The density of the EU interest system: A test of the ESA model

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 41, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 161-190

  Messer, Anne ^a   Berkhout, Joost ^a   Lowery, David ^a  

^a LEIDEN UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79957499272     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123409990329     Document Type: Article

References (193)

1. David Coen, 'Empirical and Theoretical Studies in EU Lobbying', Journal of European Public Policy, 14(2007), 333-45;
2. David Lowery, Caelesta Poppelaars and Joost Berkhout, 'The European Union Interest System in Comparative Perspective: A Bridge too far?' West European Politics, 32(2009), 1231-51;
3. Frank Baumgartner, 'EU Lobbying: A view from the US', Journal of European Public Policy, 14(2007), 482-8;
4. Cornelia Woll, 'Lobbying in the European Union: From sui generis to a Comparative Perspective', Journal of European Public Policy, 13(2006), 456-69; (Pubitemid 43398965)
5. Rainer Eising, 'Interest groups in European Union policy-making', Living Reviews in European Governance (LREG), published at: http://europeangovernance. livingreviews.org (2008).
6. Christine Mahoney, 'The Power of Institutions: State and Interest Group Activity in the European Union', European Union Politics, 5(2004), 441-66; (Pubitemid 43308437)
7. Christine Mahoney, Brussels vs the Beltway: Advocacy in the United States and the European Union (Washington, D. C.: Georgetown University Press, 2008).
8. Coen, 'Empirical and Theoretical Studies in EU Lobbying', p. 341.
9. See Lowery, Poppelaars and Berkhout, 'The European Union Interest System in Comparative Perspective'. This approach first appeared in the American literature on interest organizations, which distinguishes the mobilization of interest organizations, the formation of interest populations (density and diversity) and the use of tactics and strategies to influence the political sphere
10. (Robert Salisbury, 'Interest Representation: The Dominance of Institutions', American Political Science Review, 78(1984), 64-76;
11. Frank Baumgartner and Beth Leech, Basic Interests: The Importance of Groups in Politics and Political Science (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1998);
12. David Lowery and Virginia Gray, 'A Neopluralist Perspective on Research on Organized Interests', Political Research Quarterly, 57(2004), 163-75, pp. 164, 166-7). (Pubitemid 38545360)
13. Lowery, Poppelaars and Berkhout, 'The European Union Interest System in Comparative Perspective'.
14. Giovanni Sartori, 'Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics', American Political Science Review, 64(1970), 1033-53;
15. Giovanni Sartori, 'Guidelines for Concept Analysis', in Giovanni Sartori, eds, Guidelines for Concept Analysis (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1984), pp. 15-72.
16. Bert Pijnenburg and Clive S. Thomas, Comparative Interest Group Studies (Westport, Conn.: Westview, 2004).
17. Frank Baumgartner, Christian Breunig, Christoffer Green-Pedersen, Bryan D. Jones, Peter B. Mortensen, Michiel Neytemans and Stefaan Walgrave, 'Punctuated Equilibrium in Comparative Perspective', American Journal of Political Science, 103(2009), 603-20.
18. In part, recent discussion on the registration of lobbyists in the European Union reflects such fears: Nikki Tait and Joshua Chaffin, 'EU lobbyists not signing controversial register', Financial Times, 4 June 2009.
19. Virginia Gray and David Lowery, The Population Ecology of Interest Representation (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1996).
20. Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965).
21. David Lowery and Virginia Gray, 'The Population Ecology of Gucci Gulch, or the Natural Regulation of Interest Group Numbers in the American States', American Journal of Political Science, 39(1995), 1-29;
22. Baumgartner and Leech, Basic Interests, pp. 18-19.
23. Sonja Mazey and Jeremy Richardson, 'Interest Groups and EU Policy-making: Organizational Logic and Venue Shopping', in Jeremy Richardson, ed., European Union: Power and Policy-Making, 3rd edn (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2006), pp. 247-68;
24. Justin Greenwood, Interest Representation in the European Union (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003);
25. Baumgartner and Leech, Basic Interests, pp. 65-82.
26. Kay Lehman Schlozman and John T. Tierney, Organized Interests and American Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1986).
27. David Lowery, Virginia Gray and James Monogan, 'The Construction of Interest Communities: Distinguishing Bottom-Up and Top-Down Models', Journal of Politics, 70(2008), 1160-76;
28. Jan Beyers and Bart Kerremans, 'Critical Resource Dependencies and the Europeanization of Domestic Interest Groups', Journal of European Public Policy, 14(2007), 460-81.
29. Gray and Lowery, Population Ecology;
30. Virginia Gray and David Lowery, 'Life in a Niche: Mortality Anxiety among Organized Interests in the American States', Political Research Quarterly, 50(1997), 25-47. (Pubitemid 127342775)
31. David Lowery, Virginia Gray and Michael Fellowes, 'Sisyphus Meets the Borg: Economic Scale and Inequalities in Interest Representation', Journal of Theoretical Politics, 17(2005), 41-74. (Pubitemid 40167034)
32. Virginia Gray and David Lowery, 'Reconceptualizing PAC Formation: It's Not a Collective Action Problem, and It May Be an Arms Race', American Politics Quarterly, 25(1997), 319-46;
33. Virginia Gray and David Lowery, 'To Lobby Alone or in a Flock: Foraging Behavior among Organized Interests', American Politics Quarterly, 26(1998), 5-34.
34. Mark Smith, American Business and Political Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), but see
35. Arthur T. Denzau and Michael C. Munger, 'Legislators and Interest Groups: How Unorganized Interests Get Represented', American Political Science Review, 80(1986), 89-106.
36. Gray and Lowery, Population Ecology.
37. Mark Pollack, 'Representing Diffuse Interests in EC Policy-making', Journal of European Public Policy, 4(1997), 572-90;
38. Greenwood, Interest Representation;
39. Christian Lahusen, 'Moving into the European Orbit: Commercial Consultants in the European Union', European Union Politics, 4(2003), 191-218;
40. Christian Lahusen, 'Joining the Cocktail Circuit: Social Movement Organizations at the European Union', Mobilization, 9(2004), 55-71;
41. Jan Beyers, 'Gaining and Seeking Access: The European Adaptation of Domestic Interest Associations', European Journal of Political Research, 41(2002), 585-612;
42. Andreas Broscheid and David Coen, 'Insider and Outsider Lobbying of the European Commission', European Union Politics, 4(2003), 165-89.
43. Alan Clawson, 'Big Firms as Political Actors: Corporate Power and the Governance of the European Consumer Electronics Industry', in H. Wallace and A. Young, eds, Participation and Policy Making in the European Union (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 185-205;
44. Robert Bennett, 'Business Routes of Influence in Brussels: Exploring the Choice of Direct Representation', Political Studies, 47(1999), 240-57;
45. Jan Beyers, 'Voice and Access: Political Practices of European Interest Associations', European Union Politics, 5(2004), 211-40; (Pubitemid 43298412)
46. Pieter Bouwen, 'Corporate Lobbying in the European Union: The Logic of Access', Journal of European Public Policy, 9(2002), 365-90;
47. Pieter Bouwen, 'Exchanging Access Goods for Access: A Comparative Study of Business Lobbying in the European Union Institutions', European Journal of Political Research, 43(2004), 337-69; (Pubitemid 38809010)
48. David Coen, 'The Evolution of the Large Firm as a Political Actor in the European Union', Journal of European Public Policy, 4(1997), 91-108;
49. Rainer Eising, 'Multilevel Governance and Business Interests in the European Union', Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, 17(2004), 211-45;
50. Rainer Eising, 'Institutional Context, Organizational Resources, and Strategic Choices: Explaining Interest Group Access in the European Union', European Union Politics, 8(2007), 329-62;
51. Pieter Bouwen and Margaret McCown, 'Lobbying vs. Litigation: Political and Legal Strategies of Interest Representation in the European Union', Journal of European Public Policy, 14(2007), 422-43;
52. Mazey and Richardson, 'Interest Groups and EU Policy-making'.
53. Andreas Broscheid and David Coen, 'Lobbying Activity and Fora Creation in the EU: Empirically Exploring the Nature of the Policy Good', Journal of European Public Policy, 14(2007), 346-65.
54. Joost Berkhout and David Lowery, 'Counting Organized Interests in the European Union: A Comparison of Data Sources', Journal of European Public Policy, 15(2008), 489-513.
55. For example, Euroconfidentiel, Directory of 12, 500 Trade and Professional Associations in the EU 2002-2003 (Genval: Euroconfidentiel, 2002);
56. and Landmarks, The European Public Affairs Directory, 15th edn (Brussels: Landmark Publishing, 2005).
57. Anthony Nownes, 'The Population Ecology of Interest Group Formation: Mobilizing for Gay and Lesbian Rights in the United States, 1950-98', British Journal of Political Science, 34(2004), 49-67; (Pubitemid 38085630)
58. Anthony Nownes and Daniel Lipinski, 'The Population Ecology of Interest Group Death: Gay and Lesbian Rights Interest Groups in the United States, 1945-98', British Journal of Political Science, 35(2005), 303-19. (Pubitemid 40482638)
59. The CONECCS database, the European Commission's former database of civil society groups and organizations, which was available at http://ec.europa.eu/ civil-society/coneccs/until March 2007, is sometimes used for this purpose, but, at least on its own, provides a very imperfect census of EU interest organizations (Berkhout and Lowery, 'Counting Organized Interests').
60. Lowery and Gray, 'The Population Ecology of Gucci Gulch';
61. Gray and Lowery, Population Ecology.
62. Beth Leech, Frank Baumgartner, Timothy La Pira and Nicholas Semanko, 'Drawing Lobbyists to Washington: Government Activity and the Demand for Advocacy', Political Research Quarterly, 58(2005), 19-30. (Pubitemid 40707249)
63. Broscheid and Coen, 'Lobbying Activity and Fora Creation'.
64. Berkhout and Lowery, 'Counting Organized Interests'.
65. Lowery and Gray, 'The Population Ecology of Gucci Gulch';
66. Gray and Lowery, Population Ecology;
67. Virginia Gray, David Lowery, Michael Fellowes and Jennifer Anderson, 'Legislative Agendas and Interest Advocacy: Understanding the Demand Side of Lobbying', American Politics Research, 33(2005), 404-34. (Pubitemid 40580078)
68. Lowery and Gray, 'The Population Ecology of Gucci Gulch', p. 24.
69. They also found that interest system age and the overall size of government do not determine population size, and that interest organizations often die or leave the lobbying scene (Lowery and Gray 'The Population Ecology of Gucci Gulch', p. 24). Another variable in the theoretical model is environmental stability. That is, when political systems collapse entirely, the interest population must begin growing anew. But this factor for both the US and EU cases is only of theoretical rather than empirical relevance.
70. Lowery and Gray, 'The Population Ecology of Gucci Gulch'.
71. Gray, Lowery, Fellowes and Anderson, 'Legislative Agendas and Interest Advocacy'.
72. Lowery and Gray, 'The Population Ecology of Gucci Gulch', pp. 10-12, 25;
73. Gray, Lowery, Fellowes and Anderson, 'Legislative Agendas and Interest Advocacy'.
74. Coen, 'Empirical and Theoretical Studies'.
75. Lowery and Gray, 'The Population Ecology of Gucci Gulch';
76. Gray and Lowery, Population Ecology;
77. Gray and Lowery, 'Life in a Niche';
78. Nownes and Lipinski, 'The Population Ecology of Interest Group Death'.
79. Nownes, 'The Population Ecology of Interest Group Formation';
80. Nownes and Lipinski, 'The Population Ecology of Interest Group Death'.
81. David Lowery and Virginia Gray, 'Bias in the Heavenly Chorus: Interests in Society and Before Government', Journal of Theoretical Politics, 16(2004), 5-30; (Pubitemid 38118668)
82. Lowery, Gray and Fellowes, 'Sisyphus Meets the Borg'.
83. Gray and Lowery, 'Reconceptualizing PAC Formation';
84. Gray and Lowery, 'To Lobby Alone or in a Flock'.
85. Virginia Gray, David Lowery and Erik Godwin, 'Public Preferences and Organized Interests in Health Policy: State Pharmacy Assistance Programs as Innovations', Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, 32(2007), 89-129. (Pubitemid 350131616)
86. Broscheid and Coen, 'Lobbying Activity and Fora Creation'.
87. Alan Butt Philip, 'Pressure Groups in the European Community' in UACES Occasional Papers 2 (London: University Association for Contemporary European Studies, 1985);
88. Greenwood, Interest Representation;
89. Mazey and Richardson, 'Interest Groups and EU Policy-making', pp. 254-5.
90. Greenwood, Interest Representation;
91. Justin Greenwood and Alisdair Young, 'EU Interest Representation or US-Style Lobbying?' in Nicolas Jabko and Craig Parsons, eds, The State of the European Union: With US or Against US? European Trends in American Perspective (Oxford: European Studies Association/Oxford University Press, 2005), Vol. 7, pp. 275-95;
92. Coen, 'The Evolution of the Large Firm';
93. Broscheid and Coen, 'Insider and Outsider Lobbying'.
94. Much the same is true when we turn to the related topic of interest-system bias or diversity. The American and European literatures certainly agree on one key aspect of interest populations: at state and federal governments in the United States and in the EU, the representation of economic interests far outweighs more diffuse interests, such as human rights or the environment, in terms of numbers and perhaps influence as well (Salisbury, 'Dominance of Institutions';
95. Schlozman and Tierney, Organized Interests;
96. David Lowery and Virginia Gray, 'The Dominance of Institutions in Interest Representation: A Test of Seven Explanations', American Journal of Political Science, 42(1998), 231-55; (Pubitemid 128009976)
97. David Lowery and Virginia Gray, 'Representational Concentration and Interest Community Size: A Population Ecology Interpretation', Political Research Quarterly, 51(1998), 919-44; (Pubitemid 128342539)
98. Frank Baumgartner and Beth Leech, 'Interest Niches and Policy Bandwagons: Patterns of Interest Group Involvement in National Politics', Journal of Politics, 63(2001), 1191-213;
99. Lowery, Gray and Fellowes, 'Sisyphus Meets the Borg';
100. Greenwood, Interest Representation;
101. Pollack, 'Representing Diffuse Interests';
102. Coen, 'The Evolution of the Large Firm';
103. Mahoney, 'The Power of Institutions').
104. Woll, 'Lobbying in the European Union', p. 457.
105. Leech, Baumgartner, La Pira and Semanko, 'Drawing Lobbyists to Washington'.
106. Gray, Lowery, Fellowes and Anderson, 'Legislative Agendas and Interest Advocacy'.
107. Lowery and Gray, 'The Population Ecology of Gucci Gulch', pp. 10-11;
108. Nownes and Lipinski, 'The Population Ecology of Interest Group Death'.
109. Alan Siaroff, 'Corporatism in 24 Industrial Democracies: Meaning and Measurement', European Journal of Political Research, 36(1999), 175-205.
110. Rainer Eising, 'The Access of Business Interests to EU Institutions: Towards Elite Pluralism?' Journal of European Public Policy, 14(2007), 384-403;
111. Vivien A. Schmidt, Democracy in Europe: The EU and National Polities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
112. Nownes, 'The Population Ecology of Interest Group Formation'; Nownes and Lipinski, 'The Population Ecology of Interest Group Death'.
113. Interestingly, some European scholars (making no reference to the population ecology approach) have hypothesized that the growth of EU interest organizations will soon slow because most of the significant interests in Europe have now formed a Euro-association (Mazey and Richardson, 'Interest Groups and EU Policy-making', p. 255).
114. Clearly, other reasons may still well justify such adoption, however.
115. Gray, Lowery, Fellowes and Anderson, 'Legislative Agendas and Interest Advocacy'.
116. Lowery and Gray, 'The Population Ecology of Gucci Gulch';
117. Gray, Lowery, Fellowes and Anderson, 'Legislative Agendas and Interest Advocacy'.
118. Eising, 'Interest groups in European Union policy-making', pp. 11-12.
119. Baumgartner, 'EU Lobbying: A View from the US'.
120. Mahoney, Brussels vs the Beltway, p. 13.
121. Lowery and Gray, 'The Population Ecology of Gucci Gulch'.
122. Mahoney, Brussels vs the Beltway, p. 25.
123. Greenwood, Interest Representation;
124. Broscheid and Coen, 'Lobbying Activity and Fora Creation'.
125. Lowery, Gray, Fellowes and Anderson found that when a US state government adopts a more expansive legislative agenda, this tends to promote the immediate registration of interest organizations (David Lowery, Virginia Gray, Michael Fellowes and Jennifer Anderson, 'Living in the Moment: Lags, Leads, and the Link between Legislative Agendas and Interest Advocacy', Social Science Quarterly, 85(2004), 463-77). (Pubitemid 38799745)
126. Thus, registrations were found to be contemporaneous with the legislative cycle, rather than anticipating future agendas (that is, leading them) or responding to previous-year agendas (that is, lagging behind them). To explore this in the EU context, both the legislative activity and policy uncertainty variables will be measured not only for 2005, to assess the contemporaneous theory, but also for 2004 and 2006, to assess the leading and lagging theories.
127. Mahoney, 'The Power of Institutions';
128. Mazey and Richardson, 'Interest Groups and EU Policymaking';
129. Broscheid and Coen, 'Lobbying Activity and Fora Creation'.
130. Bouwen, 'Corporate Lobbying in the European Union';
131. Bouwen, 'Exchanging Access Goods for Access';
132. Mazey and Richardson, 'Interest Groups and EU Policy-making', pp. 250-1;
133. Broscheid and Coen, 'Insider and Outsider Lobbying';
134. Beyers, 'Voice and Access', p. 219.
135. Greenwood and Young, 'EU Interest Representation or US-Style Lobbying?' p. 279.
136. Broscheid and Coen, 'Lobbying Activity and Fora Creation'.
137. Gray, Lowery, Fellowes and Anderson, 'Legislative Agendas and Interest Advocacy'.
138. In contrast to Broscheid and Coen, we do not propose to use the lists of policy areas provided by the European Commission to define guilds (Broscheid and Coen, 'Lobbying Activity and Fora Creation'). First, these policy areas are broad and give us too low an N to assess causal relationships from statistical analysis. Secondly, there is no appropriate indicator available for guild size to match each policy area and thereby test the ESA theory in the European context.
139. See NACE Rev. 1.1 at: http://www.fifoost.org/database/nace/nace-en-2002c. php, accessed 03-07.
140. Bernard Wessels, 'Organizing Capacity of Societies and Modernity', in Jan W. van Deth, ed., Private Groups and Public Life: Social Participation, Voluntary Associations and Political Involvement in Representative Democracies (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 198-219;
141. Richard Balme and Didier Chabanet, European Governance and Democracy, Power and Protest in the EU, Governance in Europe (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), pp. 45-50.
142. This classification is available in Questions V39-53 of the World Values Survey Questionnaire 1999-2001, which asks: 'Please look carefully at the following list of voluntary organizations and activities and say... which if any do you belong to?' The list includes: social welfare services; religious or church organizations; education, arts, music or cultural activities; labour unions; political parties or groups; local community action; Third World development or human rights; conservation, environment, animal rights groups; professional associations; youth work; sport or recreation; women's groups; peace movement; voluntary organizations concerned with health; other. World Values Survey Questionnaire 1999-2001 is at http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/ (accessed November 2007).
143. Berkhout and Lowery, 'Counting Organized Interests'.
144. As discussed in fn. 27 above, the CONNECS database was available at http://ec.europa.eu/civil-society/coneccs/until March 2007.
145. The site was closed for updating and revision as part of the EC's Transparency Initiative: http://ec.europa.eu/civil-society/coneccs/index.html (accessed May 2008). Since June 2008, CONECCS has been replaced by the 'Register of Interest Representatives'.
146. The EP online directory is available at http://www.europarl.eu.int/lobby.
147. Eurostat, European Business Facts and Figures: Data 1995-2005 (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2006).
148. For various reasons: inadequate information in the sample; inadequate corresponding Eurostat data; or inadequate corresponding data for the other independent variables. More information is available from the authors.
149. Rainer Eising, 'Multilevel Governance and Business Interests in the European Union', Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, 17(2004), 211-45;
150. Eising, 'The Access of Business Interests'.
151. See fn. 74 above for the specific questions asked of respondents, and the answer options available to them.
152. The World Values Survey 2000 excluded Cyprus. See: www.worldvaluessurvey. org (accessed November 2007).
153. The EU-24 population (excluding Cyprus) was 450.7 million in 2001: Eurostat, Europe in Figures: Eurostat Yearbook 2006-2007 (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Union, 2007).
154. Gray and Lowery, Population Ecology.
155. Gray, Lowery, Fellowes and Anderson, 'Legislative Agendas and Interest Advocacy'.
156. See http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/index.htm and http://eur-lex.europa.eu/ RECH-menu.do?ihmlang5en (accessed February 2008). All legislative and preparatory acts in EUR-Lex are assigned classification codes according to a four-tier subject classification, and EUR-Lex provides an online classification-based search function to access them. The first (aggregate) tier contains 20 classification codes, but altogether the first, second, third and fourth tiers contain more than 400 codes.
157. In most cases, this involved codes at the third or fourth tier because of their level of detail.
158. For example, the Environment and Animal Rights guild had four applicable codes: 03.50.30 Animal health and zootechnics; 11.30.60 Multilateral co-operation for the protection of the environment, wild fauna and flora and natural resources; 15.10 Environment; 15.40 Protection of animals.
159. For example, all wood-based industries were allocated code 03.30.60 Forests and forestry.
160. Gray, Lowery, Fellowes and Anderson, 'Legislative Agendas and Interest Advocacy'.
161. Mahoney, 'The Power of Institutions'.
162. The bodies, members and schedules were listed in CONECCS until March 2007.
163. For example, the Sectoral Social Dialogue Committee 'Agriculture' was relevant to all agricultural guilds, whereas the Consultative Group 'Alcoholic Beverages' was only relevant to the making of beverages.
164. The CONECCS list of Consultative Bodies has been criticized for not being sufficiently comprehensive. Broscheid and Coen, who also investigated the density of the EU interest population in 2005, opted instead to use the EU's Register of Expert Groups (Broscheid and Coen, 'Lobbying Activity and Fora Creation', p. 358). This Register commenced in November 2005 and lists formal and informal advisory bodies established either by EC decisions or informally by the EC services
165. (see Ase Gornitzka and Ulf Sverdrup, 'Who Consults? Expert Groups in the European Union', West European Politics, 31(2008), 725-50).
166. Although the Register is more comprehensive than CONECCS, because it includes the EC's informal advisory bodies from November 2005, we chose CONECCS as a more suitable indicator for this research. The Register includes three sets of groups (experts, stakeholders and joint expert/stakeholder groups), and expert groups do not include organized interests. Instead, these groups are comprised 'solely of government experts/national officials'. The Register cannot be searched by group category to filter out expert groups. Thus, it taps government and interest organization activity in particular policy areas, but may provide skewed results on the question of interest organization participation in these policy-making arenas. Also, the Register started in November 2005, two months before the end of the first year of analysis reported here, whereas CONECCS held data current for the calendar years of 2004, 2005 and 2006, enabling us to reliably tap formal policy participation opportunities for the full period of study.
167. European Commission Communication COM (2002) 704, 'General principles and minimum standards for consultation of interested parties by the Commission', chap. II, 'Overall rationale of the Commission's consultation process'.
168. A consultation may simply query stakeholders about the impact of a policy (e.g., the 2008 Enterprise and Industry public consultation, which was an online questionnaire for European businesses, seeking suggestions about reducing the administrative burdens put on businesses by the EU
169. (see: http://ec. europa.eu/enterprise/newsroom/cf/newsbytheme.cfm?display Type=consultation accessed May 2008).
170. Alternatively, a consultation may lead to the drafting or revision of a legislative proposal such as a White or Green Paper. The 2006 Audiovisual Industry consultation sought comments on the White Paper, 'A European Communication Policy'. A 2005 Employment and Social Affairs consultation sought input on the Green Paper, 'Confronting Demographic Change: A New Solidarity between the Generations'.
171. See: http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/consultations/index-en. htm# closed (accessed January 2008).
172. See http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/consultations/index-en. htm (accessed February 2008).
173. Richard Balme and Didier Chabanet, 'Introduction: Action collective et gouvernance de l'Union européenne', in R. Balme, D. Chabanet and V. Wright, eds, L'Action collective en Europe/Collective Action in Europe (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 2002), pp. 21-108, at pp. 45-7;
174. Bernard Wessels, 'Contestation Potential of Interest Groups in the European Union: Emergence, Structure, and Political Alliances', in G. Marks and M. R. Steenbergen, eds, European Integration and Political Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 198-219, at pp. 203-4.
175. Gray, Lowery, Fellowes and Anderson, 'Legislative Agendas and Interest Advocacy';
176. Lowery, Gray, Fellowes and Anderson, 'Living in the Moment'.
177. Wessels, 'Contestation Potential of Interest Groups'.
178. Unlike the other two measures, the value of consultative bodies was constant across the three years.
179. However, this was not especially a problem with the energy variables per se. The three energy variables were not closely related to each other, which also made it impossible to combine them in an index. Rather, the collinearity results from our effort to include a relatively few social guilds in our model via a complex set of interaction terms and a polynomial specification.
180. We do not, of course, wish to suggest that the 'social' or 'non-economic' organizations do not have economic interests. Indeed, trade unions are largely concerned about economic issues. Rather, this distinction refers to the bases of their support as measured by the supply variables in the model.
181. Justin Greenwood, 'Organized Civil Society and Democratic Legitimacy in the European Union', British Journal of Political Science, 37(2007), 333-57, p. 342.
182. Broscheid and Coen, 'Lobbying Activity and Fora Creation', p. 105.
183. William A. Maloney and Sigrid Rossteutscher, 'The Associational Universe in Europe', in William A. Maloney and Sigrid Rossteutscher, eds, Social Capital and Associations in European Democracies: A Comparative Analysis (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 39-78.
184. Olson, The Logic of Collective Action.
185. For example, in the US case, states with more potential supporters of a strong environmental policy would be expected to have more environmental interest organizations. And across states, those with more potential supporters of a strong education policy would be expected to have more education interest organizations. But because there is more widespread support in the US for education policy than for strong environmental policy, it could well be the case that there are fewer of the latter across all of the states than the former. Thus, democratic responsiveness would not require educational groups to be as active as environmental groups to achieve the same effect.
186. It is also possible that these differences might arise because the European Union has only more recently extended its policy brief to social issues. We do not find this plausible, given the marked difference between our results and our original expectations.
187. Mahoney, 'The Power of Institutions';
188. Eising, 'The Access of Business Interests'.
189. Virginia Gray, David Lowery and Erik Godwin, 'Public Preferences and Organized Interests in Health Policy: State Pharmacy Assistance Programs as Innovations', Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, 32 (2007), p. 89-129. (Pubitemid 350131616)
190. Broscheid and Coen, 'Lobbying Activity and Fora Creation';
191. Mahoney, Brussels vs the Beltway.
192. Mahoney, Brussels vs the Beltway, pp. 17-27.
193. Jeffrey M. Berry, The New Liberalism: The Rising Power of Citizen Groups (Washington, D. C.: The Brookings Institution, 1999).