Multilevel Interest Representation and EU Policy-Making: A Comparative Perspective

The EU multilevel polity has a sizeable impact on interest groups and their opportunities to influence EU policy-making. However, the comparative analysis of the involvement of national groups in EU political debates has been somewhat lacking. In this paper, we address this gap. We investigate the lobbying strategies of almost 4,000 national interest organizations from five member states (Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). Drawing on original data from research on 20 EU directive proposals that were tabled between 2008 and 2010 by the European Commission, we examine which voice and access options national interest groups have pursued vis-a-vie European and national political institutions. The comprehensiveness and the proposal-based character of our sample enable us to explore the impacts that national contexts, organizational traits, and issue characteristics have on the representation of interests in the EU's multilevel system.