This article examines to what extent interest associations combine public political campaigning with seeking access to policy networks. Two theoretical approaches explaining choice of influence strategies are presented; one focusing on the interest association itself and another considering the institutional context in which political activities are embedded. Empirically we look at Euro-level interest mobilisation. In the literature on the EU the notion of network governance is dominant; that is, by drawing on expert knowledge and by inclusion of private and public actors, government becomes de-politicised. In general, gaining access to policy networks is viewed as more relevant than public campaigning, and so societal interests prefer access strategies instead of publicly politicising their demands. However, our evidence collected among public officials and interest associations challenges this view. We find no contradiction between both forms of political mobilisation and we observe that, in general, associations both use and combine voice and access strategies. It is also demonstrated that, although the institutional supply of access might be somewhat biased in favour of specific interests, the EU contains important opportunities for those who aim to expand the scope of political conflict. In particular, we show that institutions such as the European Parliament, but to some extent also the Council, considerably attract attempts to politicise demands publicly.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.