West European Politics,
Vol. 29, No. 4, 665 – 686, September 2006
The Council of Europe: Interest
Groups and Ideological Missions?
SILKE M. TROMMER and RAJ S. CHARI
The traditional literature on interest group behaviour presumes that private interests
develop lobbying strategies based on the principle of effective allocation of resources.
However, nearly 400 private interest groups actively lobby the Council of Europe, a
classical intergovernmental organisation with weak decision-making powers, where no
significant policy pay-off is expected to occur. This analysis aims to explain the seeming
puzzle of private interest groups seeking to influence an institution which is generally
perceived as having no strong decision-making powers in European political space. It
does so by exploring three explanations from the existing literature, namely ‘policy
overlap’, ‘venue shopping’ and ‘epistemic community’, and considers another
explanation not hitherto fully developed, suggesting that the ‘ideological motivation’
of interest groups helps to explain their behaviour. Taking the ideological motivation of
interest groups into account when analysing lobbying strategies can in fact shed light on
certain lobbying preferences that would otherwise appear to defy the logic of interest
representation. This paper therefore suggests that an ‘ideological motivation’
explanation potentially plays a crucial role in the analysis of the behaviour of any
interest group.
Introduction: Setting up the Problem
Little academic attention has been paid by scholars of European politics to
the Council of Europe (CoE): it was established in 1949 in order to promote
European cultural exchange and social integration. By 1959 it had
established the European Court of Human Rights as the judicial body
holding exclusive competence to interpret the European Convention on
Human Rights and to impose its legally binding decisions in the CoE
member states. Since the 1950s, the CoE has provided a forum for
discussion to its 46 European member states and its statutory aim is to
achieve greater European unity through agreements and debates promoting
pluralistic democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights. The
CoE has three main institutional organs. The first is the Committee of
Correspondence Address: [email protected]
ISSN 0140-2382 Print/1743-9655 Online ª 2006 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/01402380600842163
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Ministers, composed of the foreign affairs ministers of all member states,
that adopts conventions and agreements by a two-thirds majority (although
member states are ultimately free to refuse to sign an adopted text). A
second organ is the Parliamentary Assembly that serves as the CoE’s
deliberative body. It has 629 members appointed by national parliaments
plus one representative from each state holding parliamentary observer
status, namely Israel, Canada and Mexico. The Assembly adopts
recommendations and resolutions and, when invited, issues opinions to
the Committee of Ministers. A third organ is the Congress of Local and
Regional Authorities that functions as a consultative body of locally and
regionally elected members. Its two chambers, the Chamber of Local
Authorities and the Chamber of Regional Authorities, advise the
Committee and the Assembly on all aspects of local and regional policy.
Academic attention to the CoE remains limited despite the millions of
euros that are required for the CoE’s operations1 and the organisation’s
claims to operate on almost all levels concerning European society. One may
argue that there has been little analysis on the CoE, save the pioneering
work by Checkel (2003), who has examined the institution’s impact on social
interaction in Europe, because its decision-making capacities in European
political space are relatively weak. It is important to note that the CoE is not
part of the EU political system and is not to be confused with the European
Union’s Council of Ministers, the European Commission, and the European
Council.2 In contrast to these EU institutions, the CoE is generally
perceived as an essentially intergovernmental structure whose decisions have
relatively little impact on social and economic redistribution in Europe
compared with those taken by domestic and supranational (EU) institutions. This is illustrated in the fact that although the CoE has issued over
180 non-binding conventions to date, it cannot impose ratification of
conventions other than the European Convention on Human Rights. From
this perspective, although there are several CoE directives on issues relating
to social cohesion, health, education, culture, cooperation, and regional
planning which have much potential energy, the fact that violations by
member states cannot be sanctioned means that such directives lack kinetic
energy.
Despite its marginal policy impact in core issue-areas, a little known fact
is that close to 400 private interest groups and non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) pursue lobbying activity in the CoE and invest
considerable resources in so doing. At the same time, Greenwood (2003)
estimates that over 2,000 interest groups are represented in Brussels, the
‘capital’ of the EU, today. However, EU integration has reached a level
where the majority of national legislation touching upon almost all policy
areas in EU member states is directly or indirectly drafted in Brussels and
one would therefore expect a high level of interest group activity to be
triggered. The CoE, on the other hand, remains a classical international
organisation characterised by a strong human rights focus and a lack of
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regulatory powers in any other policy domain and it does not issue any
binding national legislation. Notwithstanding this fact, a growing number of
private interests are not only attempting to influence CoE decision-making,
but are continuously developing institutionalised channels through which
NGOs concentrate their individual lobbying activities at the CoE. Despite
the fact that the CoE has experienced no striking increase in power over the
last ten years, the number of interest groups has risen impressively by over
30% during this time. Since the 1950s, NGOs have been able to acquire
‘consultative status’ on the condition that they share the Council’s aims and
contribute to its work. In order to provide expertise and advice to the
Council decision-making bodies, NGOs enjoying consultative status thus
established consultation groupings around several interests coming together
in one week, ordinary meetings four times a year in Strasbourg and
organising several other events like workshops and public debates over the
year. The figure of these NGO groupings has today risen to ten and includes
topics such as social policy, education, culture, European civil society, the
environment, health, social cohesion and gender equality. In 1976, NGOs
established the ‘Liaison Committee’ in order to improve methods of
cooperation between the private sector and the Council. The 25 members of
this Committee are elected by the plenary conference of NGOs holding
consultative status with the CoE for a six year mandate. Meeting four times
a year in Strasbourg, the Liaison Committee has no budget. Organisations
involved both in the Committee’s work and in NGO groupings therefore
account for all travel costs and subsistence expenses of their representatives
attending these meetings.3
Nonetheless, the Liaison Committee is very active in promoting the
interests of NGOs at the CoE. In 2002, it highlighted the importance of
‘quadrilogue’, a concept developed by the NGO community within the CoE
which coined the idea that civil society as represented by the Liaison
Committee should be on par in CoE decision-making with the Committee of
Ministers, the Parliamentary Assembly and the Council of Local and
Regional Authorities.4 This served as a basis for Resolution 8 of November
2003 when the CoE formally approved that interest groups’ status move
beyond that of consultation and be recognised as participatory.5 The
implications of Resolution (2003)8 appear to be considerable. It grants the
Liaison Committee and the thematic NGO groupings observer status with
the Committee of Ministers and gives them the right to address memoranda
to the Committee, thus effectively enabling these NGO bodies to be involved
in the definition of CoE policies, programmes and actions. Furthermore, the
Parliamentary Assembly and the Congress of Local and Regional
Authorities are encouraged to intensify their cooperation with private
interests (Council of Europe 2003c). The CoE operates an institutionalised
system to verify that the conditions required for participatory status are met
by NGOs. In exchange for maintaining participatory status, interest groups
must supply information, documents and opinions relating to their own field
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of work to the Council organs on a regular basis. NGOs enjoying
participatory status are further requested to specify efforts made to promote
the Council’s standards, conventions and legal instruments and to give
maximum publicity to the activities of the Council in the member states
every four years in a detailed report to the Secretary General. Failure to do
so may result in the withdrawal of participatory status (Council of Europe
2003a).
The Council watches over the compliance of its member states with the
European Convention on Human Rights, which can ultimately be enforced
by the European Court for Human Rights, the only legally binding human
rights court in the world. While the CoE has relatively limited legislative and
executive influence, the European Court of Human Rights is characterised
by uniquely extensive judicial powers compared to other public international law bodies, and the CoE finds itself exposed to a considerable amount
of judicial lobbying. However, the judicial powers of the Court and thus the
regulatory influence of the CoE are limited to the field of human rights. It is
therefore interesting to note that not only classical human rights groups
such as Amnesty International lobby this institution, but there are also
certain interests represented at the Council which one would not have
expected since their concerns seem unrelated to CoE activity. Such groups
include corporate interests like the European Chambers of Commerce and
Industry and the European Council of American Chambers of Commerce.
Similarly, the Council of European Professional Informatics Society, the
European Association of Railwaymen and the World Federation of
Advertisers hold participatory status with the CoE.
Given these above ideas, this paper addresses the seeming puzzle of
private interest groups seeking to influence an institution which is generally
perceived to lack strong decision-making powers in European political
space. Much of the interest group literature presumes that interest groups
seek to allocate their resources effectively in order to maximise policy
influence. However, given that there is little significant policy output per se
from the CoE, it remains unclear why interest groups representing relatively
diverse interests are placing considerable lobbying efforts in the institution.
From this perspective, this paper represents a study of why interest groups
lobby the CoE, and it goes less deeply into how they lobby, on what issues,
and with which success. This paper tests different explanations taken from
the existing literature – ‘policy overlap’, ‘venue shopping’ and ‘epistemic
communities’ – while also considering another explanation hitherto not fully
developed, which we refer to as the ‘ideological mission’ thesis.
The policy overlap explanation argues that in policy areas which
simultaneously fall into the jurisdiction of two separate levels of decisionmaking, interest groups are faced with the choice of either lobbying both
levels at the same time, or concentrating their resources on lobbying only
one level, in a hope that this will extend their influence to the other level
also. If this explanation is valid, one would expect NGOs to engage in
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strategic lobbying at the CoE where evidence of an overlap of decision-making
with national or supranational policy levels would be found. According to the
venue shopping explanation, political actors try to control the prevailing image
of a given policy problem while simultaneously attempting to alter the circle of
participants involved in the issue by seeking out the most favourable venue in
the political system for consideration. If this explanation is valid, one would
find evidence that the lobbying activities of NGOs at the Council fit into a
larger pattern of controlling policy images at different policy venues, to which
the CoE would ultimately need to be related. The epistemic community
explanation maintains that in policy areas characterised by high levels of
uncertainty, decision-makers seek the advice of expert networks that operate
on a value-based rationale. If this explanation is valid, one would expect
NGOs at the CoE to share causal beliefs while directing their lobbying activity
towards a common political goal to which they are jointly committed. Finally,
the developed ‘ideological mission’ explanation suggests that although interest
groups generally operate according to a cost–benefit approach, they make
certain lobbying choices which lack direct pay-off in the policy process because
they believe in an idealistic value to their actions. If this explanation is valid,
one would expect that the desire to influence policy-making at the CoE is
motivated by a value-based belief system to which the NGOs individually or
collectively adhere. The overall argument to be made is that while each
individual explanation is insufficient, taken together they can help to
understand the NGO presence at the CoE. The conclusions highlight
generalisations that can be taken from this study.
In terms of methods of analysis, the study examines Council of Europe
publications, internal CoE documentation and interviews with private
actors operating in the CoE. From autumn 2001 to autumn 2003, research
was carried out in Strasbourg where sessions of the Parliamentary
Assembly, the NGO Liaison Committee and different NGO groupings
were attended and observed. Open-ended, semi-structured interviews were
carried out during this time with over 30 officials from different backgrounds, including ideological movements, professional organisations and
human rights groups.
Exploring Different Explanations
The Policy Overlap Explanation
Policy overlap is a concept recently developed in the literature analysing
public policies at both levels of EU governance (Chari and Cavatorta 2002).
These authors observe lobbying strategies in policy areas that simultaneously fall into supranational and national jurisdictions. In these areas,
two separate but related decisions must be taken by two sets of policy
actors. Overlap issues are thus issues upon which neither the domestic nor
the supranational level can unilaterally decide. Rather, the final policy
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outcome depends on two separate decisions taken on different levels of
European governance, highlighting that both levels of policy-making have a
decisive role in shaping outcomes. In this scenario, private actors are
therefore faced with a choice: they can either lobby both national and
supranational decision-makers, or attempt to influence only one side,
potentially using this set of actors to influence the other level.
Applied to understanding developments in the CoE, this explanation
would suggest that private interests attempt to influence the institution
because it is perceived as being one where ‘policy overlap’ occurs. Interest
groups pursue a double strategy of influencing decision-making on the
international level while lobbying public actors at home. However, in this
case, the question of whether or not domestic and international levels share
power in influencing policy outcomes is debatable. In fact, it was suggested
above that the political impact of the CoE is marginal. Moreover, the
Council is a classical intergovernmental organisation: there is no institutionalised division of jurisdictions between the national and the supranational
level as seen in the EU political system. Thus, overlap issues would not be
expected to occur since the international level has no real power to impose
decisions on the domestic level.
Nevertheless, one may argue that there is some evidence to suggest that
private interests lobby the CoE based on ideas of perceived policy overlap.
Pointing out that the CoE plays an important part in the preparation of
political and legal principles, lobbyists representing social equality, human
rights and professional associations at the Council affirm in interviews their
perceptions that the CoE is an institution which can indirectly influence
policy outcomes in their member states.6 One representative of a European
human rights association reported that principles elaborated at the Council
are frequently translated into national and international law. The Social
Charter was given as an example of this phenomenon because its complaints
procedure, similar to European law, accords rights to individuals that can be
claimed against states. This is illustrated when the French trade union
Syndicat National des Professions du Tourisme won a collective complaints
procedure before the European Committee of Social Rights against France.
Here it was later decided that the French government violated its obligations
under the Social Charter by discriminating against interpreter guides with a
state diploma who were denied the right to conduct guided tours in certain
areas open to the public (Council of Europe 2000). Furthermore, the
European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg adds a third level of
jurisprudence to the protection of the rights of European citizens and
private associations. This is true as the Syndicat National des Professions du
Tourisme case shows, since European Union labour law only combats
discrimination against workers from another EU member state. In the case
quoted above, European legislation would not have deployed its effects and
the discrimination which was based on French law could not have been
eliminated.
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Convinced of an existing policy overlap, private actors thus have an
incentive to direct their attention towards the Council. Mazey and
Richardson (2001) suggest that lobbying generally relies not only on
influencing decision-making of public actors, but also collecting information
on developments in all relevant policy areas in order to potentially minimise
surprises. In this sense, knowing developments in different political arenas
may prove as important as influencing policy outcomes: participation in
intermediation institutions may thus be perfectly reasonable even without
resultant policy pay-offs. Using this line of reasoning, private interests lobby
the CoE because they believe that it may impact on decisions made at other
levels, namely the national and the EU level. They generally use the Council
as an arena in which they can exchange information with representatives of
national governments through cooperation in different committees and joint
conferences, such as the 1999 Strasbourg conference on market-oriented
society, democracy, citizenship and solidarity, where measures to reach a
socially responsible economy were discussed (Council of Europe 1999).
This explanation gains more strength considering that the CoE consists of
national actors representing national interests. When asked in what way
their organisation benefited from being represented at the Council, all NGO
representatives interviewed explained that the Council provided access to
national decision-makers.7 As a forum in which wider questions connected
to overall social and political developments in Europe are debated, it is an
institution allowing interest groups to learn more about national governments’ stances. Representatives of organisations concerned with human
rights and the environment can supply information more easily to domestic
actors in the CoE compared with those at the national level. Checkel (2004)
explains that the accessibility of these actors increases in more insulated, in
camera settings with limited public attention such as the CoE. He has
further shown that persuasion of political and social agents is effective in
promoting change when the persuader engages in regular, principled debates
(Checkel 2003). One representative of an NGO promoting social justice
highlighted this aspect, stating that private actors continuously use the
Council ‘to remind government representatives of the responsibilities they
carry in the creation of an equitable and just Europe’.8 Referring to the
benefits of lobbying the Council, another representative of a human rights
NGO argued that his organisation won important political battles at the
Council that facilitated the pursuit of the organisation’s goals on the
domestic level. In particular, the inclusion of homosexuality in the set of
equal rights allowed the NGO to justifiably press for similar national level
legislation. At the same time, many of the national actors represented in the
CoE also participate in the EU decision-making process. Thus, the CoE’s
Committee of Ministers consists of the 46 foreign ministers; 25 of these
actors simultaneously comprise the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council and they
sit with their relevant heads of government in the European Council which
gives impulse to the general direction of EU policies. Interest groups
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perceive that ‘personal contact with public actors from different political
systems allows us to extend our influence to those systems’.9 One lobbyist of
a human rights NGO in the CoE therefore suggested that lobbyists tend to
coordinate their activities with their organisations’ representatives to the
EU,10 stressing the importance of not only working within the hierarchy of
one’s own institution, but also attempting to work ‘diagonally’ across
institutions. In his organisation, the representatives to the CoE and to the
EU functioned as each other’s replacement and their cooperation was
described as taking on the character of a ‘symbiosis’. While this
representative worked at the CoE, an institution separate from the EU
political system, it was contended that ‘de facto, we all know one another’.11
In sum, one may argue that the policy overlap explanation is important
because it points to an essential problem lobbyists face. In political domains
in which a state has international obligations, actors are open to influences
that originate outside the national system. This leads to a complex and often
intelligible process of decision-making in which the real impact of domestic
or international influences on the policy outcome is almost impossible to
determine. The scenario at the CoE illustrates a situation in which the extent
of overlap between the national and the international level is not regulated
by binding rules. At this high degree of uncertainty, simply lobbying the
powerful centre of decision-making appears to be a risky strategy. The
policy overlap explanation points out that lobbying the Council is thus
partially driven by risk aversion.
Regardless of the strengths of the policy overlap explanation, however,
one may conclude that the same dilemma found in the initial problem
somewhat remains: under the presumption that political actors allocate their
resources rationally and that the CoE is an institution of limited political
impact, the fact that private interests lobby this institution so extensively
still appears as a paradox. In other words, while the explanation may point
to a strategy of potentially minimising risks and indirectly influencing some
policy outcomes at the domestic level, accepting the explanation that
interest groups have actively tried to sharpen and enhance their position in
the CoE decision-making process for over 50 years on the sole basis of
perceived policy overlap is not convincing. In fact, in order for this to be
true, private interests must be seen as static actors who are not capable of
learning and who pursue adopted strategies even if these turn out to be
inefficient. As such, we turn to ideas raised in a hypothesis first outlined by
Baumgartner and Jones (1991) highlighting the importance of ‘venue
shopping’.
The Venue Shopping Explanation
Baumgartner and Jones (1991) develop ‘venue shopping’ as a concept in
connection with the ideas of ‘policy image’ and ‘policy venue’. Analysing the
American political system, they claim that policy actors try to control the
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prevailing image of a given policy problem while simultaneously attempting
to alter the circle of participants involved in this issue by seeking out the
most favourable venue in the political system for consideration. On the one
hand, the term policy image refers to existing beliefs and values concerning a
particular policy problem, while, on the other, policy venues are sets of
political institutions within a system that can deliberate a given issue.
According to Baumgartner and Jones (1991), policy images are favourably
received in some institutional venues, while they would be considered second
order issues in others. Since any given conflict may be directed to a variety
of venues, they suggest that political actors search for favourable venues
within a given political system through a trial-and-error process or an
evolutionary search. While actors seek out new venues which they hope will
be receptive to their views, each success leads to some change in the policy
image as more groups seek to lobby within the political system.
Baumgartner and Jones (1991) also argue political actors may search in a
variety of arenas at once. Venue shopping thus describes a dual strategy
consisting of the presentation of a policy image and the search for a policy
venue receptive to it. It is therefore an interactive process characterised by
positive feedback, which leaves those actors that find themselves on the
losing side of the political debate with an opportunity to find more venues
within the system for their issues.
Considering this model to explain developments in the EU, Mazey and
Richardson (2001) suggest that the behaviour of interest groups in the
EU fits the pattern of Baumgartner and Jones’ (1991) venue shopping
hypothesis. They additionally contend that the principle of rational
allocation of lobbying implies that interest groups participate in institutions
of limited influence where there may be no direct policy pay-offs. This
behaviour is perfectly rational since ‘interest groups will seek to exploit new
opportunity structures or venues as a means of maximizing their capacity to
shape public policy to their advantage’ (Mazey and Richardson 2001: 218).
Prima facie, the venue shopping argument seems to be somewhat
problematic when explaining lobbying strategies in the CoE: the organisation is neither part of the EU political system, nor does it constitute a
political system of its own using Easton’s (1957) definition. However, as
pointed out earlier, rules concerning the field of human rights are, in
principle, legally binding in all of the Council’s member states. From this
perspective, the CoE can be considered a favourable venue for human rights
issues and related interests whose decisions influence the domestic level.
Since the CoE helps to define the prevailing policy image in these areas, it is
strategically lobbied by private interests which are venue shopping.
The Council presents itself as a favourable policy venue for the
consideration of issues for two reasons. First, although the Council’s
original activities were related to the field of human rights, over time this has
expanded to include other areas such as social policy, environmental
conservation, cultural promotion, and the consolidation of European
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democracies. As a policy venue, it is thus receptive to private groups
concerned about these themes. With this in mind one may argue that the
policy image, notably of human rights issues debated at the Council, has
subsequently been subject to change. Political domains not traditionally
related to human rights issues are affected by efforts to protect human
rights, demonstrating that an existing set of values can change to comprise a
larger scale of issues when considered in a policy venue favourable to it.
As pointed out above, the CoE is only a relevant policy venue, that is to
say a policy venue from which influence on the EU and domestic policy
systems can be exercised in the field of human rights, since it is not perceived
as having any real powers in other policy domains. Following Baumgartner
and Jones (1991), private actors try to participate in the shaping of policy
images in policy venues which are part of a given political system. Mazey
and Richardson (2001) admit that shaping public policy images even at a
policy venue of limited influence within the entire political system may prove
to be beneficial for private interests. The evidence from the CoE suggests,
however, that NGOs extend policy images at the CoE policy venue to
include areas in which the Council does not actually form part of any
political system. This is seen in the case of social cohesion where the CoE
managed to expand the set of fundamental rights guaranteed by all of its
member states to include rights as outlined in the Social Charter, although
standards such as non-discrimination in the workplace do not traditionally
feature among fundamental human rights. By shaping the policy image of
fundamental rights to include social standards within the CoE policy venue,
interest groups helped turn social cohesion into a policy area in which CoE
legislation is binding on all member states. In participating in the extension
of the human rights policy image at the Council, NGOs thus helped to
create a new relevant policy venue for questions of social policy which had
not previously had influence on EU and domestic political systems. In other
words, even if the institution has virtually no influence on any political
system in a given policy area (for example, the CoE and social policy), by
lobbying an institution that is also ideologically motivated, private interests
can cooperate with the public actors at the CoE to include the given policy
area in the realm of their specific policy concerns (such as human rights).
This fact in turn creates a link between the institution they are lobbying and
the political systems they are ultimately trying to influence, which in this
case includes both domestic and EU systems. It can be seen as extended
venue shopping because the CoE institution was never considered to be a
venue in this policy area before.
Evidence of this dynamic is seen when interest groups were asked what
motivated them to lobby the Council of Europe. In response, all
representatives interviewed identified the desire to broaden the scope of
the issues they represent.12 Thus, one representative of an NGO primarily
concerned with poverty-related issues explained that the Council’s statutory
aims of promoting human rights and democracy today serve to expand its
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action to the fields of education, equality and poverty. This particular
development has been accentuated as more countries that have undergone
democratic transitions adhere to the Council and as poverty has become a
more acute problem in Europe.
Second, the Council serves as a favourable policy venue because it
considers participatory democracy to be one of its core values and,
therefore, encourages civil society participation. This is in line with
Checkel’s (2004) idea that brainstorming and depoliticised institutional
venues are more open to processes of interaction between individual actors,
which in turn may enable one group to persuade the other into attitude
change and lead to deeper levels of cooperation. The Chairperson of the
Liaison Committee confirmed this finding in interviews. He explained that
trying to first gain participatory status with the Council in the 1990s initially
seemed illusionary.13 However, when lobbying activities began to promote
direct civil society participation in the CoE decision-making process, private
interests surprisingly discovered that public actors reacted positively. As the
Parliamentary Assembly would later note, the Council considers ‘participatory democracy as an indispensable element in the development and
consolidation of democracy’ (Council of Europe 2003c: 3). Because the CoE
serves as a venue for civil society participation, one may argue that private
interests utilise the opportunity to further define their own image as
legitimate partners in the political process. For example, a European
teachers’ association representative acknowledged that a goal in lobbying
was actively to shape the general image of private interests as promoters of
their own position in other national and international systems, while
solidifying their role as serious policy participants.14
This evidence suggests that the venue shopping approach as hypothesised
by Baumgartner and Jones (1991) operates on the CoE level: it is an
institution favourable to the participation of civil society in European
governance and private actors from areas such as human rights, social
rights, environmental standards and other related fields lobby this
institution knowing that their interests will be openly received. Private
actors use the favourable atmosphere at this venue to change their own
prevailing policy image while acquiring legitimacy as political partners who
seek to expand their sphere of influence. By influencing their policy image to
their advantage, private interests thus turn from a simple provider of
information and expertise to an institutionalised partner. With this in mind,
the venue shopping explanation helps demonstrate that influencing their
prevailing image can have a positive impact on lobbying activities in general.
Thus, lobbying activity is not only comprised of collecting information and
influencing policy outcomes; rather, shaping the image of one’s interest
group is an equally important aspect of any lobbying strategy.
Yet, even though private interests lobby the CoE because they can
partake in the definition of the policy image in an institutional venue that
fosters participation, this form of venue shopping cannot alone explain why
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interest groups lobby the CoE. This is because enhancing their role and
shaping their organisation’s image is only beneficial within the CoE arena,
given that its decisions have marginal impact and limited influence on other
regional, national or international bodies. Although private interests can
promote their causes and prestige as partners in the CoE’s process, this does
not affect their status in other political systems because the Council is an
independent international organisation. The idea of acquiring a favourable
image in an organisation of limited political impact appears, quite like the
policy overlap explanation, as a paradox: it cannot be considered a sufficient
explanation because, for this explanation alone to be true, it would have to
be presumed that private actors are incapable of learning and of changing
inefficient strategies over time. As such, focus is turned on a third
explanation highlighting the importance of epistemic communities.
The Epistemic Community Explanation
The concept of epistemic communities was first developed by Haas (1992) in
order to understand better the role of expert committees in the process of
European public policy-making. Haas (1992) observes networks of
professionals from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds who form socalled epistemic communities based on a shared set of normative beliefs,
shared causal beliefs, shared notions of validity and a common policy
enterprise. An important characteristic of any epistemic community is that
the group’s rationale for weighing and validating knowledge as well as its
analysis of possible policy actions and desired outcomes is value-based. As
such, epistemic communities tend to associate a set of common practices
with a set of problems to which they direct their professional competence.
Haas (1992) presumes that this is done out of conviction that human welfare
will be enhanced as a consequence. These groups become most influential in
policy areas where the success of policy coordination depends heavily on the
behaviour of other players which, in turn, cannot directly be controlled.
This process is very much the case in transnational policy-making which is
characterised by a very high level of uncertainty since consequences of
policy choices are often hard to anticipate. According to Haas (1992), it
gives rise to a desire for information among decision-makers which is not so
much based on purely technical knowledge but rather on human
interpretation.
Adler and Haas (1992) argue that epistemic communities use four distinct
strategies in order to influence policy-making. First, such communities may
contribute to policy-making by policy innovation, that is to say by framing a
certain issue according to their own convictions and beliefs. Second, policy
diffusion refers to a mechanism used by epistemic communities whereby
they communicate via transnational links in order to make their views
known. The fact that these views are consequently spread around the
globe contributes to the strength of their arguments when facing national
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677
decision-makers. Policy selection is identified as a third way in which
epistemic communities exert influence. According to this mechanism,
decision-makers will seek advice from such epistemic communities which
they know will support their views in order to gain approval of their policy
choices. Finally, Adler and Haas (1992) use the term policy persistence in
order to express the idea that the continuation of consensus of beliefs and
goals over time among the members of the epistemic community contributes
to their credibility and hence their authority.
Verdun (1998) criticises Haas’ definition for being too rigid ever to apply
to any given community of experts, since his conditions are simply extremely
difficult to meet. Verdun (1998), however, acknowledges the usefulness of
the approach because it underlines the role of values and convictions in
policy-making in general and during the process of policy formation in the
period prior to the final decision-making process in particular. According to
her, an epistemic community is essentially characterised by two elements,
namely by shared causal beliefs and by the commitment to a common
political goal that is based on knowledge.
How applicable are the ideas raised in this literature in understanding CoE
developments? First, the NGO community at the CoE clearly qualifies as a
network of professionals from various disciplines and backgrounds sharing
normative beliefs that provide a value-based rationale for their action.
Evidence is seen in the continuous reference to an idealistic view of European
democratic governance which, according to the NGO community at the
CoE, is characterised by principles elaborated as a direct consequence of the
World War II experience, such as pacifism, transnationalism and adherence
to human rights. This linkage does not exclude the adherence of corporate
interests to such a community, since these groups may find it beneficial to be
linked with democratic and human rights values from a company image and
marketing point of view. Second, NGOs at the CoE share causal beliefs
which serve as a basis for elucidating the multiple linkages between possible
policy actions and desired outcomes. As pointed out by the Chairperson of
the Liaison Committee, Daniel Zielinski, all of the NGOs represented at the
CoE are convinced of the fact that the continuity of democracy as a political
model depends on third sector participation in the decision-making process.
It is based on the idea that NGOs function as ‘schools of citizenship and
democracy’ (Council of Europe 2003d: 14). This, in turn, forms the core of
their common policy enterprise, which appears to be the general enhancement of the role of NGOs in processes of policy formation. At a conference
held by the CoE and the Liaison Committee of NGOs enjoying participatory
status, Zielinski explicitly stated that in the field of democratic governance
‘the Council of Europe can serve the world as a regional model’ (Council of
Europe 2003d: 14).
Additionally, decision-makers at the CoE actively seek advice and
interpretation from NGOs enjoying participatory status with the Council,
while NGOs readily offer such advice, reflecting commitment to a common
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S. M. Trommer and R. S. Chari
political goal within the epistemic community. Evidence of this is seen in the
September 2003 report of the Parliamentary Assembly which states: ‘several
Assembly activities rely on information and advice provided by interest
groups when organising hearings and seminars, preparing fact-finding visits,
election observation and in the preparation of reports’ (Council of Europe
2003b: 4). In September 2003 Lord Judd of the Parliamentary Assembly
furthermore argued that the CoE depended primarily on NGOs for the
quality of their research and their practical front-line experience.15 Similarly,
interest groups and CoE organs interact in committees, common projects,
and joint conferences in order to develop common rules. For example,
members of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities and
intergovernmental committees met with private interests in Strasbourg in
2002 to discuss the integration of migrants in local public life (Council of
Europe 2002e). The Council, together with these groups, subsequently
produced a manual for local authorities and established a network of
advisory councils of foreign residents. Furthermore, as the then Chairperson
of the NGO Liaison Committee Daniel Zielinski highlighted, groups were
involved in the planning process and the drafting of CoE conventions and
charters (Council of Europe 2002c).
If we have shown the NGO community at the CoE to qualify as an
epistemic community in Verdun’s terms, we have to admit, however, that
this explanation remains highly descriptive. The concept of epistemic
communities is extremely useful in evaluating the role of expert groups in
policy-making. However, it cannot help to explain why such experts, who
are representatives of interests, perceive it as beneficial to provide a given
institution with their advice. It is trivial to state that for many NGOs
enjoying participatory status, the CoE appears as their natural policy
environment. As one member of the Parliamentary Assembly noted,
complementary, if not similar, objectives are pursued by many interest
groups and the CoE.16 This observation does not solve our initial puzzle,
however, of knowing why NGOs representing all kinds of interests lobby
this seemingly weak institution so extensively. If the weakness of the
epistemic community explanation stems from its largely descriptive nature,
it has to be acknowledged that the attempt to examine the role of values and
beliefs in the decision-making process adds an angle to the analysis of
political activity which may prove beneficial in solving our puzzle despite the
fact that it is often neglected by political science. With theoretical
explanations from the literature failing to fully explain why NGOs lobby
the Council so vividly, we thus turn to examine the impact which ideological
convictions may have on the development of lobbying strategies.
The Ideological Mission Explanation
Although not fully developed in the existing literature, a potential
theoretical explanation argues that lobbying the CoE is driven by a sense
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679
of ‘ideological mission’. Interest groups and the CoE have more in common
than a set of shared values and interests in policy outcomes. Rather, interest
groups are relevant partners for the CoE, and vice versa, because both hold
an idealistic view on European democratic governance.
In order to draw out this argument, and guided by authors such as Claus
Offe (1980) who argue that the ideology of groups is constitutive of their
behaviour in political space, one may start with the proposition that a great
number of interest groups represented at the CoE rely on ideals. These
groups’ raison d’eˆtre is often a spontaneous act based on an idealistic or
emotional impulse to protect or promote a set of values that are perceived as
being very valuable or even threatened by society. Amnesty International
(AI), for example, was launched in 1961 by Peter Benenson after he read
about how two Portuguese students were sentenced to seven years in prison
for raising their glasses in a toast to freedom (Amnesty International 2004).
A worldwide newspaper appeal that year resulted in more than 1,000 offers
of support for an international campaign to protect human rights. After
years of political activity, AI’s structures have become institutionalised, as
seen in its sending delegations to hundreds of countries to represent political
prisoners, taking up hundreds of legal cases, and organising national
branches in dozens of countries. With groups such as AI acquiring expertise
in their field, they become legitimate, credible members of civil society and
partners in the political process. As expressed by the Chairperson of the
Liaison Committee, Catherine Mieg-Schaller, several groups are ‘impelled
by ideological references and are therefore affected by political issues, where
their ideological reference allows them to perform a distinctly political
function in spite of their independent status’ (Council of Europe 1995: 10).
Further evidence of this ideological motivation is seen when NGO
representatives from human rights organisations highlighted concerns for
social equality and identified their desire to have an impact on European
policy-making in the name of their organisation.17 When confronted with
the statement that the CoE was an organisation of limited political impact,
all lobbyists interviewed insisted on the specific nature of the debates held at
the Council: the organisation offers a unique opportunity for such groups to
partake in debates not otherwise fully allowed in other political fora. These
debates concern problems in society, including fundamental human rights
issues, health problems including HIV/AIDS, and amelioration of sustainable development and cultural dialogue. In their view, lobbying the Council
is a ‘rational choice’ as the institution considers themes not otherwise
equally debated elsewhere. Additionally, this institution is open to NGO
participation since, as Checkel (2004: 12) notes, the mandate of the CoE is
‘to think big and puzzle through issues in an open way’. An example is seen
in the action field ‘North–South Dialogue and Solidarity’ whose aim is to
encourage dialogue between industrialised and developing countries (NGO
North–South Dialogue 2004). Interest groups pertaining to this larger
structure regularly invite Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders to
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S. M. Trommer and R. S. Chari
pursue non-confrontational debates within the CoE. Although NGO
representatives of human rights and social equality organisations confirmed
the limited pay-off from partaking in such debates, they underlined their
view that such activities served as a reference point to highlight ‘Europe’s
conscience’18 and to counteract EU-level policies motivated purely by
economic interests.
Public and private actors at the Council furthermore share an ideal of
global governance with a strong emphasis on civil society participation
that they try to promote through their joint activities and conferences. As
Anheier (2002: 23) suggests, debates on governmental reform at national
levels in North America, Europe and Japan are characterised by an
‘absence of a wider vision of what kind of future society we have in mind
when we discuss the role of the third sector’, that is the role of civil
society. Speaking for the Secretary General, Hans de Jonge suggested that
it was the Council’s task to define what civil society is in order to be able
to profit from its capacities to serve the development and the consolidations of democracy in Europe (Council of Europe 1995). Similarly, the
Chairperson of the Liaison Committee, Daniel Zielinski, who criticised the
EU, the IMF, the WTO and the World Bank for only recently discovering
the benefits of civil society participation in the policy-making process,
stated that:
The Council of Europe remains an ideal setting for developing civil
society, and for advancing the cause of democracy and human rights.
By strengthening its relations with NGOs . . . the Council will be
retaining a firm lead over all the other international institutions and
acting as a pioneer, responding to topical issues and citizens’ new
needs through the development of structured dialogue. (Council of
Europe 2002c: 2)
Additionally, interest groups see their working environment at the Council
as an alternative to the working methods of other groups at the EU level
because it is more reflective of and receptive to both western and eastern
European ideals. All those interviewed believe in the role of the CoE in
providing a forum for the whole of Europe without the exclusion of
economically weaker countries.19 In this sense, the Council of Europe is
perceived as the guarantor of a united Europe, whereas the EU, even after
enlargement, is seen as having institutionalised the division of Europe
between EU and non-EU members. This perception is based on the CoE
participants’ belief of belonging to a genuine alternative to EU lobbying
environments (Council of Europe 2003d). Such an environment has
astonished even interest group representatives at the EU about the facility
of cooperation between public and private actors at the CoE. This confirms
the NGOs’ own perception of themselves as genuine participants in, and
defenders of, debates regarding sustainable democracy: constructing and
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681
defending vital democracies is the ideological goal pursued by all private
and public partners in the Council.
Evidently, the idea of a ‘ideological mission’ cannot stand alone if one
wants to explain why interest groups lobby the Council. First of all, not all
interests represented at the Council follow specific ideals based on moral
convictions like human rights, environmental protection or democracy.
Thus, the European Chambers of Commerce and Industry or the World
Federation of Advertisers represent corporate interests and are not
motivated by a desire to be the ‘conscience of Europe’. At this point one
may, however, hint at a general development among globalised corporate
interests which is seen in the concept of what may be defined as ‘ethical
audits’ (Vinten 1998; Yuthas et al. 2004). According to this concept, the
public image of large transnational corporations is strengthened by
promoting and complying with international health, environmental, safety
and human rights standards – all of which are aimed at promoting ‘social
good’ – in the production and commercialisation of products. A similar
approach is also expressed in the notion of ‘counteractive lobbying’ as
discussed by Baumgartner and Leech (1996). While corporate interests are
certainly not the motor of ideologically motivated lobbying at the CoE, their
presence in such an environment may be less surprising than one would
initially presume. Nevertheless, the ideological mission explanation alone
remains weak because stating that the activity of interest groups is purely
ideologically motivated implies groups lobby the Council for reasons
presumably known only by themselves that cannot be explained from a
theoretical perspective. In this sense, referring solely to ideological
motivations may remain purely descriptive and difficult to measure
empirically.
Despite the shortcomings of this explanation, the evidence does suggest
that the strong interest group presence and their high level of activity at the
Council cannot easily be explained sufficiently based only on pre-existing
models developed in the literature. This is because the political pay-off for
interest groups lobbying the Council remains simply too weak. In other
words, the discrepancy between the high level of interest group activity and
the limited impact of CoE legislation cannot be resolved without introducing
the idea of ideological missions: the ideological and moral background of
any interest group must also be considered if one wants to understand fully
why they participate in the political process. This conclusion does not mean
that all other explanations tested here are insignificant. Rather, as discussed
in the next section, all the explanations together may contribute to explain
why interest groups have incentives to lobby.
Towards a Synthesis
The above evidence suggests that the individual explanations outlined in this
paper are not alone satisfactory in explaining why interest groups lobby the
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S. M. Trommer and R. S. Chari
Council. However, taken together they offer an insight into what motivates
private actors to take on lobbying strategies that one would not otherwise
expect. What exactly is the interrelationship between the different
explanations?
We hypothesise that the final explanation highlighting the importance of
ideological mission is a crucial foundation on which interest groups
originally based their lobbying activity in the CoE. Being ideologically
motivated, interest groups sought to lobby an institution that shares their
ideals and values. The CoE was also an amenable institution through which
specific ideological issues, such as human rights, could be discussed by
interest groups that would otherwise not have had such an institutional
outlet. Nevertheless, while ideological motivation helped attract interest
group representation in the CoE, one may argue that the other three
explanations also came into play over time in order to cement such lobbying
activity. In particular, as governance in Europe witnessed the increasing
significance of EU-level politics, interest groups perceived policy overlap to
be occurring at the CoE in issues that were framed by ideals and ideologies,
such as human rights issues. Being ideologically motivated, they thus
lobbied an institution that shared their values because there was a belief that
decisions made by the Council had an impact on European society. From
this perspective, policy overlap and ideological motivation worked
simultaneously over time in influencing interest groups to lobby the Council
and seek institutionalisation of their own position.
One may further hypothesise that as interest groups established a
lobbying structure in the CoE, it quickly became evident that this institution
was more favourable to their participation than national and supranational
political systems. This is also true because the CoE as an institution pursues
mostly ideologically motivated goals. For ideologically motivated private
interests, the Council hence presented itself as a policy venue open to their
concerns. Lobbying the CoE thus enabled interest groups to shape their own
policy image and advocate their participation in European governance. By
means of venue shopping, public and private actors at the Council widened
the policy domain connected with a given policy issue. This had the effect
that the CoE started to address certain policy problems by becoming active
in policy areas which were not traditionally related to this particular issue.
Since interest groups thus began to form an epistemic community advising
national and EU political actors within the institutional framework of the
CoE, the shaping of their image and the expansion of the field of their policy
issues at the Council was believed to have a long-term effect on their image
and influence in different European and national political systems. The
venue shopping and epistemic community explanations are interlinked
precisely because venue shopping had an influence on the perceptions
national and European political actors have of certain policy areas. No payoff would have occurred for private interests by following a strategy of
venue shopping in a policy venue which is not connected with a given policy
The Council of Europe
683
system at all. Only by including the idea of an epistemic community evolving
at the CoE and reaching out to national as well as European actors can a
strategy of venue shopping be effectively pursued. Both explanations taken
together therefore also add insights regarding why interest group activity at
the Council has continuously increased over the past 50 years.
Conclusions
The first main observation made in the beginning of this paper is that the
Council of Europe, despite its relatively large organisational structure, has
marginal policy impact in the European political space when compared to
other supranational institutions such as the European Commission or the
Council of Ministers. This is because this classical intergovernmental
institution has no real power to impose decisions on member states that can
inevitably refuse to adopt its norms without any penalisation. The second
main observation was that despite this organisation’s weak policy impact,
considerable efforts have nevertheless been made by groups representing a
variety of different interests who seek to influence decision-making at the
Council: 400 organisations hold participatory status, invest large amounts
of resources in lobbying the organisation, and develop transnational
strategies to further their individual interests. Further, NGOs cooperate
with one another to strengthen their own position in the political process by
striving for active participation in decision-making at the Council. Both of
these observations are unexpected considering that the interest group
literature would suggest that if the decision-making powers of an institution
are weak, private interests have little, if no incentive to allocate their
resources there given that such groups are presumed to be rational actors
whose primary goal is to influence policy-making. Bearing this in mind, the
central question was to explain the seeming puzzle of private interest groups
seeking to influence an institution that has no strong decision-making
powers.
Different theoretical explanations from the literature, including those
relating to policy overlap, venue shopping and epistemic community, were
tested. This paper argued that these three ideas only partially help explain
why interest groups perceive it as beneficial to lobby the Council. As such,
based on the evidence from the Council, the paper considered the hypothesis
of ‘ideological mission’ which highlights that interest groups’ idealistic views
on European democratic governance serves as a foundation from which
lobbying activity is pursued.
The main argument that was developed is that in order to understand why
interest groups lobby the CoE, all four explanations are needed and must be
seen as interlinked. That is, ideologically motivated interest groups lobby an
institution where they perceive policy to overlap with other, more powerful
levels of decision-making in Europe. Furthermore, this institution constitutes a favourable venue not only for a large number of interests, but also
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for these interest groups’ policy image. At the Council, interest groups can
thus shape their image as partners in the decision-making process according
to their ideological motivations. This is seen as beneficial because there is
potential for affecting the groups’ image by forming part of a community of
experts, providing information and advice to political actors from the
national and European level.
These findings are significant because they demonstrate that the idea of
ideological mission, not hitherto developed fully in the literature, is of value
in explaining interest group behaviour. In addition to direct and indirect
policy pay-offs that result from influencing institutions, ideological motivations play an important role in directing lobbying preferences of private
interests. The ideological mission explanation is significant because denying
the fact that actors can be ideologically motivated to pursue certain lobbying
strategies may lead to a misinterpretation of the situation one is trying to
explain. Thus, one of the main conclusions to be drawn from this study is that
testing the ideological motivation of any interest group can potentially add to
a general better understanding of what motivates interest groups to partake
in the political process. In other words, examining whether or not ideas of
ideological mission prevail within a given interest group may help improve
understanding of its strategic decisions and its lobbying preferences.
With these ideas in mind, future research may apply the concept of
ideological mission in order to better understand interest group behaviour in
the EU political system and at the domestic level. As suggested above, the
ideological mission alone is not sufficient in explaining interest group
strategies. However, in the example studied here, the idea of ideological
mission proves to be essential in order to understand the motivations of
interest groups when pursuing political activity. For this reason, the testing
of ideological backgrounds of interest groups operating within national and
EU institutions has potential in deepening our understanding of interest
group activity at these levels of policy-making.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the several high-ranking officials in the CoE who
were kind enough to allow interviews and access to documents throughout
the study. The authors also acknowledge the constructive suggestions made
by the two anonymous reviewers.
Notes
1. The CoE’s Ordinary Budget in 2005 amounted to e186 million compared to e180.5 million
in 2004 (Source: http://www.coe.int).
2. The EU’s Council of Ministers, which represents the national governments of the 25
member states, sets the medium and long-term EU policy agenda while the Commission is
the administrative body of the EU. The European Council can be seen as the most
‘significant’ council in the sense that the summits of the EU heads of state define the EU’s
The Council of Europe
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
685
general political guidelines and serve as the arena where main agreements between member
states are finalised.
For details please see Council of Europe (2005).
For further information on this idea, please see the Council of Europe (2002a; 2002b;
2002d).
While Resolution (2003)8 grants permanent participatory status to international NGOs at
the Council of Europe, Resolution (2003)9 on partnership status allows the Council of
Europe to establish working relations with national NGOs to cooperate on individual
projects on a short-term basis.
Author(s) interviews with high-level NGO representatives, December 2003, in Metz and
Strasbourg. For the sake of anonymity, as requested by the interviewees, names are
withheld.
Interviews with high-level NGO representatives, December 2003, in Metz and Strasbourg.
Interview with high-level NGO representative, December 2003, in Strasbourg.
Interview with high-level NGO representative, December 2003, in Metz.
Interview with high-level NGO representative, December 2003, in Metz.
Interview with high-level NGO representative, December 2003, in Metz.
Interviews with high-level NGO representatives, December 2003, in Metz and Strasbourg.
Interview with the Chairperson of the Liaison Committee, December 2003, in Strasbourg.
Interview with high-level NGO representative, December 2003, in Strasbourg.
He further affirmed that NGOs ‘have much to offer to the Council in terms of their
experience for the process of policy-building’ (Council of Europe 2003c: 37).
For more details please see Council of Europe (2003c: 36).
Interviews with high-level NGO representatives, December 2003, in Strasbourg.
Interview with the Chairperson of the Liaison Committee, December 2003, in Strasbourg.
Interviews with high-level NGO representatives, December 2003, in Metz and Strasbourg.
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