Rainer Eising

The delegation of policy-competencies to the European Union has changed the context in which national actors form their interests and represent them. Shaping European markets and societies, EU regulation has important effects in the member states. This book analyses how business interest organizations respond to this challenge and what strategies they develop to cope with European integration. Starting from the idea that institutional contexts, resource dependencies, and organizational characteristics explain, to a considerable degree, how interest groups adapt to EU policy-making, this study delivers important insights into EU governance. The empirical analysis draws on a comprehensive data set of German, British, French, and EU business associations and large firms. Divided into three parts, it moves from the study of domestic contexts to the analysis of multilevel-governance in the EU before finally scrutinizing in greater detail the factors that shape the access of interest groups to the EU institutions. Making an important contribution to the development of institutional and organizational accounts of interest groups in the EU, this book will be of interest to political scientists, economists, and sociologists working in the areas of European integration, comparative European politics, political economy, interest groups and civil society.

Interest Mediation, Capitalism and EU Policy Making

The Political Economy of State-Business Relations in Europe

Jan Beyers

William A. Maloney

Interest organizations have always assumed a prominent place in European politics because they link states with citizens, institutionalize the resolution of social conflicts, regulate important sectors of the economy and society, contribute to workable policy outcomes and socialize members into democratic politics. However, the plethora of interest group studies that exist have not consolidated our understanding of these actors. These analyses have been subject to the vagaries of different theoretical perspectives and vary greatly in their conceptual and methodological frameworks. Consequently, a not always complementary and fragmented series of findings has emerged. This book is a systematic and comprehensive effort at investigating and integrating the state of the art in European interest group research. Combining the analysis of interest group politics in the EU with the comparative study of interest organizations, the book seeks to identify the areas about which there is consolidated knowledge, that are marked by controversies, in which considerable uncertainty exists, that have been omitted from research programs and that ought to be part of future studies. Thereby, it provides a general reflection on how the study of interest group politics can be improved by linking it to the comparative study of governance. This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.

Rainer Eising

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