Consultation of stakeholders: window-dressing or instrument of influence?

Governmental entities such as the EU Commission regularly consult with societal stakeholders. In such consultations, a variety of different tools are used ranging from open online consultations over stakeholder conferences to discussions in closed policy fora. Recent research has demonstrated how the range and diversity of the consulted actors vary across these consultation formats. Yet, we have limited knowledge about the value societal stakeholders attach to their participation in consultation. Do stakeholders see consultation as a mainly symbolic activity or as something that provides for actual influence on proposed regulation? Moreover, does this evaluation vary between different actor types or across consultation tools? To answer these questions, this paper draws on a new survey administered to stakeholders registered in the EU transparency register. We ask stakeholders to evaluate different consultation tools on various dimensions and employ survey experiments to obtain information about dimensions that may appear illegitimate to participants.