4a.) Commission top
None
Low
Medium
High
Activity in integrated policy fields
31
None
Low
Medium
High
Activity in integrated policy fields