Large Firm Interactions with Policymakers at Multiple Levels of European Governance

Nation states provide important incentive structures and normative and institutional contexts for corporate behaviour. However, research on lobbying in the EU suggests tempered expectations concerning the impact of national modes of interest mediation. We investigate two explanatory variables as potential causes of this variation: the domestic political context and business specific features. In respect to domestic factors we are particularly interested in whether, in comparison to firms based within a pluralist domestic setting, companies that enjoy the traditional associational representation opportunities of corporatist systems find the European policy setting more conflictual. In respect to business factors, we explore sectoral characteristics, industry concentration, and the firms’ relative level of international exposure. We test these rival predictors of multilevel engagement and their interaction with a set of 100 large German and British companies, spanning the principal sectors of the European economy. We find considerable variation in the level of political engagement by large firms across multiple levels of governance. Moreover, the quality of the relationships between policymakers and corporations differs both within and across layers of governance.