Projects / Programmes
Opening the black-box of policy consultations in EU policymaking
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 5.06.01 |
Social sciences |
Political science |
Politology |
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 5.06 |
Social Sciences |
Political science |
interest groups, Evropska unija, policy consultations, democracy, policymaking
Data for the last 5 years (citations for the last 10 years) on
June 28, 2024;
A3 for period
2018-2022
Data for ARIS tenders (
04.04.2019 – Programme tender,
archive
)
| Database |
Linked records |
Citations |
Pure citations |
Average pure citations |
| WoS |
76 |
335 |
286 |
3.76 |
| Scopus |
98 |
789 |
680 |
6.94 |
Researchers (14)
Organisations (1)
Abstract
With populist parties on the rise, dropping voters’ turnout and decreasing trust in political parties and institutions, European countries are facing democratic deficit. The latter is an even more pressing issue at the supranational level. Due to the lack of legitimacy of its institutions, the European Union (EU) has been especially a subject of criticism for its democratic deficit. Consequently, European Commission has taken several measures towards more inclusive governance with the aim to improve legitimacy of policies formulated at the EU level. This includes turn towards participatory democracy and inclusion of interest groups and other stakeholders in policymaking. Although stakeholders can take advantage of various opportunity structures at the EU level, organisation of policy consultations in the policy formulation stage of EU policymaking provides the tool for broader mobilisation of interests where individuals as well as interest groups can take part. Lately, scholars have raised concern that despite openness of policy consultations, interest representation remains biased. Thus, equal representation in participatory democracy is questionable, as various studies stipulates that economic interests, transnational interest groups and interest groups from older, Western democracies, are more likely to enter complex process of EU policymaking. This project aims to empirically approach the normative issue of interest groups’ access to and influence on policymaking process, tackling the issue of interest groups’ (un)equal representation in relation to democratic deficit/legitimacy at the EU level. The focus will be on policy consultations, organized in the frame of policy formulation stage, that remains black box of EU policymaking. In particular, it is unclear how the Commission handles interest groups’ consultation contributions and what the Commission actually considers when preparing legislative proposals, what is left out, and on what grounds. The project aims to answer what are the main characteristics of interest groups that participate in policy consultations in policy formulation stage at the EU level, which factors determine the influence of interest groups on outputs of policy consultations, and what is the bias in access and influence. To do so, we will conduct intensive analysis organised in 5 activities and 9 work packages that will include: analysis of sample of policy consultations organised in the Commission’s 2014–2019 mandate, mapping of the population of interest groups that responded to policy consultations, content analyses on interest groups’ contributions and Commission’s legislative proposals to measure the influence of interest groups on policy results, online survey among interest groups representatives, and face-to-face interviews with EC policy officials to understand how policy consultations at the EU level are organised and implemented and what are their policy effects. Previous research has been limited to the study of bias in access and on the analyses of characteristics of interest groups that participated in consultations and their contributions. Unanswered remains the factors that determine the interest groups’ influence, how does bias in access translate to the bias in influence, and how EU policy officials decide whose positions submitted in the frame of policy consultations and on which basis are considered. The proposed project seeks to close these research gaps. Answering these questions will address also the issue of contribution of participatory democracy to the quality of democracy, reduction of the democratic deficit and improvement of legitimacy of policymaking at the EU level. The project will be implemented by the members of the Centre for Political Science Research at the Faculty of Social Sciences, which is one of the leading research centres in scrutinising European integration processes. The project team has rich experiences in interest groups research and EU policymaking.
