Interest Group Influence and the European Green Deal: A Network Approach

• In Event: Competition among Political Elites from a Network Perspective

Abstract

The major aim of the interest groups in governance is to influence policy making. However, recent empirical studies show that not all the interest groups are equally successful at transmitting their preferences into policy proposals or outcomes at EU level. Existing literature mostly builds on traditional approaches treating actors independent from each other in a given structure and explains the variation in influence by referring to the attributes of the actors, issues and/or institution. However, in real life, actors are embedded in the networks and interacting with each other. The main logic of network approach is that interactions and dependency of actors can create huge political impacts and the position of a particular actor in the network leads to different political outcomes. This paper aims to explore the effect of network position of interest groups on their level of influence and asks the following: “How does the position of interest groups within the network impact its influence on the policy formulation?”. Adopting a network perspective, this study assumes that individuals are connected, and individual outcomes are related. The study adds value to the debate on the determinants of influence by examining this issue from a network perspective.
This paper focuses on the public consultation held by the European Commission on updating the EU Emissions Trading System for the analysis of interest groups network and their influence. The analysis is based on an original dataset identifying 342 interest groups’ network positions by using social network analysis techniques. The dependent variable of the study, influence, is measured by assessing groups’ preference attainment. Preferences are identified by coding policy position documents formally sent to the European Commission during the public consultation process. The Commission’s policy proposal adopted following the consultation is assessed as the outcome of this specific stage. In order to identify the preferences translated into outcomes, the correspondence between them will be examined. At the end, the correlation between the influence and the position of the interest group will be tested.

Author

• Ilgi Hamarat, Universitat Pompeu Fabra