Interest groups in EU policy-making

There is a plethora of studies on interest groups in the EuropeanUnion. While these studies have generated a wealth of insights, itis not actually clear what they have accomplished. This LivingReview seeks to identify those areas of interest group studies inwhich our knowledge is fairly consolidated and in which majorresearch gaps or major controversies can be noted. I argue thatthese research gaps and controversies stem from both the empiricalvariance in the interest group landscape and the theoreticalsegmentation of EU interest group studies. These have been shaped byinfluences from Comparative Politics, International Relations,Policy Analysis, and Democratic Theory. I suggest that futureresearch should engage to a greater extent in cross-cuttingtheoretical debates in order to overcome the pronounced demarcationof research areas and in more rigorous theory testing than hassometimes been the case. The article starts by discussing theproblem of conceptualizing interest groups before moving on to thefissured theoretical landscape. Thereafter, major research themesare discussed. First, I review the relation between EU institutionsand interest groups. Here, I look both into multilevel governanceand Europeanization studies that focus on the vertical interactionand into analyses that stress the horizontal segmentation of the EUsystem in different institutions and sectors. Second, I analyze corethemes of EU and comparative interest group studies, namely theissue of collective action, the access of interest groups topolicy-makers and their influence on EU policymaking. Full online version available at http://www.livingreviews.org/lreg-2008-4