Lobbying Makes (Strange) Bedfellows: Explaining the Formation and Composition of Lobbying Coalitions in EU Legislative Politics
| Author | Iskander De Bruycker,Jan Beyers |
| Date | 01 November 2018 |
| Published date | 01 November 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321717728408 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717728408
Political Studies
2018, Vol. 66(4) 959 –984
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321717728408
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Lobbying Makes (Strange)
Bedfellows: Explaining the
Formation and Composition
of Lobbying Coalitions in EU
Legislative Politics
Jan Beyers and Iskander De Bruycker
Abstract
This article analyzes the formation of lobbying coalitions in European Union legislative politics.
Specifically, we investigate whether interest organizations establish coalitions and under which
conditions business interests and non-business interests join a coalition. Our explanatory
framework emphasizes three factors that drive coalition formation: the influence-seeking needs
of interest groups, the need to ensure organizational maintenance, and policy-related contextual
factors. To test our hypotheses, we analyze 72 policies initiated by the European Commission
between 2008 and 2010 and 143 semi-structured interviews with representatives of European
interest organizations. Our results demonstrate that non-governmental organizations that depend
relatively less on membership support are strongly inclined to engage in coalitions. Moreover, the
heterogeneous coalitions we identified—consisting of both business and non-business interests—
are usually situated in policy areas that enjoy considerable salience among the broader public and
emerge on issues that receive substantial media visibility.
Keywords
interest groups, coalitions, lobbying strategies, European Union
Accepted: 17 July 2017
Introduction
In December 2008, the European Commission (EC) proposed a directive on the collection
of waste from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) (COM (2008) 810), arousing
intense lobbying from both business interests and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs). One key issue in the proposal was whether producers of electronic equipment or
Department of Political Science, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
Corresponding author:
Jan Beyers, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Antwerp, Antwerp 2000,
Belgium.
Email: jan.beyers@uantwerpen.be
728408PSX0010.1177/0032321717728408Political StudiesBeyers and De Bruycker
research-article2017
Article
960 Political Studies 66(4)
member-states should be held responsible for achieving waste collection targets. As a
response to this proposal, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), a prominent
European environmental NGO, established a coalition together with various business
associations representing producers of electronic equipment. This coalition of “strange
bedfellows” was established to retain the responsibility for obtaining collection rates at
the member-state level. The coalition was a success; the member-states remained respon-
sible for waste collection targets, and collection targets were set at a reasonably high level
(interview ID: 10177). In contrast, an interest organization representing electrical and
electronic waste collection and recovery organizations—the WEEE Forum—sought to
establish an alliance with the producers of electronic equipment because they shared
many goals. However, this attempt to establish a coalition failed because some stakehold-
ers refrained from this because, as one interviewee argued, “probably because they feared
we would say something other than what they wanted” (interview ID: 70292).
This example highlights the role lobbying coalitions can play in European Union (EU)
legislative politics and demonstrates that interest groups may exert considerable influ-
ence when acting in a coalition. Coalition formation is mentioned by both practitioners
and academics as one of the most effective strategies to influence policy outcomes
(Hojnacki, 1997; Hula, 1999; Klüver, 2013; Mahoney and Baumgartner, 2015). By work-
ing together, interest organizations share resources and costs, establish a division of labor,
and send a credible signal that their policy views enjoy broad support. Although coalesc-
ing produces considerable advantages, it also entails some costs and risks (Hula, 1999).
Coalescing requires coordination costs and joint position taking. Moreover, involvement
in a coalition may compromise an interest group’s identity and its relation with the sup-
portive constituency. For these reasons, not all interest organizations will become part of
a lobbying coalition, and groups may prefer to lobby on their own. Obtaining more
detailed insights into the conditions under which interest organizations establish coali-
tions or lobby alone is important to further our understanding of how interest representa-
tion works. This information also sheds light on a key component of the strategic repertoire
upon which interest groups rely when seeking to achieve policy influence. For instance,
a high prevalence of lobbying coalitions implies that the alliances through which organ-
ized interests act matter more than the individual capabilities of the organized interests
that constitute these coalitions (Mahoney and Baumgartner, 2015).
In addition to the mere prevalence of lobbying coalitions, the internal composition of
these alliances can be instructive because it reveals patterns of alignment and the structure
of conflict in the representation of EU interests. Much of the literature distinguishes between
business and non-business interests as key categories and expects these categories to cor-
respond with a generic conflict pattern that characterizes most legislative lobbying (Coen,
2007; Danielian and Page, 1994; Dür and De Bièvre, 2007). The organization type (i.e. an
NGO or a business interest) affects mobilization patterns, coalition behavior, and policy
influence. A problem with this distinction is that it sometimes serves as an attractive and
intuitive narrative shortcut rather than a theoretically informed tool to distinguish between
substantively different interests. It is true that business groups and NGOs often stand against
each other, but on other occasions, such as in the aforementioned example, business inter-
ests and environmental NGOs join forces and establish coalitions.
This phenomenon leads us to examine under which conditions interest groups lobby
alone or join a coalition. Moreover, it invites us to analyze how coalitions are composed
and whether and when business lobbyists join forces with non-business lobbyists. To
answer these questions, this article is structured as follows. First, we develop a conceptual
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