The Energy Transformation in Germany:
Why Interest Groups win – and why they lose
Wolfgang Gründinger, Prospectus, draft as of 19th June 2012 – yet to review
Abstract
Lobbyism has witnessed surprisingly scant scholarly attention. Current literature, to a large extent, applies under-complex theoretical concepts, lacks systematic empirical evidence or is distorted by biased perceptions, and thus fails to explain how the paradigmatic shift in energy policy
over the last years was possible against the very will of previously powerful corporations and
despite all institutional inertia inherent to path dependence and the given high number veto opportunities. Aiming to overcome these deficits, the paper at hand investigates lobbyist influence
of interest groups in German energy politics since the first socialdemocratic-green government in
1998 initiated the Energy Transition until the recent dramatic policy changes in the aftermath of
the Fukushima accident. Policy output is explained by three variables: resources endowment of
interest groups, institutional veto points and electoral pressure. The explaining factors, again,
are embedded in an external systemic environment: situational events, socio-economic conditions and bounded rationality.
Keywords: energy policy, climate policy, policy change, lobbyism, interest groups, veto points,
nuclear energy, nuclear phase-out, emission trading, cap and trade, renewable energies.
Zusammenfassung
Lobbyismus wird in der Wissenschaft erstaunlich wenig beleuchtet. Die Literatur wendet größtenteils übersimplifizierte Theoriekonzepte an, mangelt an systematischer empirischer Evidenz
oder leidet an verzerrenden Forschungsdesigns. Aufgrund dieser Schwächen kann sie die
“Energiewende” – also den jüngsten Paradigmenwechsel in der deutschen Energiepolitik – nicht
erklären, der schließlich gegen den Willen und gegen die Interessen scheinbar mächtiger Konzerne, entgegen pfadabhängiger Trägheiten und trotz einer hohen Zahl an Vetopunkten erfolgte.
Um diese Defizite zu heben, erforscht das vorliegende Projekt den Einfluss der Interessengruppen in der deutschen Energiepolitik seit der ersten rot-grünen Regierung 1998 bis hin zu dem
dramatischen Politikwechsel in der Folge des Unglücks von Fukushima. Das Politikergebnis
(abhängige Variable) wird erklärt durch drei unabhängige Variablen: Ressourcen der Interessengruppen, institutionelle Vetopunkte und Wählerdruck. Diese Faktoren sind wiederum eingebettet in eine externe systemische Umwelt: situative Ereignisse, sozioökonomische Bedingungen und unvollständige Rationalität.
Keywords: Energiepolitik, Klimapolitik, Politikwechsel, Lobbyismus, Interessengruppen, Vetopunkte, Atomkraft, Kernenergie, Atomausstieg, Emissionshandel, Erneuerbare Energien.
Author: Wolfgang Gründinger, Humboldt Universität Berlin, www.wolfgang-gruendinger.de
Do not cite this paper. This prospectus is still in review.
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1
Introduction
“Those damned lobbyists!“ For this famous curse, US President Ulysses S. Grant (1869-77) is
referred to as father of the term “lobbyist“. He supposedly felt annoyed by the ever-growing
crowd of petitioners who wanted to catch a minute with the President, awaiting in the entrance
hall of the Willard Hotel in Washington D.C. where he frequently stopped by for a brandy or a
cigar (Kolbe, Hönigsberger, & Osterberg 2011, 2). Since then, the notion “lobbyism” – originally
derived from the Latin word for cloister courtyard – refers to the influence of interest groups in
policy-making.
Political decisions do not originate in a vacuum. Policy choice is neither the mere result of rational deliberation, nor a natural evolution determined by objective problem pressure or the logical consequence of technological and economic developments. On the contrary, political decision-making is a complex process, embedded in a complex institutional setting and soaked with
severe and fundamental conflicts, also with the active participation of interest groups in pursue
of their divergent vested interests.
Albeit pluralistic democracy theory stresses the legitimacy of interest groups participation and
its positive effect on policy quality (Truman, 1971), scholarly and even more public debate carries a negative undertone and a stereotyped depiction of lobbyism. Theodor Eschenburg (1955)
early cautioned against the “rule of private associations” on their way to ruin the common good
and undermine democracy. Investigative journalists are out to uncover the lucrative wheeling at
dealing of politics and industry and announce a “republic of corruption” (Tillack 2009), ruled by a
mafia-like “ruthless network” of a few top managers and politicians (Roth 2007), with shady puppet-masters (Gammelin & Hamann 2005) holding the strings of government in their hands while
democratically elected representatives lose their say. Most prominently, Colin Crouch (2008) has
proclaimed the era of “post-democracy” in which parliamentarians are reduced to a spectator
role and power has shifted to a cartel of few elite lobbyists, spin doctors and top bureaucrats
who calmly tie up shady deals in an arcane sphere sealed off from public deliberation. Even top
politicians warn against the ongoing disempowerment of parliaments (Wulff, 2011). Lobbyism
has acquired a negative connotation and encounters a stereotyped perception in an evergrowing body of writing. “Lobbying confers an unfair advantage on those that can afford to carry
it out and therefore runs counter to the notion of democracy” (Warleigh & Fairbrass, 2002, S. 2).
In particular, energy politics turned into a fiercely contested showground of lobbyism and became a highly politicized issue that attracted bitter public dispute and mobilization. Energy represents a vital public good for daily life and economy. The interaction of regulatory bodies and
market is here as strong as in merely any other market. Energy politics affect every individual
citizen and the entire economy, disrupt the competitive positions of branches and corporations
and redistribute financial resources, tied up in a conflict-prone goal triangle of environmental
compatibility, security of supply and economic efficiency. As energy politics impacts almost
every dimension of environmental protection, economic progerss and social justice, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon called energy politics the “golden band of a sustainable future” (Ki
Moon, 2012). The mitigation of climate change, skyrocketing crude oil and natural gas prices,
and the societal controversy about nuclear power moved energy politics onto the top of the political agenda. These issues share a range of characteristics making them to so-called “wicked
problems” hard to deal with, since “they go beyond the capacity of any one organization to understand and respond to, and there is often disagreement about the causes of the problems and
the best way to tackle them” (APSC, 2007, S. 1; Rittel & Webber, 1973). Moreover, the established energy industry is judged as one of the most powerful lobbies in Germany, along with the
armament, pharmacy and automobile lobby (Bülow 2010, 172). The “nuclear lobby” and “coal
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lobby” are blamed to use their immense political power and their disreputable connections to top
politicians to obstruct climate protection and hinder renewable energies to develop (Greenpeace,
2007; Lobbycontrol, 2008, S. 79-80).
A number of scholars claim enormous and dangerous influence of lobbyists in policymaking,
not limited to energy politics alone. Wehlau (2009), for instance, argues that lobbyists from insurance corporations have pushed for the partial privatization of the German pension system,
and making good profit out of it. Economists at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conducted
a study showing that the financial industry spent billions for political lobbyism to foster deregulation of the financial market, allowing banks and pension funds could take higher risks,
eventually contributing to the recent economic crisis (Igan, Mishra, & Tressel 2009). Corbach
(2007) blames energy companies and industry to have worked against strict climate targets at
the EU emission-trading scheme, so that the cap and trade system eventually failed to entail
environmental protection. Lorenz (2010, 83) concludes that the established energy industry effectively blockades renewable energies by lobby pressure. Becker (2011) explains the failure of
the German electricity market liberalization by the successful lobbyism of traditional power suppliers and their dense network of manifold personnel and financial relations with state actors.
Conventional wisdom proposes that “big business” wins virtually every political battle, at least
unless no accidental exogenous shock occurs, such as a nuclear disaster, that disrupts her
power for a short moment. But even a first glance at recent political decisions engenders reasonable doubts about the alleged power of the nuclear and coal lobby. The claim “big business
does always win” in actual fact does not fit reality. Indeed, energy corporations suffered serious
setbacks over the recent years, notably first and foremost the nuclear energy phase-out, emission trading, renewable energy feed-in tariffs, carbon sequestration and grid regulation. In fact,
the energy transition – that is: the greening and state-supervised market opening of the energy
supply – runs against all predictions of conventional theories. The agreement on a rigorous climate protection regulation in the second phase of the cap and trade system is only one major
instance where the sheer influence of coal power plant operators cannot be regarded as most
essential factor in policymaking, very contrary to previous assumptions. Obviously, not even a
green party in government ensures green policy: Whilst the left-green Schröder government
implemented a weak emission-trading scheme, the conservative-socialdemocratic Merkel coalition enforced a progressive cap & trade regulation, and even the subsequent conservativeliberal government is keeping renewable energy laws and is shutting down nuclear power plants
faster than previously intended – both decisions running against the very interests of the established energy industry. Indeed, there must be side factors that restrain the power of dominant
interest groups to the advantage of others. Not without reason, the former high-rank energy industry lobbyist Jürgen Hogrefe (2008, S. 8) holds the power of energy corporations to be “grotesquely overestimated”. How powerful is the “fifth power” (Leif & Speth, 2006) in fact?
Competition of interest groups is traditionally perceived as a fight of David versus Goliath
(Kolbe, Hönigsberger, & Osterberg, 2011, S. 12f.). If thought through, this metaphor actually
predicts a final victory of the apparently weak NGOs over supposedly invincible big corporations,
due to their smarter use of resources and opportunities. Hence, little NGOs would eventually win
over corporation. As we have already noted, this picture is even not far off from reality. But then,
how we can we explain their success, against the background that they have only scarce resources at hand to influence politics? Literature has just started to recognize the paradigmatic
shift of the recent policy change and is far off from proposing a systematic and compelling explanatory framework. Despite numerous, albeit mainly popular-academic publications, the defacto influence of interest groups in policy-making remains surprisingly barely evaluated. Overall,
academic literature on lobbyism stays rather vague and blurry, and often stereotyped or inconclusive. Skjaerseth & Wettestad (2008, S. 277f.), for instance, count national political pressure
amongst three main explanatory variables for climate policy, but miss to explain the genesis and
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constituent factors of political pressure. In a large-N analysis on state support for renewable energies in the EU27, Jenner et al. (2012) suggest that the existence of a solar energy association
increases the likelihood of a state to adopt regulation, but they miss to elaborate a usually tiny
solar energy association with marginal resources1 can push governments to pass a regulation to
the very disadvantage of large, established energy corporations – the statistical evidence risks to
be illusive if the underlying assumptions are unclear or even simply wrong. Another big junk of
literature employs too narrow a focus, confining the research design solely to a single case
or/and a single explanatory factor. Systematic and comprehensive studies across time and
cases are absent. Some scholars have confined their research design solely to energy industry
but excluded environmental issue groups, and neglected a systematic institutional analysis, ending up with one-sided and biased conclusions.
Indeed, the Energy Transition in Germany runs against all traditional theories in multiple dimensions: (1) The reforms torpedo the vested interests of the main beneficiaries of the traditional energy system, namely the large energy corporations and broad parts of the industry. Advocates of renewable energies have always remained marginalized outsiders. Power resources
theories and neo-institutionalist approaches would expect that these insiders have consolidated
their power, building dense connections into politics, and would veto down every attack to their
vested interests. Surprisingly, politicians were out to curtail the interests of powerful pressure
groups and their former allies. (2) Path dependence approaches argue that change is rare and is
only driven by external shocks. But quite the contrary, there has been fundamental change in the
past 15 years. These reforms represent instances of paradigmatic shift as the entire policy goal
was changed, from the promotion of nuclear and fossil energy production to the promotion of a
renewable energy supply. The Fukushima accident unfolded only an acceleration effect, but did
not work as the initial motor for change. (3) The reforms have favored diffuse interests held to be
weak and endowed with least organizational and conflict capacity. Both scope and direction of
policy change are unexpected and yet unexplained. Against this backdrop, how can we account
for these astonishing reforms?
“Science endorses an outdated and almost frumpy view of lobbyism. There is hardly any
clear empirical analysis, rather a questionable recycling; no new science, rather plain copies of
what has been written down traditionally.” (Leif & Speth 2006, 353) With a particular focus on
energy politics, both politicians and lobbyists recapitulate that “only little scholarly discussion on
lobbyism exists” (Bülow 2010, 156) and that “demystification of lobbyism is overdue” (Hogrefe
2008, 8). The failure of conventional accounts to provide a cogent explanatory model for interest
groups triumph and defeat results in a poor understanding of how political actors are navigating
the treacherous waters on such a hot-tempered issue as energy politics. Present theories meet
evident deficits in research design or don’t help so much to explain why some interest groups all
of a sudden become successful in contradiction to conventional wisdom, while researchers
seem to be busy defending their traditional claims so that they fail to pick up that something
must have changed but is not captured yet in democracy theory. More fresh empirical research
is needed to put the blinders down and sharpen the old lenses to contribute to a clearer view on
what lobbyists are doing in our democracy. When and why certain interest groups win, and when
and why they lose, has attracted surprisingly scant scholarly attention. The ongoing debate
about the democratic deficit in the era of post-democracy has remained unresolved. Aiming at a
closure of the gap in literature, our central research question is therefore, put in a nutshell: Who
wins? Why? And how?
1
The German Federal Association for Solar Energy (Bundesverband Solarwirtschaft) was founded only in 2006. Beforehand, four small predecessor organizations tried to promote solar energy – with little success until 1999/2000
when the first socialdemocratic-green coalition in federal government introduced substantial feed-in tariffs.
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Contrary to conventional wisdom, this paper argues that it is not only about the endogenous
power of interest groups if they win the game, with deviations justified as odd coincidences. To
the very contrary, their power is constrained by the boundaries of the given setting of political
institutions. Against this background, the conceptual framework employed combines neocorporatist and neo-institutionalist accounts of interest groups bargaining, with a focus on vetopoints in conjunction with electoral pressure. As heuristic approach to identify and investigate
main conflicts, I apply the Advocacy Coalition Framework, an actor-centered institutionalism
approach that allows for a reasonable level of abstraction. I devote a good deal of attention to
describing how the policy-decision process took course, answering which actors were central
and how they behaved, how the legislative process progressed, and how the policy output
looked like. Building on this process tracing, I turn to explaining policy output by three independent variables: resources of interest groups, institutional veto points and electoral pressure. The
explaining factors, again, can be affected by external systemic factors: situational events, socioeconomic conditions and bounded rationality.
This paper investigates the most important decisions in energy politics in Germany since the
change of government in 1998, when the first social democratic/green coalition took office, until
the current legislative period of the conservative/liberal Merkel government terminates in 2013.
As research objects, it selects five case studies of the most important and controversial legislation projects in the electricity market: nuclear phase-out, renewable energies feed-in tariffs,
emission trading, grid regulation and carbon capture and storage. By comparison over time and
cases, I believe that stable factors and mechanisms can be identified. I explicitly address interactions with the EU level.
The paper will be organized as follows: In order to provide a deeper understanding of the policy field in question, I fill first sketch the basics of energy and climate policy (chapter 2), I begin
by laying down my theoretical and methodological framework (chapters 3 and 4). Thereafter, I
turn to an overview and analysis of the relevant actors (chapter 5). After this comprehensive
groundwork, my empirical research on the five legislation projects follows (chapters 6-10). In the
final conclusion (chapter 11), I wrap up my findings and advance a discussion of perspectives of
lobbyism research and democracy engineering.
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2
Theoretical Framework
2.1
The Advocacy Coalition Framework
An applicable theoretical approach for the investigation of the role of interest groups for policy
choice must be able to cope with the complexity of reality at a reasonable level of abstraction.
We take up this challenge building on the Advocacy Coalitions Framework created by Sabatier
and Jenkins-Smith (1993; (Sabatier, Weible, & McQueen, Themes and Variations: Taking Stock of the
Advocacy Coalition Framework, 2009)) which provides a comprehensive conceptualization of conflict constellations and interactions of private and state actors within a given setting of political
institutions, and integrates various theoretical strands, such as the power resources approach
and neo-institutionalist theories, into a sophisticated framework for the explanation of the policy
process (Schneider & Janning, 2006, S. 194f.).
Against the background of a complex modern society and the associated need for specialization, political elites tend to form autonomous subsystems as networks of decision-making. The
Advocacy Coalition Framework consequently focuses on policy change within a policy subsystem, i.e. the collection of all private and state actors that are actively dealing with a particular
policy issue (such as energy policy), be it corporations and industry associations, be it citizens’
initiatives and NGOs, ministries and parliamentarian committees, or also individual politicians,
journalists and scientists (Sabatier 1993, 120, 126).
The variety of actors within a subsystem can be aggregated into advocacy coalitions, consisting of all actors who share the same belief system – that is “a set of basic values, causal assumptions and problem perceptions” as “the causal driver for political behavior” (ibid., 127; Sabatier et al. 2009, 122) –, and seek to translate their common beliefs into policy output, for which
they coordinate their activities to a nontrivial extent. At the heart of their belief system sits a stable “deep core” of fundamental normative and ontological axioms, such as liberal or conservative
ideology. In the middle lies the “policy core” of key causal assumptions and problem perceptions,
and which is key for the assignment of coalition membership. Those basic positions and strategies, e.g. pro or anti nuclear power, are resistant to modification but can be adjusted in response
to serious anomalies in real life experience. At the surface of the belief system are “secondary
aspects” located. These rather instrumental considerations, such as the specific number of years
of a nuclear power plant lifetime, are more likely to change over time in pursue for the core beliefs (Sabatier 1993, 131-135; id. et al. 2009, 122-123).2
While the belief system informs the direction of actors’ behavior, their ability to push through
their beliefs, however, crucially depends from their resources endowment (money and expertise)
and their number of allies.3 As one coalition usually dominates a policy subsystem, their beliefs
will be mirrored in the policy choice (Sabatier 1993, 131).
2
In the remainder of this work, I will stick to the traditional terminology „interests“ to capture the articulated policy
preferences, including also ideal and societal values beyond solely material interests, and which are derived from the
beliefs of the actors. If individuals with overlapping interests join together to promote their interests through a formal
organization, they establish an (organized) interest group, being any association of natural or legal persons, formally
organized at least to a minimum degree, aiming to benefit their members’ interests by lobbying political decision making, without pursuing to acquire political offices.
3
My concept of resources endowment is specified in a later section. Since this paper focuses on interest groups, I
omit jurisdictional authority from the resources concept, in deviation from Sabatier’s definition (1993, 131).
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The number of coalitions is limited by the necessities to pool resources, consolidate positions,
line up allies and eventually achieve to exert effective pressure (Sabatier 1993, 128). The range
of coalitions within one subsystem is therefore rather small, and – as empirical data show – most
likely to end up in a competition of only two coalitions (id. et al. 2009, 131f.). In conformity with
this proposition, a literature review4 suggests to analyze energy politics as a battle between two
coalitions: an “economy-first coalition” and an “environment-first coalition”.
This aggregation serves as heuristic approximation to investigate primary cleavages in a
complex society, and should by no means lead to a misunderstanding of coalitions as monolithic
blocks. Albeit the line-up of allies and opponents is generally stable over time , in particular
among principal members, homogeneity of members should not be assumed and defection of
members is quite commonly observable, often in the aftermath of external or systemic events.
Indeed, coalitions facing internal conflicts may form sub coalitions, which are still glued together
by a part of their policy core beliefs against a common rival but internally quarreling about other
parts of their belief system (Sabatier 1993, 126-137; id. et al. 2009, 128-130). The economy-first
coalition, for instance, may sometimes be divided into a manufacturing industry camp pushing
for cheap electricity rates and an energy suppliers camp planning electricity rate increases.
Once a mature subsystem with a strong, dominating advocacy coalition has been established, policy change is unlikely. The status quo creates path dependence and unfolds inertia,
due to the costs of policy change (stranded investments, compensation claims, loss of credibility,
and so forth), the resistance of losers of policy change who are better to identify and to organize
than potential winners, and the veto opportunities in the political system that structurally enhance
the chances of opponents to stop policy change. As an example: Once billions of Euros have
been invested in a centralized infrastructure of coal and nuclear power plants, a shutdown of,
let’s assume, nuclear power plants would impose heavy burdens on energy corporations and
government would risk legal compensation claims; moreover, a fleet of base load power stations
with a tailored grid is technically not feasible to integrate substantial shares of volatile electricity
generation. Losers of policy change will fight back every political attack on their vested rights,
while potential winners – such as unemployed who might find a job in solar handicrafts, or future
generations who presumably favor clean, infinite energies – are hardly capable to mobilize, if
even clearly to identify. Finally, obstacles for the transition to renewables seem not readily surmountable, even though also the existing system is far from being perfect.
According to Sabatier (1993; id. et al. 2009, 124), policy change is still possible, triggered by
two sets of causal factors: external events and policy learning. External events can shift resources, disturb the power constellation or modify beliefs, and thus foster policy change or alter
the menu of policy options. We can distinguish stable and dynamic factors. Stable external parameters capture broad changes in economic conditions (crude oil and gas prices, competiveness of industry, unemployment, etc.), the state of the art of technology (feasibility of renewable
energy generation, efficiency, etc.), geographical conditions (access to natural resources), or
public opinion and societal values (Sabatier, 1993, S. 123-126; Reiche, 2004, S. 17). Dynamic
parameters are sudden shocks or “focusing events” (Kingdon 1995), such as a heavy accident in
a nuclear power plant or an oil supply crisis, which open “windows of opportunities” (ibid.) for
political entrepreneurs to push for policy change. Policy learning is an alternation of thought or
behavioral intentions resulting from experience or new information about problems and policies.
Policy learning is instrumental, i.e. it more likely affects secondary aspects of how to implement
4
Corbach 2007, 49-50; Dagger 2009, 47-68; Gründinger 2012; Lorenz 2010, 34-37; Reiche 2004, 139-150. Hirschl
(2008, 563-565) similarly differentiates two coalitions in support or opposition to the substantial market increase renewable energies. Sabatier himself (1993, 128-129) proposes, in the field of the US clean air policy, a dichotomy of an
“economic feasibility coalition” vs. a “clean air coalition”.
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core beliefs (Sabatier 1993, 121-123, 137-141). I regard these two sets of factors rather as elements of the surrounding environment and take a closer look at a different set of causal factors
endogenous to the political system in order to explain policy choice: resources of interest
groups, institutional veto points, and electoral pressure. Despite that, I stick with the hypotheses
of the Advocacy Coalition Framework that policy will not substantially change as long as the
dominating advocacy coalition remains dominating in the subsystem, unless the change is imposed by superior political entities (Sabatier 1993, 136).
The Advocacy Coalitions Framework offers a heuristic approximation to investigate the main
cleavages in a policy sub-system, and allows empirically provable hypotheses about role, behavior and interests of actors. The model incorporates the pluralist emphasis on the role of interest
groups in shaping political decision-making without neglecting the importance of institutional
constraints and external conditions. Groups compete for influence, while their success depends
form their resources endowment relative to opponent groups, restricted by the given institutional
opportunity structure.
2.2
The Logics of Interest Groups Bargaining
In contrast to Rousseau’s notion of an a-priori defined, homogeneous “common good”, the pluralist paradigm recognizes the naturalness and legitimacy of diverging interests in a free society.
In a pluralistic society, there is nothing like an undisputable common good that could be considered as a natural-like, objective norm that just has to be discovered and then could guide state
action, but as the a-posteriori result of the bargain of diverging interests. Accordingly, the struggle interest groups is entrenched in the very nature of democracy.
Politics are directed by interests. Interests must be articulated and asserted to have a chance
for recognition in decision-making (Rucht, 2007, S. 19). Following the classical pluralist David B.
Truman (1971), the collective interest representation via interest groups allows individual citizens
to bundle their “shared attitudes”, i.e. their material and non-material interests, and to effectively
inform political decision-making beyond the vote at the ballot alone. Since many individuals belong to various groups, these “multiple memberships” create a balance of interests within each
group and ensure fair cooperation. By their autonomy and heterogeneity, the numerous groups
limit their power against each other. As firstly outlined by Toqueville, groups furthermore function
as a critical intermediary bundling individuals’ preferences, as well as an aggregator and moderator of atomistic interests. The open, free and competitive bargaining of interest groups represents the existing constellation of interests in society, supplies the state with information and
produces an ideal equilibrium of interests, resulting in a balanced policy choice. As long as the
bargaining process is fair and bound to “the rules of the game”, the result is normatively acceptable. Fraenkel (1973: 275) recognizes the role of the state as coordinator and adjudicate in the
competition of interest groups and emphasizes legal and moral guidelines to safeguard society
and political system from destabilizing effects of unfair fights.
In opposite to the unhindered wheeling-and-dealing of numerous interest groups in pluralistic
theory, (neo-) corporatist states have established institutionalized structures for the participation
of interest groups in political decision-making. State-associations-relations and attributes of the
interest group system deviate essentially from pluralistic models. Different from concepts of corporatism as mode of state-organization (Schmitter, 1974), this paper refers to a Lehmbruchian
view of corporatism as process-like mode of policy intermediation (Lehmbruch 1979), with interest groups organized into a limited number of hierarchical peak associations, intertwined political
parties and interest associations, and institutionalized negotiations between associations and
government. Leaders of associations play the broker between their members’ interests and the
state, balancing between the need to serve the full range of their members’ interests (member-
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ship logic) and the need for building political compromises (influence logic), and consequentially
faced with an organizational dilemma: The more autonomous the leadership, the greater is the
loss of control for their members, but the greater is also their political ability to act.
Corporatist theory conceptualizes interest group bargaining as logic of exchange between
state and interest groups (Lehmbruch, 1979; Lehmbruch, 1986, pp. 273, 288; Charrad, 2005, pp.
7-10). While the government needs expertise, information, intermediation, support and legitimacy from associations, the latter seek state recognition and access to policy-making. Hence,
interest groups can trade political goods for access to institutions (Bouwen, 2002b; 2002a;
Schneider, 2000, S. 257). The state aims to achieve assent with important interest groups to
avoid resistance and to raise support and legitimacy (Benz, 1994, S. 59; Heyen, 2011, S. 150).
Hence, in deviation from the neo-pluralist premise of efficient aggregation of interests in pursue
for the best policy option, policy is made up by giving and taking between interests.
Package deals are indeed not unusual in energy politics. For instance, in 1999 coal power
plant operators were granted generous exception rules in eco-taxation in exchange for their assent to state support for renewable energies; in 2003, a hardship provision for corporations in
the Renewable Energy Sources Act was linked with their placet to the set-up of a regulatory
authority for the electricity market (Hirschl, 2008, S. 133-176, 246-248). By combining several
conflict lines into a single package, politicians seek to craft broad cross-coalition agreements, in
order to alleviate the opposition of well-resourced and economically important interest groups
against the intended reforms by compensating losses with adequate concessions at any other
policy project (Häusermann, 2010). “There is always hope of future gains that can balance current losses.” (Richardson, 2000, S. 1011) Package deals often link various legislative projects,
sometimes even from very different fields, and can only be captured by in-depth analysis. Overall conditions for package deals are sufficient power of both negotiation partners and sufficient
appeal of the respective offers (Hirschl 2008, 563).
Inefficient aggregation can also distort the real interests constellation within an organization,
for instance when a small group of members dominates a peak association and leaves inferior
members under- or not-represented in political bargaining. “Because of institutional biases in
group formation and government recognition of groups, groups do not necessarily represent the
full range of preferences and interests of citizens” (Immergut, 2011, S. 81). For instance, the
German Association of Energy and Water Industries (Bundesverband der Energie- und Wasserwirtschaft, BDEW) represents established energy supplier corporations with settled investments
in fossil and nuclear power plants as well as lots of small energy firms running renewable energies. If the established group dominates, interests of small firms are ruled out. This example also
points to the importance of integration for a given interest coalition (cf. Zahariadis 2003, 45-52). I
hypothesize that the deeper the integration of a coalition, the greater is ability for bargaining with
state institutions. In other words: The larger the inner coherence of interests within a coalition,
the deeper the linkages between the actors, and the greater the search for unanimity, the
greater is the ability for bargaining with state actors. Vice versa, the larger the divergence of
interests within a coalition, the more chaotic and infrequent the linkages between the actors, and
the less search for unanimity is pursued, the lower is the bargaining ability.
The importance of formal and informal access to decision-making process, particularly in light
of the dissolution of neo-corporatist patterns of interest intermediation, has been stressed in the
network theory as firstly introduced in the issue network approach by Heclo (1978). “Policy networks are mechanisms of political resource mobilization in situations where the capacity for decision making, program formulation and implementation is widely distributed or dispersed among
private and public actors” (Kenis & Schneider, 1991, S. 41). As suggested by the corporatist
logic of exchange, state institutions actively ask interest groups for expertise and support, fostering hereby the emergence of cooperation arrangements amongst a great number of varying actors. Policy output is best understood, then, as the result of information exchange and negotia-
10
tions between state and private actors engaged in the policy area at stake, “often made in a
highly decentralized and informal manner” (Kenis & Schneider 1991, 27) beyond the mere formal legislation act.
Yet, access to a policy network is not equally open to every affected actor but rather shows
levels of hierarchy, with an “inner circle” of individuals representing distinct corporatist actors and
a “policy community” of those actors intertwined by a high degree of social interaction and informal consensus. Interest groups who are not able to effectively participate due to lacking resources are often excluded from the network core. Despite their marginalized position, interest
groups outside of the core nevertheless seek recognition via mostly informal tactics and strategies of influence (Winter, 2004, S. 763). Policy networks tend to produce stable actor constellations, eventually resulting in stable policy preferences and quite predictable results (Sebaldt &
Straßner, 2004, S. 333). Policy change is unlikely, unless an external shock occurs.
Eventually, the inner circle of an issue network can develop into a subgovernment, if some
“single-industry economic interests” are able “to insulate themselves from the influence of largescale democratic forces through the creation of relatively independent depoliticized […] subgovernments” (Baumgartner & Jones, 1991, S. 1045, 1068). A subgovernment represents an
autonomous subsystem of close, informal cooperation arrangements amongst of elite lobbyists,
high-rank state officials and members of parliament, hence a closed shop sealed off from the
public and rather indulging in back-room politics than serving as transparent and fairly open
source of information. These hegemonic circles are likely to arise in distributive policy areas because a subgovernment can only persist if all involved actors can exploit it somehow (Schneider
& Janning, 2006, S. 25). Excluded actors with deviant interests therefore attempt to move decisions to alternative venues or to change current institutional arrangements (Baumgartner &
Jones, 1991, S. 1048, 1052; Richardson, 2000, S. 1011). One can plausibly argue that energy
politics has been directed by such as subgovernment for quite a long time, namely until the end
of the era Kohl in 1998 when the green party participated in government for the first time and the
old network has been shaked (cf. Becker 2011).
Germany ranks among the empirical role models for neo-corporatist systems (Lijphart, 1999,
S. 177). By tradition, government and associations seek to resolve disputes amicably by roundtables, commissions or legal agreements. This corporatist intermediation is mirrored in the hierarchical organizational structure of industry peak associations such as the Federation of German
Industries (BDI) who admits only branches associations but no single firms as members, in contrast to traditionally more pluralistic countries such as Great Britain where the Confederation of
British Industries (CBI) knows membership of branches associations and single firms alike
(Schneider, 2004, S. 228-230) In energy politics, corporatist intermediation has been utilized e.g.
for a state-industry-contract concerning the phase-out of nuclear power, and the involvement of
industry in working groups for the design of the emission-trading scheme.
Yet, since the 1990s, an erosion of traditional corporatist cooperation and a trend to corporate
lobbying is observable, along with a diversification of lobbyism patterns and an undermining of
the representation monopoly of established peak associations. Large companies tend to run own
capital representation or engage public affairs agencies, law offices or consulting firms (Leif &
Speth, 2006, S. 18; Winter, 2004, S. 39-40; Schneider, 2004). In particular in energy politics,
large corporations turn to direct lobbying, whereas social, employment or health politics is rather
matter of associations (Schneider, 2004, S. 232).
This diversification of interest intermediation is rooted in the functional differentiation of postmodern society, parallel with the growth of single corporation sizes in the context of Europeanization and globalization. Ideological camps (socialists, conservatives, etc.) are dissolving in the
process of individualization and the change in societal values, and hence political parties decease to be the genuine allies of any given ideology or interest. Traditional economic interest
camps (workers, industrialists, farmers etc.) are replaced by ever more specific groups (solar
11
craftsmen, farmers growing bio-energy crops etc.) with own specialized associations faced with
intensifying competition for political recognition, mirrored in a more and more clientalistic and
opportunistic interest representation. Due to advantages of specialization, companies still cooperate with associations to take concerted action. However, if associations fail to continually redirect to evolving interest constellations among their members or to iron out sound compromises
among them, they lose in importance at least for large corporations (Rucht, 2007, S. 24)
(Schneider, 2004, S. 228-240).
2.3
Resources of Interest Groups
The terrain of politics is not a level playing field. Theoretical approaches of conflict theory, network theory and new political economy break with the pluralistic premises that the entire spectrum of societal interests can equally organize and all organized interests can employ equal
chances of influence. Instead, they highlight structural differences of interests in terms of their
capacity for organization and conflict as decisive conditions for their assertiveness.
2.3.1
Organizational Capacity
Not every interest in a society is equally able to organize and mobilize. Rather, the organizational capacity depends from distinct qualitative characteristics of the respective interest (Offe,
2003 [1972], S. 21f.; Schmidt, 2007, S. 116). The concept of organizational capacity therefore
refers to the ability of a societal interest “to mobilize motivational and material resources to a
sufficient extent to establish an association or a similar means of interest representation” (Offe
2006 [1969]; cf. also: Rucht 2007, 28f.).
The reasons for different levels of organizational capacity are exhaustively discussed in
scholarship. According to the seminal work of Mancur Olson (1965) on the “logic of collective
action”, it cannot be taken for granted that individuals with common interests really act collectively to achieve them. Public and common goods, such as a stable climate, clean air or finite
fossil fuels, suffer from a cooperation dilemma: The incentive for the individual to protect the
environment is low, because nobody can be excluded from their use. If I pay my membership
fees to any environmental association, spend my time at protest or abstain from cheap flights to
my summer holidays on Mallorca, all in pursue to alleviate the pollution of the earth’s atmosphere, doesn’t pay off for myself as everyone else can just go on polluting the atmosphere and
not take any sacrifices, whereas they still profit from my contribution to keep the climate stable
without doing anything about it themselves. Even worse, the contribution of a single individual is
too small to make a difference, which is why the individual has no incentive to contribute (trivial
contribution problem). Nobody has an incentive to act if there is no guarantee that everyone else
also acts. Hence, if individuals maximize their self-interest to rational ends, they seek to impose
the costs of environmental protection to third parties, but still take advantage from the use of the
public good (free-rider problem). Large, heterogeneous and latent groups are disadvantaged
because they pursue overall societal interests. Small, homogenous groups, bound together by
concentrated selective incentives, can organize most effectively – such as specialized industry
associations and unions who can lobby for their own clientele and do not have to care for the
overall economic development, unlike large associations with heterogeneous membership structure. In other words: The clearer the outer boundaries of a given interest group in the allocation
conflict for a public good, the more she will profit from cooperation, and thus the greater is her
organizational capacity. The interest in saving the environment is diffuse and therefore weak,
whereas the interest in jobs or money is vital and therefore strong.
12
These findings of new political economy explain the inclination of politicians to burden nonorganized parts of population at large, while at the same time providing exception rules for better-organized private interest groups, particularly in the case of high market concentration in
branches such as energy supply, coal mining and chemical industry (Böckem, 1999).
The logic of votes maximization inherent to party competition furthermore fosters short-term
thinking and inhibits future-oriented policy. The past is, so to say, always better organized than
the future. The threat of climate change or shortage of fossil fuels is loaded with uncertainties, is
an ambivalent risk that will only materialize someday in the future, and is thus not sufficiently
acute yet to rise in rank against the vital economic concerns of today. Similarly, non-existing jobs
that could possibly be created in new industry sectors such as clean technology cannot organize, whereas existing jobs in present industries are well organized in unions and business associations. Economic expansion and protection of climate and environment are facing a structural conflict (Deutsche Bank Research, 2007, S. 5f.). Indeed, the human mindset feels current
losses weightier than (potential) future gains, which is why losers of a political reform will mobilize stronger resistance than (potential) winners would. Losers of policy reform are just easier to
identify and organize than potential winners (Heyen, 2011, S. 151f.). If entire business stands
united against a certain political reform, it is hard to get up against.
Latent groups, however, will not always fail (Hardin, 1982), as collective action can also arise
from extra-rational motives beyond material self-interest. The strength of environmental NGOs
with their large membership and donations represents an instructive example. Moreover, modern communication tools of web 2.0 enhance dramatically the organizational capacity of diffuse
interests in civil society. Mobilization through new social media channels is promising, but hardly
ever predictable, as the internet is quite a chaotic system. To get people motivated to join,
causes must be easy to communicate to a broad audience, and thus cognitively comprehensible. Rather abstract and non-emotional issues, such as claims for a 30% CO2 reduction target,
are hard to raise mobilization, as experiences of political activism platform Campact show. However the internet is clearly not the be-all and end-all solution, it enables the easy access to information and offers tools for communication, coordination and campaigning with virtually zero
transaction cost – and constitutes a latent threat to every sort of political actor to get targeted
online by political entrepreneurs aiming to ruin their public image. Confronted with restricted access to political decision-making, actors use the internet to explore alternative venues and strive
to shift the debate from the closed shop of policy networks to the public domain in order to
change the policy image along with a venue shift (Richardson, 2000, S. 1012-1013). A growing
number of successful mobilization, such as of Greenpeace versus Nestlé or a rather uncoordinated crowd against the German government plans for internet blocking, underpins that the
change in organizational capacity of diffused interests, held “weak” in traditional political sciences, is in need of a very different understanding in the era of web 2.0.
2.3.2
Conflict Capacity
Conflict Capacity describes the ability of a particular organized interest to exert political pressure
by the credible threat of refusal of economic resources of systematic importance or usage of
effective sanctions, including job losses, relocation of sites to other countries, holding back of
investments, calling strikes or boycott. Threats are defined as credible if the addressee perceives their realization as likely (Offe, 2003 [1972], S. 67; 2006 [1969]). The capacity for conflict
is not determined by democratic majority rule but by decisions of interest groups or key single
actors with large resources at hand. “Votes count, but organizational resources decide” (Stein
Rokkan cited by Offe 1984, 173).
13
Capabilities for pressure vary considerably among organized interests. Any given interest is
unlikely to be reflected in political decisions if it does not bear sufficient capacity for conflict
(Offe, 2006 [1969], S. 224). Groups outside of the production process (children, unemployed,
elderly in need of care etc.) or idealistic interests groups (environment, human rights etc.) usually have only negligible options for resources withdrawal and are therefore structurally disadvantaged. NGOs neither hold jobs or industrial sites they could move to other countries, nor do
they pay taxes or make donations to political parties. Though some diffuse interest groups might
generally be able to engage in economic conflicts, such as consumer boycott against corporations, they normally are not able to translate this potential into group mobilization and action;
without organizational capacity, conflict capacity is neutralized.5 To the very contrary, corporations and business associations can invest substantially more financial and personnel resources
to set up effective lobbying activities, make campaign contributions (Grossman & Helpman,
1994), and are able to establish a credible threat in terms of job losses, shutdown of factories
and investment withdrawal, and enjoy privileged access to decision-making (Böckem, 1999, S.
52-54; Leif & Speth, 2006, S. 13). “The economy, the prime concern of modern governments,
cannot prosper without business activities. But business cannot be forced to be active. It cannot
be punished […] for scaling down its activities. So business is free to use the threat of doing
less” (van Gunsteren cited by Offe 1984, 172) – a phenomenon that was early referred to as the
“privileged position of business” (Lindblom, 1977).
Financial means are vital (Winter & Willems, 2007, S. 227; Zohlnhöfer W. , 1999, S. 51).
However money cannot buy political decisions, sufficient financial and personnel resources determine the capacity of an interest groups to establish and systematically maintain contacts to
decision-makers – in this sense, “buy” access to political decision-makers (sometimes even literally) –, afford professional public affairs and fund pleasant commissioned studies to support
own preferences with expertise. Examinations on campaign contributions in the US revealed that
interest groups can translate financial support into programmatic concessions of candidates
(Grossman & Helpman, 1994) and even increase the likelihood of representatives to vote in favor of the legislative projects desired (Mian, Sufi, & Trebbi, 2010). Albeit party funding in Europe
is largely provided by state and restricted for private donors, and thus the relation probably is
more vague, an interest group with no money still can hardly call attention.
Evidently, financial resources are unevenly distributed. Large business groups can pay extensive lobbying activities out of the “petty cash” (Bülow, 2010, S. 181f.), whereas NGOs rely on
state funding and donations. Successful lobbying pays out for companies in hard cash, whereas
public NGOs can only achieve mere idealistic goals. For firms, membership in an industry association can be of very practical importance, whilst this does not hold for members of any only
idealistic organization. Moreover, business groups are significantly better staffed than most
NGOs. For instance, each of the four large energy companies employs five or six highly qualified
staff members based in Berlin who are responsible for political relations and additional special
consultants at its headquarter who can be delegated for special talks in the capital or constituencies. NGOs generally employ fewer, lower paid and less experienced staff (Bülow, 2010, S. 165169). “Not least their economic power is a decisive factor how efficient interest representatives
can shape their lobby activities and to which extent they can gain influence on policy-making.
Less powerful interests can easily lose out” (Papier, 2010, S. 22).
5
The Shell boycott as response to the Greenpeace campaign against the scuttle of the Brent Spar oil rig in the Atlantic in 1996 is a famous exception.
14
2.3.3
Resonance Capacity
While organizational and conflict capacity refer to endogenous resources for active intervention,
the assertiveness of a group is also informed by the conduct of the (however mainly passive)
audience: the resonance capacity (Rucht, 2007, S. 29). As politicians are seeking for (re-) election, they are sensitive to public beliefs in problem perceptions and normative assumptions. Media (“published opinion”) and surveys (public opinion) constitute key reference points for political
actors who depend from societal and electoral support, as they display empirical benchmarks if
an articulated interest is vital and legitimate in the eyes of the general public. This is why party
leaderships spend a good deal of attention on press reviews and opinion polls.
Even though a given interest is able to organize and capable for conflict, it does not necessarily rely on public resonance. The German Atomic Forum, for instance, enjoys both great organizational capacity (being a small, homogenous group of four big corporations with very specific and clear common interests) and conflict capacity (holding a fifth of electricity generation,
lots of jobs, economic importance, and huge bank accounts), but the nuclear industry ceased to
have sufficient resonance capacity: the legitimacy of their interests does not hold in the eyes of
the broad public. Therefore nuclear power firms, as every other interest group, strive to portray
their interests as legitimate and serving the common good (rather than their particular interest),
they invest in sophisticated techniques to gain or simply pretend public support through public
relations, CSR activities, image management and framing of problem perceptions, direct orders
of pleasant opinion polls, and alignment of argumentation strategies along public resonance.6
Policymaking can be conceptualized as struggle of interest groups for a strategic social construction of beliefs in the battle for conquering the prerogative of interpretation, targeted at challenging the status quo and maximizing the own power in a given power constellation. When one
strand of perception has achieved discursive hegemony, e.g. by argumentation strategies of
practical constraints or absence of alternatives, the consequential cognitive closing suppresses
the search for alternatives. (Rüb, 2006, S. 345, 350). Baumgartner & Jones (1991) confirm the
importance of discursive stability for the safeguarding of subgovernment policy-making arrangements: A subgovernment collapses if it loses control over the prevailing policy perception
in society (policy image). “Because powerful economic interests cannot normally dominate all
venues, they can lose control of the policy image that protects them. As image changes, so does
the possibility for dramatic policy change contrary to the will of those previously favored by governmental arrangements” (Baumgartner & Jones, 1991, S. 1050, 1071).
Hence, discursive hegemony over public and elite discourses is of strategic importance to
preserve or attack a dominating coalition, respectively. Interest groups and parties seek to steer
discourses on their behalf, aiming to dominate the policy image and to mobilize public pressure.
Policymakers try to shield themselves from by installation of corporatist commissions or councils
(e.g. the Hartz Commission on Labour Market Policy, the Rürup Commission on Pension Policy,
or the Ethics Commission on Nuclear Power) that refer to expert knowledge as more neutral and
non-partisan than interest groups knowledge (Rüb 2006, 346-349). For strategies of resonance,
the steerage of media is key, as political decision-makers cannot communicate with every single
citizen but have to use indirect communication via mass media (cf. ibid., 350).
Credibility, legitimacy and size of membership constitute resources for resonance mainly nonbusiness interest groups can exploit. They can rely on their members, organize street demon-
6
This theoretical claim entirely corresponds with atomic energy public affairs strategies described in several leaked
confidential papers (DAA 2011a, id. 2011b, PRGS 2008).
15
strations or new social media protests,7 or stick to classic PR work. A survey amongst industry
associations and corporations revealed that, from their perspective, NGOs possess a much
higher influence on politics than business lobbyists, and even hold public and media support for
their lobbyism (in contrast to business associations who are frequently blamed for illegitimate
lobbyism activities). Indeed, this self-assessment literally draws the notion of industry as minor
“David” in the fight against NGOs as the unbeatable “Goliath” (sic!). Business representatives
complain that NGOs meet with a far higher public acceptance even though the latter do not
straightforward contribute to jobs and wealth, and blame media to employ a biased coverage
(Kolbe, Hönigsberger, & Osterberg, 2011, S. 12f.); also (Hogrefe, 2008, S. 6f.; Gräf, 2012, S. 1).
2.3.4
Access Goods
Access to decision-makers constitutes the conditio sine qua non for influence because it entails
the chance to deliver information to politicians and civil servants. Without contact to decisionmakers, influence is virtually impossible (Winter & Willems, 2007, S. 227). Interest groups are
interested in access to political decision-makers, and political decision-makers are interested in
the compliance and expertise of interest groups: Thus, following the corporatist logic of exchange and in line with new political economy, they can enter a trade: Interest groups can gain
access to policymaking through exchange for certain access goods: expertise, intermediation,
support/cooperation and legitimation. Albeit every kind of these resources matter for recognition
in policymaking, I argue that expertise is decisive to turn access into influence (Winter & Willems, 2007, S. 227; Wehlau, 2009, S. 57-59; Rudzio, 2006, S. 98-99). Yet, the effective usage of
access goods requires also knowledge and experience on the side of interest groups about the
very logics of politics (Schneider, 2004, S. 237-238).
My argument draws on Bouwen’s “Theory of Access”, which holds that “actors who can provide the highest quantity and quality of the critical access good in the most efficient way will enjoy the highest degree of access” (Bouwen, 2002a, S. 17). In his concept, access goods consist
of “expert knowledge”, that is “the expertise and technical know-how required from the private
sector”, and the “aggregated needs and interests of a sector” which political decision-makers
require to design and implement a sound legislation (Bouwen, 2002b, S. 369f.; 2002a, S. 8). The
more of these resources an interest group can provide, the greater will be her access to institutions; the scarcer the good and the greater the need, the higher is its value. If only one group
obtains high expertise, she likely will have more influence on policy-making than opponent
groups with little expertise. If many groups with similar levels of expertise compete, no single
group can exert dominant influence. Bouwen has found such a causal relation in a comparative
study of interest groups’ access to European institutions (Bouwen, 2002a). Further empirical
analyses confirm the importance of information as resource for interest groups bargaining
(Culpepper, 2002). The information needs of policy-makers are particularly high if the legislative
project in question is novel and time pressure to decide is high, and therefore external expertise
is indispensible because the political apparatus lacks sufficient data and experience (cf. Zahariadis 2003). Furthermore, the assertiveness of an interest group is greater if she employs argumentation patterns representing the interest as serving the common good or macroeconomic
goals rather than a solely particular interest, aiming to raise legitimation and resonance of the
interest (Wehlau, 2009, S. 59-60; Rudzio, 2006, S. 98-99).
7
NGOs in Germany have partnered up with the new online platform Campact.de with approx. 550.000 subscribers
in the mailing list. I can hardly picture that any business interest group has access to such a large network of voters.
16
Public and private interest groups alike strive to solicit and generate knowledge to support
their interests, as by funding self-serving research to issue studies with outcomes desired, and
hereby influence the policy image in relative venues. Yet, “information is not evenly distributed or
free.” (Zahariadis 2003, 19) When it comes to regulation of the economy, however, business
associations and large corporations usually have a monopoly on technical expert knowledge
(Schneider, 2004, S. 237-238). The regulation of financial markets in the aftermath of the recent
crisis provides a textbook example: Policymakers had so little own expertise at hand and were
exposed to the expertise monopoly of the banking sector that the responsible members of European Parliament even initiated a “Call for a Finance Watch” to create a counter-weight from civil
society to the lobbying power of the financial industry (Finance Watch, 2010).
2.5
Institutional Opportunity Structure: Veto Points
This paper investigates the role of interest groups in the context of neo-institutionalist approaches with a focus on veto points and veto players concepts (Immergut, 1998; Mayntz &
Scharpf, 1995; March & Olsen, 1989; Immergut, 1992). Hence, policy outcomes cannot be explained without an analysis of interacting effects between societal and political actors and the
respective institutional conditions. Institutional factors neither determine political decisions nor
behavior, but they “establish rules of the game for politicians and interest groups” and “distinct
logics of decision-making that set the parameters both for executive action and interest group
influence” (Immergut, 1992, 58f.). Consequently, they may “privilege some interests at the expense of others” (Immergut, 1998, 25f.). “The organization of political life makes a difference,
and institutions affect the flow of history” (March & Olsen, 1989, S. 159).
Veto approaches provide a theoretical framework in the exploration of policy-making that has
proven great explanatory power and permitted embedding of societal actors and electoral pressure into a set of political institutions. Their focal point is the power of certain legislative actors to
stop bills that run contrary to their interests. Number and characteristics of such formal institutions with veto power markedly affect means and ends of policy choice and determine channels
of influence for interest groups. “Interest groups […] need to influence the positions of veto players by endangering the achievement of their programmatic or electoral goals in order to influence policies” (Zohlnhöfer R. , 2009, S. 103).
In one of the most cited elaboration of this approach, Tsebelis (1995; 2002) holds that the institutional setting of veto players, that is, “actors whose agreement is required for policy decision” (1995, 293), enables predictions about policy change and stability. “The potential for policy
change decreases with the number of veto players, the lack of congruence (dissimilarity of policy
positions among veto players) and the cohesion (similarity of policy positions among the constituent units of each veto player)” (ibid., 289). In other words: Policy stability increases when
more actors or decision-making bodies must give assent for change to occur, when the ideological distance between them is greater, and when they are more internally cohesive. All this suggests that the German political-institutional environment – with its high number of veto players,
the need for coalitional engineering within government and between the two chambers of parliament, and the proportional electoral system – is hostile to large-scale policy change.
Albeit Tsebelis mainly refers to formal political institutions (institutional veto players) and political parties in government (partisan veto players), he explicitly points out that additional veto
players such as interest groups, referendums or individuals in sensitive positions should be
taken into account (ibid., 306f.); however, the paper at hand does not conceive interest groups
as veto players as they do not have formal veto power and one runs the risk of conceptual diluting. Interest groups rather strive to influence veto players while the latter decide.
17
Following Tsebelis, the success of a legislative proposal depends from shared positions of
the veto players involved. That is, every veto player takes up an “ideal position” for policy choice
within a zone of indifference, while within the “win set” of overlapping zones shared by different
players, agreement is achievable and status quo can be changed. The smaller the win set, and
vice versa the larger the “core”, that is “the field of policies that cannot be beaten by unanimous
consent of the veto players”, the more likely is policy stability (ibid., 293-296; id. 2002, 21). A
second important feature to stress is the significant role of the agenda setter as the only actor
“who can make take it or leave it offers to other veto players”, and therefore decides first about
which policy options make it to the decision-making at all. If the agenda setter’s ideal position
moves towards other players, the likelihood of policy change increases (id. 2002, 34-36).
Differing from Tsebelis’ actor-centered veto players approach, Immergut’s seminal veto points
concept looks at the constitutional features and the political majorities of political arenas where a
proposal can be stopped (Immergut, 1992, pp. 56-58, 63-68; Immergut, 1990). A veto point is
defined as “closed” for interest groups influence when the government can rely on a sufficient
majority. Vice versa, a veto point is defined as “open” when the government lacks such a majority. The influence of interest groups depends from the extent they can organize resistance to put
these majorities at risk. Even if groups fail to assemble sufficient majorities to veto a law proposal, they can still achieve compromises as the government seeks to avoid the proposal to be
vetoed. The more veto points exist, and the more of them are open, the larger is the chance for
influence of interest groups. As veto points can uphold a law from passing, and thus preserve
the status quo, I assume that interest groups with a preference for keeping the status quo benefit
from a high number of (open) veto points.
Looking at the legislative route in Germany, the government typically functions as agenda
setter. Law proposals by the lower chamber of parliament (Bundestag) are legally possible but
de-facto exceptional because parliamentarians lack administrative resources to elaborate a law
draft. Albeit required to pass the law, the Bundestag is traditionally not considered as an open
veto point as the government can usually count on reliable majorities due to party discipline, thus
a positive vote is quite predictable (Immergut, 1992, S. 65; Tsebelis, 1995, S. 303). A significant
part of law proposals require approval of the upper chamber (Bundesrat) as representation of
regional state governments. If government lacks a stable party majority here, the Bundesrat is
an open veto point (Immergut, 1992, S. 65). In this respect, logics of federalist negotiation and
strategies of party competition are in conflict when different party majorities in the two chambers
lead to a systematic blockade of policy change (Lehmbruch, 1976), famously described as “joint
decision trap” (“Politikverflechtungsfalle”) by Scharpf (1985). In spite of this, state governments
might pursue specific subnational interests not identical with national interests, which is why they
often tend to vote along regional lines, rather than along party lines. The electorate constitutes a
further contingent veto point if approaching elections (or, on regional state level, also referendums) can endanger political majorities of incumbents. Finally, every law must stand judicial
review of the Constitutional Court.
Interest groups cannot veto law proposals themselves, but they seek to convince decisionmakers along the chain of veto points to vote in favor of their demands. Because any change to
the status quo has to pass several veto points, interest groups with a preference to keep the
status quo enjoy a structural advantage: They need to block policy change at only one veto
point, whereas interest groups with a preference for policy change must acquire sufficient majorities at every veto point. In regard to energy politics, one can certainly say that the established
energy supplier companies and industry have dominated the market for a long time. That
means, the Economic Coalition held a structural advantage, as reforms required a consent that
is hard to achieve. Yet, since 1998, governments successfully established renewable energy
feed-in tariffs, emission trading and nuclear energy phase-out, to the very disadvantage and
against the will of powerful groups with entrenched interests in the status quo.
18
Political arenas are never neutral but carry a decision bias. Hence, the venue where a political decision is taken plays a decisive role for the expected outcome. Baumgartner et al. (1993)
show for the US Congress that both consultation process and results in regard to issues such as
nuclear energy, toxic substances or smoking significantly differ, depending whether the debate
takes place in the Economic, Environmental, Financial or Health Committee. The same argument can be forwarded for committees in German parliament and for the respective ministries in
charge of law drafting. It makes a difference if the ministry of economy or the ministry of environment writes the law proposal. Political actors are aware of this decision bias and strive to
locate the competence for the policy issue in question to a venue that is held likely to lean towards their interests. This holds not only true for interest groups, but also for state actors who
seek to extend their power. Disadvantaged actors may try to move the decision to a venue outside of the policy subsystem in order to “enable interests not generally supportive to the involved
industry to intrude” (Baumgartner, Jones, & Talbert, 1993, S. 1051).
2.6
Electoral Pressure
Government change is considered as one of the most typical triggers for policy change (Heyen,
2011, S. 151). Policy change by government change is quite predictable and “mandated” by the
electorate, if it is in consistence with the new incumbents’ programmatic objectives. On the other
hand, “not-mandated” policy change, i.e. without government change and contrary to the incumbents’ programmatic objectives, is all the more in need of explanation (Wasserhövel, 2011).
Therefore we seek to explain why incumbent mandate holders sometimes pursue policy choices
against the very programmatic goals of their parties or their previous decisions. Political survival
certainly is a crucial causal factor for that phenomenon.
Political parties can be conceptualized as policy seeking and vote maximizing, with votes as
their key resource to obtain power and occupy offices (Rucht 2007, 22). Following rational
choice models of voting (Downs, 1957), politicians adjust their position to shifts on the voters’
market aiming to gain or keep office. Politicians trade benefits for votes. Policy output ideally
reflects the equilibrium of voters’ preferences. A rational politician will try not to turn from the
median voter’s preference that ensures most votes and thereby already prescribes policy decisions to the detriment of voters with deviant preferences. Political parties try to accomplish their
programmatic interests but also need to serve their electoral interests as conditio sine qua non
for gaining office. Parties therefore accept to deviate from their policy positions in order to obtain
electoral gains (policy sacrifice ratio), and they are more sensitive to electoral considerations if
important elections are approaching. The accelerated nuclear-phase-out in the aftermath of the
Fukushima meltdown is frequently referred as a textbook case for electoral pressure. Another
striking example is the failure of the Carbon Capture & Sequestration Act in Germany that met
consensual all-parties-support at the beginning but faced strong resistance in the electorate,
which successfully pushed parties in affected states to adjust their positions. However, it is obviously not only energy politics that matter for the voting behavior of constituents, which is why
arguments of electoral pressure require evidence in election analysis.
Unless expected electoral losses do not entail a loss of office, however, policy-oriented interests will predominate. Incumbent parties with a large majority are insulated from electoral pressure and can follow their programmatic objectives. On the other hand, opponent parties adopt
policy objectives they conceive to enlarge their votes in order to threaten existing majorities.
Vulnerability of incumbents is strongly determined by the electoral system – if majoritarian or
proportional – and the behavioral patterns of the electorate – i.e. shares of core and floating voters. The electoral system likewise affects the channels of interest intermediation (Bülow, 2010,
19
S. 30f.). In Germany, the representation of parties in parliament is determined by a proportional
electoral system (Zweitstimme). As small parties have better chances to gain seats and threaten
given government coalitions in office than in a majority election system, incumbents are more
vulnerable to electoral pressure of opponent parties. As candidates are elected at the regional
state level a de-facto top-down selection procedure headed by the party leadership, politicians
are forced to take the specific interests of their Länder into account (f.i. coal and heavy industry
in North Rhine-Westphalia). This holds even more in the run-up to the elections of the state parliaments (Landtage), particularly when they are likely to cause meaningful changes of party majorities in the Bundesrat. The electoral system in conjunction with the geographic settlement
structure of industry and population therefore shape channels of influence for interest groups.
In constituencies with majority vote, as in the UK and partially in Germany with the personalized voting element in the single constituencies (Erststimme), candidates are bound to their constituencies’ local interests in order to gain or keep the mandate. If a large industrial site or coal
power plant is located in the constituency, the politician will seek an industry- or coal-oriented
policy (as, for instance, in the German Ruhr area). In contrast, politicians from a constituency
with lots of renewable energy firms and private persons who run small renewable energy plants
will advocate according policy options to the advantage of their clientele. On the other hand, the
direct vote in the constituency increases candidates’ independence from party support at higher
levels since they do not require votes beyond their own constituency. In a proportional representation, in contrast, interests are aggregated and thus less dependent from local interests.
To wrap up, electoral pressure is determined by three factors (Immergut & Abou-Chadi,
2010): willingness of voters to alter their votes in order to punish politicians (volatility); insulation
of government against changes of parliamentarian composition; institutional efficacy of translation of voter mobility into parliamentarian majorities.
2.7
The European Union: National Politics as Multi-Level Game
National politics cannot any more be understood without taking the international level – first and
foremost the EU – into account. The EU is a supranational organization with the Commission as
administrative, government-like body, and the European Parliament and the Council as representation of national governments as the two chambers of legislation. Most important is the EU
Commission that holds the monopoly of the right of initiative, granting her the agenda setting
power to select issues and draft proposals, and as head of the sophisticated EU bureaucracy
apparatus. Since the late 1990ies, the EU continuously gained significantly in importance, even
though energy politics remain mainly a national issue (Hirschl, 2008; Lobo, 2010, S. 79-157).
International pressure strengthens the domestic proponents of a particular policy option and
weakens its opponents, and can provide a necessary condition for policy change. On the other
hand, international actors rely on positive resonance from interest groups within the national
states to generate sufficient support for their policy preferences (Putnam, 1988, S. 429f.).
Hence, international relations can be considered as a “two-level game”: “At the national level,
domestic interest groups pursue their interests by pressuring the government to adopt favorable
policies, and politicians seek power by constructing coalitions among these groups. At the international level, national governments seek to maximize their own ability to satisfy domestic pressure, while minimizing the adverse consequences of foreign developments.” (ibid., 434). State
behavior is thus based both on the pressure of domestic interest groups and its position in the
international constellation.
Moravcsik (1993) stressed that this multi-level game does not necessarily result in loss of
power for national governments for the benefit of supra-/international or sub-national actors.
20
Quite the contrary, national executives can shield themselves against resistance of societal or
legislative actors by shifting controversial decisions to supranational bodies, particularly to the
EU level. EU institutions have been “designed to assist national governments in overcoming
domestic opposition” and increase “the initiative and influence of national governments by providing legitimation and domestic agenda-setting power” (ibid., 514f., 517). Moravcsik emphasizes the role of the EU Commission as technocratic and autonomous supranational authority.
The Commission’s right of initiative and control function decreases the risk of arbitrary or unfair
decisions as well as the risk of temporal delay, sanctions the adherence of community law and
guarantees reliability of agreements (Moravcsik, 1993, S. 475; Cram, 1999; Steuwer, 2007).
2.8
External Conditions
2.8.1
Technological and Economic Conditions
[Yet to elaborate.]
2.8.2
Bounded Rationality
Some traditional philosophical and economic accounts of public policy presume the Aristotelian
axiom of the man as a rational creature, and paint a picture of society where deliberation and
reason are the rule of everyday life. However, as behavioral sciences and organizational theory
underpin, the behavior of actors is not always entirely rational but is constrained by cognitive
limits of bounded rationality (Sabatier 2009, 122). Time pressure sometimes may not allow actors to deliberate as long as they wish about which policy option to choose – eventually one has
to decide at some point, even though one would desire to have more time to solicit information
and think about the best solution. Additionally, information deficits, high complexity, and uncertainty and ambiguity about likely effects of a policy option rarely make the best solution evident –
to the very opposite, often one has to decide even in absence of sufficient knowledge about the
consequences (March & Olsen, 1989; Immergut, 1998, S. 14-16). For instance, if a nuclear accident happens, the government must quickly decide how to react. Also, governments can utilize
EU deadlines to put legislative bodies under time pressure.
Following the garbage can model of choice in organization theory (Cohen, March, Olsen
1972), modern society is marked by fluid participation, problematic preferences and unclear
technology. Political actors hurry from one decision to the other; politicians come and go; interest
groups may be involved or not. Citizens commonly do not articulate their preferences clearly or
consistently enough, and thus miss to equip their representatives with a coherent set of policy
assignments. At the same time, there might be an abundant pool of information, but existing
information is inconsistent and in need of interpretation. Third, technology is unclear, as politicians often lack sovereign understanding of what is technically feasible and have to trust experts
who may have stereotyped mindsets due to group thinking, pursue own interests, or be divided
in their opinion among themselves. Given such cognitive constraints, theories starting from the
assumption of rational behavior are insufficient to an understanding of policy choice, and selecting the best alternative turns into an unachievable task.
In this environment of ambiguity – that is a situation of having many ways of interpretation of
the reality “that may not be reconcilable, creating vagueness, confusion, and stress” –, and of
uncertainty – that is “the inability to accurately predict an event” (Zahariadis, 2003, S. 2-3) – poli-
21
ticians must still make choices. Politicians cannot deliberate as long as they think it requires, but
are forced to decide on issues of high complexity they do not know sufficiently.
Sharing common ground with the literature on bounded rationality and organization theory, I
assume that decisions of high complexity, lacking reliable and sufficient data, and facing uncertainty about the possible consequences, made under time pressure, strengthen business interest groups and governments, and weaken non-business interest groups and the parliament. In
line with the neo-corporatist logic of exchange, I argue that business interest groups usually
store the data and expertise the state needs to make a decision, and that this expertise becomes a scarce and valued resource the interest groups can trade for influence. In addition, the
state requires co-operation of actors that have to implement the decision, which are usually
business groups. If they withdraw their support, implementation will be more likely to fail and
resistance will be stronger. Business groups can thus trade expertise, support and legitimation
for influence, with the value of these access goods increasing along the level of complexity, uncertainty and time constraints of the decision at stake. Third, the state must avoid economic disruptions as society has a vital interest in a functioning economy. When the consequences of a
decision are unknown and might cause unintended economic fractures, business groups acquire
higher recognition for their policy objectives. Finally, time pressure does not allow timeconsuming deliberation and hinders NGOs from raising public awareness. In sum, non-business
groups are likely to lose out and the parliament is weakened because it cannot employ a large
administrative apparatus to gather information independent from government, and lacks the time
to deliberate about the government proposal before taking the decision.
2.8.3
Path Dependence: The Power of the Status Quo
Policy is resilient to change, because the institutional setting with lots of veto points to be passed
privileges the status quo, which makes change difficult, which is even supported when status
quo has strong support through entrenched interests in society, which makes change undesirable. A third condition interplaying here is path dependence, hence a historical decision taken in
the past inform and restrain subsequent menus of policy options by privileging some alternatives
over others, eventually stabilizing the trajectory once chosen (Pierson, 1993). Even though past
circumstances may no longer be relevant, current decisions are still informed and constrained by
preexisting institutions and settled actors’ constellations (Lehmbruch, 1995). Change is rare and
unleashed by exogenous shocks. Lack of change, from this strand of theory, represents a sort of
inertia where old policies continue to persist only because they have already been there, reassured over and over again by positive feedback loops. The dynamics of policy can hence be
best understood as a series of periods with “punctuated equilibrium”, interrupted by periods of
radical change driven by exogenous shocks (Baumgartner & Jones, 1993, S. 18).
The concept of path dependence is of instructive value for energy politics. Once an energy
system is constructed, it cannot be simply abandoned and exchanged overnight, which makes a
large-scale change in energy policy unlikely. The textbook case is the strategic decision in
France to build upon nuclear energy (Sabatier, 1993, S. 124), but also in Germany, the historical
design of a fossil-nuclear energy system has set a systemic trajectory in motion: Huge investments in power plants had to pay off and must now provide sufficiently high returns on capital.
Moreover, existing grid and base-load power plants are too inflexible to adjust to a volatile electricity production from decentralized sources. Hence, the fossil-nuclear trajectory has created
vested interests and liabilities, why the conventional energy companies strongly opposed the
emergence of a new renewable energy branch (Hirschl, 2008, S. 578f.). In his historical analysis
of energy market regulation, Becker (2011) explains the failure of electricity market liberalization
22
by the historically developed oligopoly of conventional electricity companies resulting from the
path dependence of a centralized energy system and their simultaneously tightly knit network of
manifold personnel and financial relations with state actors, constituting the two most essential
variables for the lobby influence of the traditional energy industry (cf. Reiche 2004, 29ff.).
Profound change of the energy system is technically difficult and risky to carry out, is economically expensive, steps on the vested interests of important corporations and their workforce,
and is thus highly unlikely. “Never change a running system”, so to say – because it costs a lot
of money, you don’t know if it works, and many people in the fear of losing their job are against
it. Contemporary preferences of people, parties, and interest groups, as well as the evolution of
dominating coalitions (Sabatier 1993), can therefore be well understood as seeded in preexisting
configurations. Path dependence privileges the proponents of status quo: traditionally the conventional energy corporations and the energy-intensive industry, and all their allies in support for
the persistence of the given centralized, fossil-nuclear energy supply.
Even though unlikely, profound change is still possible driven by exogenous shocks. If then
resources are redistributed or the institutional opportunity structure is reshuffled, the inferior interests coalition has a chance to challenge the old path and unsettle the punctuated equilibrium
by replacing the policy image or venue. The era of policy stalemate is then superseded by a
period of rapid, drastic and non-incremental change (Baumgartner & Jones, 1993, S. 18), while
the collapse of the old coalition network encouraged politicians to dismiss entrenched interest
groups and collaborate with new actors (Richardson, 2000, S. 1011-1013) – as the Merkel government did after Fukushima, treating her old allies from the nuclear industry as very opponents
one should not even talk to (Teyssen, 2012). With the entrance of a new trajectory, a new selfreferential reform cycle is established: Reforms tend to produce further reforms (Brunsson,
2005). First, the redistributive effects of reforms influence actors’ preferences and may even
create new actors, changing the constellation of winners and losers, who eventually turn to be
new actors in subsequent reforms (Häusermann, 2010, S. 15). Second, the effects of reforms
again require adjustments of the legislation framework, or, while mitigating one problem, they
create new problems or unintended effects that need to be tackled. Furthermore, attempts to
translate concepts from their attractive drawing board version into reality are characterized by
high complexity bearing inconsistencies, conflicts, and implementation deficits (Brunsson, 2005,
S. 19-21). The story of the Renewable Energy Sources Act in Germany represents an instructive
case for such a self-reinforcing reform cycle, given the ever-shorter time of reviews and the evergrowing complexity of rules.
2.8.4
Focusing Events
Just as path dependence contributes to policy inertia, sudden external shocks disturb the power
relations within a policy subsystem and promote policy change. Such a focusing event – be it an
accident or a catastrophe, be it a crisis or scandal – can rock the prevailing policy image, move
an issue to the top of the agenda, redistribute resources amongst interest groups, change the
interests or cost/benefit ratios of actors, or mobilize electoral pressure. In this moment of a critical juncture, inferior actors find a policy window opened up to attack the dominating coalition and
alter the enduring trajectory of policy development (Immergut, 1998, S. 17f., 23-25; Sabatier,
1993, S. 125-126; Baumgartner & Jones, 1993; Kingdon, 1995; Birkland, 1998).
One of the most prominent elaborations of this approach is the multiple streams approach in
organizational theory formulated by Kingdon (1995) to explain why some issues make it onto the
agenda and some do not. He suggests that policy change occurs if three largely independent
“streams” accidently meet: problems, policies, and politics. Problems consist of scientific re-
23
search that indicates a problem, or media coverage that equips an issue with more attention;
policies comprise a menu of solutions hammered out by specialists in the respective policy
community (but are typically produced for the “garbage can”); the politics stream looks at the
national mood, interest group pressure, and fluctuation in legislative bodies. As these forces run
largely separated from each other, only if a focusing event or a similar incident of compelling
problem pressure couples them together, the “opportunity for advocates of proposals to push
their pet solutions, or to push attentions to their special problems” (Kingdon, 1995, S. 165). Such
a “window of opportunity” never generates change automatically, but must be actively exploited
by political entrepreneurs, such as interest groups or politicians. The Advocacy Coalition
Framework applied in this paper incorporates the window of opportunity model but is more complex, looking at the entire policy formulation, implementation and evaluation process.
Starting from the multiple streams heuristic, I move on to make my argument more precise. If
public awareness about an issue is only latent (f.i. nuclear power or climate change), politicians
face no pressure to act even though solutions are available and can rely on public support. Only
when focusing events work as catalyst for policy change and activate public awareness, incumbents feel pressure to act. This holds even more if interest groups can mobilize voters and intensify electoral pressure.
2.9
Interim Summary: Political Institutions and Interest Groups
Our puzzle is why interest groups win – and why they lose. Their influence or power refers to the
extent the interest group can make its policy preferences recognized in political decisions. Coalitions of interest groups compete for influence on policy decisions. An actor or coalition may be
so powerful that it can design a policy output that closely corresponds to her preferences. Interest groups can exert political pressure at veto points by credibly threaten them with the denial of
systematically important resources or sanctions, such as job losses or enterprise deaths (conflict
capacity); they can mobilize public pressure and threaten them with loss of votes (resonance
capacity); and they can trade special expert knowledge indispensible for a sound design of a
policy in exchange for access in policy-making (access goods). They can only apply these resources if they are able to organize at all (organizational capacity). While private interest groups
can employ economic sanctions, public interest groups can better mobilize electoral pressure.
Constellation of veto points and magnitude of electoral pressure constrain and pre-structure
the potentials and strategies for interest groups influence. A large number of veto players, low
congruence and high internal coherence are beneficent to interest groups with a preference to
keep the status quo since chances to organize a refusal of a law draft are higher. If important
elections are approaching, incumbents are sensitive to electoral pressure and tend to pass concessions for interest groups who are able to organize loss of votes, even if they are in contrast to
their actual programmatic orientation. In times without important elections, incumbents are more
likely to follow their programmatic interests and less sensitive to public pressure.
To wrap up, the policy output (dependent variable) is to be explained by three independent
variables: (1) the relative resources distribution amongst interest groups, (2) constellations and
majorities along institutional veto points, (3) electoral pressure. External shaping forces can
cause changes to the three explaining factors: if a situational event impacts voters’ behavior,
new economic conditions reframe state capacity to act, evolving social values and discourses
are changing societal preferences, or restrictions of bounded rationality distort policy choice.
24
Building up on the elaborations in this chapter, I am setting up the following set of propositions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
Policy will not substantially change as long as the dominating advocacy coalition remains
dominating in the subsystem, unless the change is imposed by superior political entities.
External shocks to the subsystem or government change are a necessary, but not sufficient, cause of large-scale policy change.
The more resources an interest group can employ compared to her opponents, that is organizational capacity, conflict capacity, resonance capacity, and access goods, the greater
is the opportunity to exert influence (resources endowment hypothesis).
The larger the inner coherence of interests and the deeper the linkages between the actors, thus the greater the search for unanimity, the greater is the capacity for bargaining
with state actors.
The organizational capacity of diffused interest has increased.
The more veto points are open, the greater are the opportunities for interest groups influence – to the advantage of interest groups with a preference to keep the status quo (veto
points hypothesis).
The parliament is more likely to serve weak and diffuse interests than government, because access is more evenly open.
If a legislative project is within the competence of the Ministry for the Environment (Ministry
for the Economics), both the government proposal and the parliamentarian modifications
are likely to serve the interests of the Environmental Coalition (Economic Coalition).
If important elections are approaching, parties are more likely to adopt policies deviant
from their programmatic interests but useful to their electoral interests. An election is defined as important when incumbents face the risk of loss of majority (electoral pressure
hypothesis).
The more public pressure an interest group is capable to mobilize, the greater are the policy concessions of parties aiming to serve their electoral interests (resonance capacity hypothesis).
The less symbolic and the less cognitive comprehensible a particular decision is, the less
important is public pressure and the more important are expertise and access to decisionmakers as means of interest groups’ influence.
The more uncertainty and incomplete information a legislative project bears, and the larger
the time pressure to decide an issue of high complexity, the stronger is the influence of
business interest groups against the influence of non-business interest groups, and the
stronger is the influence of government against the parliament (bounded rationality hypothesis).
If a well-resourced interest group suffers losses at a state decision, she is likely to be
granted concessions at another, often extraneous decision (package deals hypothesis).
Source: W.G.
25
3
Concept for Empirical Analysis
3.1
Qualitative Policy Analysis
This paper performs a qualitative policy analysis of electricity policy in Germany. A qualitative
case study allows a high resolution and depth of focus in the description and analysis of public
policy and provides differentiated insights into the inner life of contemporary politics, which, in
turn, can be reflected in the context of existing theories. Case studies allow for investigation of
the mechanisms of interest groups bargaining and retracing actor behavior and interactions in
detail, serving as explorative instrument to generate empirical evidence and foster further development for existing theoretical approaches and concepts, and thus deliver fruitful contributions to
theory building (Schneider & Janning, 2006, S. 40-42).
Our empirical observations are embedded in a theoretical framework and seek to support my
theoretical statements. I carry out an in-depth exploration and comparison of a small number of
case studies in one policy area, aiming to structure the complexity of empirical material and inconsistencies of individual findings, and to generate causal relations and deep-seated patterns.
The inductive policy analysis makes sense because recent lobbying is scarcely empirically
evaluated, and hence empirical evidence is required to generate substantial theoretical statements (Schneider & Janning, 2006, S. 32-34). The sole application of deductive tests would bear
the risk of tailoring the empirical reality into hypotheses that might seem suitable but might be
wrong in fact. I open, so to say, the “black box” of politics (Easton 1965) and look what is happing in the interior of the box, instead of just looking to a set of black boxes and hypothesize by
their shape how their inner life is working.
I prefer this qualitative approach over statistical large-N analysis due to insufficient valid data
for the measurement of state activity and aiming to uncover qualitative patterns of lobbyism and
the functioning of the inside of politics. Most existing large-N studies on environmental policy
change use performance data such as pollutant emissions as proxy for policy output. However,
this conceptualization, usually motivated by easier data availability, involves severe validity concerns. Indirect indicators capture the supposed effects of a policy instead of actual policy contents, contrary to a precise understanding of policy change. Shifts in environmental performance
might be the result of many other shaping forces not related to state regulation, such as new
technologies or varying energy prices. Furthermore, performance data generally show a delay of
several years after policy change and thus deliver structurally distorted data (Knill, Schulze, &
Tosun, 2010; 2011). In a comparative study, Knill et al. (2011) found genuine clean air state
regulation not in consistent linkage with emission levels, and therefore call into question the validity of environmental performance for the study of determinants of policy change.
A recent large-N study by Jenner et al. (2012) illustrates the methodological shortcomings of
oversimplified measurement. Their examination runs regression tests on renewable energy support schemes in the EU27, detecting a significant link between the presence of a solar energy
association and the probability of a state to adopt regulation, whereas the existence of a nuclear
or fossil industry association does not interfere. That is a surprising finding, indeed: Why should
a tiny solar energy NGO acquire such a great say to push governments to comply with their demands, whereas the established energy industry apparently has no chance to uphold the solar
NGOs? One can hardly assume that the mere existence of any little NGO leads to the recognition of its demands. The authors also find that high solar radiation increases the probability of
renewables regulation. Why, then, did Germany pass the very first solid feed-in law even though
the country is not blessed with sunshine – and why is the achieved share of solar electricity in
26
the grid in Germany higher than in other countries with more sunshine? As average sun intensity
never changes, how does then policy change occur? And why do Jenner et al. find this significant correlation only for solar energy but do not find any evidence for similar relationships for
wind or bio-energy? Besides these shortcomings, the study does not ask how states support
renewable energies: effective and ineffective laws are thrown in the same basket. If one wants to
research the de-facto influence of interest groups, the mere existence of any formal law seems
not to be the most suitable dependent variable.
Statistical tests require a sound understanding of underlying processes. The paper at hand
aims at a closure of the research gap and delivers a sound theoretical and empirical base. As
empirical preoccupation with lobbying is quite an uncharted scholarly territory (Leif & Speth,
2006, S. 353; Bülow, 2010, S. 156; Hogrefe, 2008, S. 8), a qualitative study appears as the most
promising approach to uncover hidden mechanisms (e.g. package deals) and causal relationships. To address the risk of arbitrariness and poor generalizability, I explore the evolution of five
major legislation projects across four legislation periods (15 years). According to Sabatier, the
explanation of policy change requires a time span of at least one decade (Sabatier 1993, 119).
This requirement is met. By comparison over time and cases, I believe that stable factors and
mechanisms can be identified.
I carry out an integrated process tracing following the policy cycle heuristic to trace back interactions between interest groups, political institutions, electoral pressure and external factors.
A literature review reveals mixed approaches to generate evidence for lobbyist influence. Lobby
successes are rarely the immediate reaction of a politician to a single lobbyist activity. Rather,
specific lobbyist activities can only prosper on the ground of an overall cultivation of political
landscape. Even if consultations between interest groups and political institutions take place, it
cannot be undoubtedly proven from an outsider perspective if certain law details are the result of
particular lobbyism or evolved from an overall, complex deliberation process. Sometimes, it is
quite a delicate issue to say if someone “lost” or “won”. To identify losers and winners, I show
which actors could make their revealed preferences recognized in the policy decisions, and to
which extent. This win set is drawn up in a Boolean truth table to compare the main preferences
of the two competing advocacy coalitions (if necessary, additional sub-coalitions) with the law
drafts and the final policy result. The relevant preferences are identified by expert interviews with
involved politicians and lobbyists as well as a content analysis of official position papers. The
influence of an interest group, then, is measured by the congruence of the final policy output with
the interest group’s demands. By comparison with the original law draft, I measure if influence
has been exerted during or after the drafting process (including patterns of anticipatory compliance). Following the recommendations given by Rüb (2006, S. 345, 352-353) for the analysis of
power constellations, I furthermore employ discourse analysis of primary sources, participatory
observation at relevant events and meetings, and the account of differences in expert knowledge
availability. For strengthening my argument, I employ counterfactual reasoning to test my hypotheses by explicit considerations what would probably or certainly have happened if one of the
factors was different (Fearon, 1991).
3.2
Sources
The most important source for the illumination of lobbyist activities in the arcane sphere is the
knowledge of involved experts. I am conducting a large number of exploratory and semistructured expert interviews covering a broad range of the political-institutional spectrum: representatives from interest groups and consultancy agencies, spokespersons and specialists from
parliamentary groups, staff members from ministries and other relevant administrative bodies, as
well as further intimate observers and insiders. On request, I ensure anonymity to the interview
27
partners to protect the source of potentially sensitive information and to realize a maximum of
honest and complete answers. The expert interviews then undergo a structured content analysis. Besides, the author is attending lobbyist meetings to take informal side-talks with politicians
and lobbyists, and carry out participatory observation.
The author is aware about the methodological problem that interview partners might employ a
hidden agenda and might give responses that fail to adequately reflect their actual intention and
strategy, or are informed by ideological beliefs instead of observable facts. To tackle this problem, I am soliciting interviews with a broad spectrum of actors so that wrong or misleading descriptions can be revealed, and compare their answers against written statements.
In addition, I evaluate the usual primary material (autobiographies of politicians, laws, minutes
of meetings, position papers, press releases, statistical reports etc.), and secondary material
(case studies and further relevant scholarship). I particularly strive to solicit unpublished documents (confidential notes, minutes of internal meetings, correspondence etc.) to validate internal
and external communication, and I make use of the new social media channels Twitter and
Facebook used by many politicians to express their authentic opinion. Where meaningful, I also
use press reports and popular scientific publications.
In Germany, a transparent lobby register is lacking, in contrast to other countries like the
USA.8 Apart from that, some other sources are available. In the online encyclopedia Lobbypedia.de, information about lobbyist activities is collected. The newspaper taz provides an online
tool (“Parteispenden-Watch”) to illustrate sources and size of donations to political parties in
Germany according to official reports.9 The online platform Abgeordnetenwatch.de documents
the voting behavior of every individual Member of Parliament at important decisions.10
3.3
Dependent Variable and Case Selection
This paper investigates energy politics in Germany since the first social democratic/green coalition took office in 1998 until the current legislative period of the conservative/liberal Merkel government terminates in 2013. This time horizon covers four legislation periods across 15 years
with changing party coalitions in government. My dependent variable, thus, is the genuine policy
output in terms of actual legislation, not the outcome in terms of environmental performance or
other benchmarks of this kind. Hereby I focus on policy choice, that is: which policy option was
chosen among the range of alternatives suggested by interest coalitions.
The study deals with the electricity market because it has undergone the most tremendous
and astonishing reforms in comparison to the heat and fuels market. As research objects, I selected five legislation projects with a total of 15 major reforms which have witnessed several
drastic policy changes, sometimes moving forth and back and forth:
1) nuclear power: revision of the Nuclear Energy Act in 2002 as legal framework for the previous agreement between government and energy corporations on a nuclear phase-out, the
extension of lifetimes in 2010 and the accelerated phase-out in 2011;
2) renewable energies: the Renewable Energy Sources Act in 2000, and its revisions in 2004,
2009, and 2012;
8
http://lobbyingdisclosure.house.gov, http://www.opensecrets.org
9
http://www.taz.de/1/politik/parteispenden-watch
10
28
http://www.abgeordnetenwatch.de/abstimmungen-991-0.html
3) emission trading: the national implementation of the EU Emission Trading Scheme by the
Emission Trading Act and the related National Allocation Plans for the three separate trading
periods (2005-2007, 2008-2012, 2013-2020);
4) carbon capture and sequestration: the failure of the Carbon Capture and Storage Act in 2009
and the retrial in 2011/12;
5) energy market regulation: revisions in 2003, 2005 and 2011 to the new Energy Market Law
as of 1998 (including a brief analysis of the 1998 law).
The selection of the five legislative projects is based on a preliminary survey amongst nine highrank energy lobbyists and politicians from various interest groups and parties, who unanimously
agreed to these five cases being the most important and contested ones within the last 15 years
and still of ongoing importance. As this paper engages in jurisdiction projects already ongoing, it
bears selection effects, i.e. it could neglect issues that do not have even made it onto the legislative agenda. However, this filter is not problematic for the research interest because I focus on
the causal mechanisms when things happen and how a policy output is shaped, not so much
which ones get onto the agenda.
3.4
Current State of Research and Time Plan
Since I started working on my PhD project in February 2012, substantial progress has been
made. After two presentations of the project at the Comparative Democracy Colloquium at the
HU Berlin and a talk at the University of Flensburg organized by the local students committee, I
am about to complete my workings on a comprehensive theoretical framework and research
concept. Also my empirical investigation is on track. I conducted some 20 expert interviews and
attended some 15 conferences and other relevant events. The basic structure of the chapters on
my cases is already laid down and first findings are made. As in the past, I will keep to attend the
Colloquium at the Humboldt University and stay in close contact with fellow PhD students. I intend to finish my research project latest in January 2015.
29
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