Lobbying Success in the European Union

The Role of Information and Frames

Daniel Rasch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351211369
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Having information is key for most political decisions – both for decision-makers and societal actors. This is especially crucial in democratic countries where external stakeholders are invited to participate in decision-making pro- cesses. Assuming that every actor that gets involved in decision-making processes has a particular lobbying goal, there is a
heterogeneous set of actors competing against each other to provide information to the decision-makers. This competition leads some stakeholders to be more successful in achieving their goals than others. Frames, and the framing of information, play an important role in such lobbying success.

In this book, Daniel Rasch questions whether and, if so, how, information impacts lobbying success and shows how various actors perform in three instances of European decision-making. He does so by combining findings from a qualitative content analysis with the results of a cross-case analysis using the quantified qualitative data. The new dataset contains a representative sample of over 200 position papers from EU level and national consultations, press releases and evidence from national stakeholders in Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Lobbying Success in the European Union effectively bridges research on interest mediation and framing studies, and offers a new model for measuring stakeholders' success. This new and pragmatic approach to study lobbying success using a traceable and easy to use instrument can be adapted to any policy analysis and any issue.

1 Introduction

Having information is key for most political decisions – both for decision-makers as well as societal actors. Information helps to inform and evaluate as well as make decisions on political issues – it is the currency of lobbying (Bouwen 2002, 2004; Klüver 2011; Chalmers 2013; Eising et al. 2015). Many stakeholders compete for information and its provision to decision-makers, especially in democracies where external stakeholders are invited to participate in decision-making processes. Assuming every actor who becomes involved in decision-making processes has a certain goal, there will be a heterogeneous set of actors representing different interests of society, for example consumers’ or business interests. This set of actors consists of different types of organizations, such as citizens’ initiatives, highly specialized business representatives, workers’ unions, environmental groups and even institutional representatives like city councils. The competition between these actors means that at the end of the policy process some stakeholders are more successful in achieving their goals than others. Identifying losers and winners of the decision-making process is important for “European/EU democracy, political legitimacy and European politics generally” (Beyers et al. 2008: 1117) to detect a potential bias in this process (see also Bunea 2014).

The formulation of European legislation is a highly institutionalized, multi-dimensional and multi-level process in which different institutions share decision-making in a close relationship with the society and its actors because of its pluralistic system. European decisions are the result of negotiations and bargaining efforts and normally have consequences for all member states in terms of changes to existing national laws or establishing new political instruments. Several interests are voiced and need to be taken into account during decision-making. If we understand these interests as actors’ goals, we can measure whether they have achieved the desired state of affairs at the end of the decision-making process.

This book focuses on the presentation of such goals, from societal actors as well as decision-makers. It asks the questions, who proposes what, but mainly, how, and with what success? The different forms of presentations can best be described by the concept of frames. The literature on framing provides promising instruments and approaches for measuring the presentation of content and the different effects of different presentations. Frames and the activity of framing can shortly be defined as “to select aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text” (Entman 1993: 52). Others define frames more negatively or more positively: frames can be interpreted as a manipulation of information (negatively) or the communication of a perspective on an issue (positively). Using frames, actors promote a certain understanding of an issue to persuade the decision-maker to integrate the organizations’ goals.

However, analyzing the decision-making process and the effect of frames on lobbying success implies one important feature: policy-making is a communicative process in which decision-makers communicate with societal actors and where goals and therefore interests can be exchanged and frames can be used. For every policy, issues need to be defined and policy alternatives discussed and chosen as well as formulated, implemented and evaluated (see Jann and Wegrich 2007). Communication and therefore frames play an important role in all these stages.

Communication has various forms and can use a variety of channels; it is seen as a strategic element for stakeholders and especially interest organizations. Beyers differentiated between voice and access strategies (Beyers 2004), while others distinguish between inside or outside strategies (for example Dür 2008): every lobbying strategy needs a form of communication. The European Union (EU) has an institutionalized and formalized interaction and therefore communication between European and national institutions as well as the actors in member states’ societies (Smith 1990).

Many of these formalized interactions are described by the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU – see Möstl 2010) and several other documents such as the whitepaper on governance (EC 2001) in order to institutionalize the consultative relationship between EU institutions and societal actors even further. However, interest group scholars have pointed to the fact that only some institutions play an important role and provide real opportunities for societal actors to be successful. The most often addressed institutions are the European Commission (EC), the Council and its Presidency and the European Parliament (EP) (Panke 2012). Similarly, collective action and influence studies point out that only some parts of a society become organized in order to participate in the political processes (Aspinwall and Greenwood 1998; Dür and De Bièvre 2007), which means that the consultation process itself might already be biased toward more active and engaged actors.

This book looks at frames as the communicative part of interest mediation, interest representation or lobbying – whichever concept is used. These three concepts are most often used and used interchangeably although they actually differ very much.

Whereas interest mediation and interest representation are broad terms which cover different strategic and institutional aspects of interest mediation (Greenwood 2011), lobbying has several positive as well as negative connotations. This comes from the fact that there is no clear definition of the term. Some definitions emphasize a procedural aspect, where lobbyism is “non-institutionalized advocacy towards public officials in power,” operationalized as direct contact with Members of the Parliament (translated from Möller 2009: 1). Other definitions focus on the outcome: “lobbyists who try to persuade politicians to make a decision, which is favorable for the lobbyists’ clients” (translated from Sundström 1998: 9). Another definition of lobbyism highlights different strategic elements: lobbyism is an interaction

either by direct means (such as using a lobbyist) or indirect means (such as through a public demonstration), with a view to influencing current policy or creating a relationship conducive to shaping future policy to the benefit of that group or interest.

(Thomas 2005: 283)

Other authors differ between information and pressure-based lobbying, where the latter is “lobbying through threats, defined as contingent punishments or rewards that are applied by the interest group itself, and informational lobbying as lobbying through transmission of information without any contingent punishments or rewards” (Gullberg 2013: 614).

Coming back to the understanding of decision-making as a communicative process, the information about contingent punishments or rewards has to be communicated. For this reason, having and presenting information to decision-makers is the most important form of lobbying. This book follows a broader understanding of informational lobbying. It is defined as a process whereby stakeholders provide any form of information to decision-makers in the hope of getting their interests (goals) represented by the outcome.

The book focuses on informational lobbying, defined as the exchange of content between stakeholders and decision-makers through different channels of communication – such as national or EU level consultations or even the media. Recent studies support this, by suggesting that decision-makers have an informational demand that societal actors meet. Decision-makers face an uncertain environment that is highly complex. They lack important information needed to fulfill their policy goals, namely, to formulate effective and good legislation that helps them to stay in office (Smith 1990; Austen-Smith 1993; Bouwen 2002, 2004; Crombez 2002; Bennedsen and Feldmann 2006; Hall and Deardorff 2006; Chalmers 2011, 2013; Klüver 2012a, 2012b, 2013).

Studying informational lobbying means looking at the success of the different stakeholders. Successful informational lobbying means getting one or more goals successfully adopted by decision-makers at the end of the policy debate.

But how should we study the success of stakeholders?

Influence, Power and Success – A Discussion of Key Concepts

Early studies on the integration of societal actors into the decision-making process can be traced back to (neo-)pluralism or (neo-)corporatism research (see Lowery 2007 for an overview). An early definition of power is an actor A forcing an actor B to do something he or she would not have done without the pressure of actor A, a form of power described by Max Weber (Winkelmann 1980). However, the term “structural power” appears more often. Structural power refers to the power over structures, such as credit capacities or information that can be used to collaborate with the governments in order to arrive at a functioning market (Smith 1990: 316). Other forms of power are described using the differences between power over outcome and power over resources. The first refers to the ability to change an outcome, the latter to collecting resources. “Power is seen as causing changes in the behavior of others,” McFarland writes (2007: 47).

The problem that occurs with the term “power” is its operationalization. Power over structures or resources might not necessarily lead to power over outcomes. Power can exist without an actor taking action, because it might simply be based on resources or structures and is therefore hard to measure and almost unobservable as such.

That is why interest group scholars focused more intensively on the term “influence”: it describes the potential of a stakeholder to move the outcome toward his or her preferences and interests (see Nagel 1975). Another definition shows the closeness to power: “by influence is meant ability to get others to act, think, or feel as one intends. […] the appropriate people must be persuaded, deceived, coerced, inveigled, or otherwise induced to do what is required of them” (Banfield 1961: 13, quoted in Weaver-Hightower 2014: 117).

Like power, the concept of influence misses a clear-cut operationalization to measure the causal relationship between an event and an actor (Lowery 2013). Lowery suggests that influence can be based on different factors, such as authority, respect, gratification, rational persuasion or changing perceptions (Lowery 2013: 5–6). In addition, when measuring influence, a researcher should be aware of influence not being observable because: (a) the influence took place without public knowledge; (b) the agenda was already set and full; (c) there are more than just two sides of the game, including a status quo; (d) it is a long term and multi-dimensional process where losing on one issue might lead to winning on another; (e) selection and sampling errors; (f) simply luck; and (g) decision-makers simply decided not to listen to societal actors (Klüver 2013; Lowery 2013).

Dür’s work on how to measure influence captures the methodological challenges and compares three different methods, namely, process tracing, assessing “attributed influence” and degree of preference attainment. In process tracing, researchers try to uncover the causes and effects step by step. This means,

with respect to measuring interest group influence, scholars scrutinize groups’ preferences, their influence attempts, their access to decision-makers, decision-makers’ responses to the influence attempts, the degree to which groups’ preferences are reflected in outcomes and groups’ statements of (dis-)satisfaction with the outcome.

(Dür 2008: 562)

Attributed influence studies are mostly carried out with surveys, either by asking actors to provide a self-assessment of their influence or by asking them to assess the influence of other groups (i.e., actor B assesses the influence of actor A). The third method, degree of preference attainment, looks at the outcomes of political processes and compares these with the ideal goals of actors. The distance between an outcome and the ideal point of an actor is the indicator of the influence of the actor. However, as Dür stresses, none of these three methods can draw a full picture on its own. He proposes three solutions: first, to either triangulate the findings from different studies; second, to use big N-studies; or third, to calculate the degree of preference attainment with absolute values of paired comparisons (Dür 2008).

Comparing the concepts of power and influence in the 1960s, Dahl ordered them hierarchically, arguing that influence is the broadest of the two concepts and that power is a type of influence (Dahl 1963: 62). In both concepts, preferences or interests are the unit of analysis and indicate whether the dependent variable, influence or power, is achieved. In addition, interests are often only loosely defined as claims or wishes societal actors have and would like to see adopted by decision-makers (Willems and von Winter 2007). “A preference is a comparative evaluation of (i.e., a ranking over) a set of objects” (Druckman 2004: 673) – an ordered list of alternative actions or interests where an actor clearly prefers alternative A to alternative B. Often, preferences are not clearly distinguishable and an actor might make a wish or claim but not a list of alternatives and least preferred options.

In order to achieve a simpler method for the measurement of influence and a smaller unit of analysis, researchers have treated access as an alternative indicator for influence (e.g. Bouwen 2002; Chalmers 2013). Access is defined as “the exchange of policy relevant information with public officials through formal or informal networks” (Beyers 2004: 213). Although scholars stress that access does not automatically lead to influence, they say that it is a necessary condition for being influential. Actors must have contact with decision-makers in order to communicate their interests and preferences.

However, there are two problems that occur when using access as an indicator for influence: first, as Streeck and Schmitter (1991) put it, actors, and especially interest organizations, have to balance the logic of membership and the logic of influence. Whereas the logic of membership requires building compromises inside the organization and provides members at the same time with the advantages of getting their interests potentially better represented, the logic of influence makes it necessary to adopt positions in relation to the institutional setting and to negotiate with decision-makers. Here, interest organizations have to decide which of these two logics to follow during a policy process. Assuming that actors such as interest organizations represent a special constituency who pay for their membership and expect a certain amount of benefit from this, there is pressure to represent the constituency’s interests and not just to “be there” without being influential. Klüver supports this arguing that influencing decisions is a core interest for interest organizations (Klüver 2012b: 211). Being there and having access is important but this is not what legitimates interest organizations especially, since decision-makers can choose from a range of information that is supplied by competing interests. Interest representation must be successful to a certain degree and frequency of contact might not necessarily indicate successful actors.

Second, at the same time as stakeholders, like interest organizations, face a certain pressure to be successful, decision-makers might also have to fulfill goals and needs – especially if they want to get re-elected or to stay in office, as party literature suggests (see, for example, De Winter 2009). Although this argument needs to be considered specific...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Researching Informational Lobbying and the Effect of Frames
• 3 Measuring Lobbying Goals and Lobbying Success
• 4 Lobbying Success in the European Union: Three Case Studies
• 5 Conclusion
• Appendix
• Index