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This article explores the nature of long-term interactions between bureaucrats and interest groups by examining two behavioral logics associated with stability in public policy making. In addition to the implicit short-term strategic choices that usually feature in resource-exchange explanations of interest group access to policy makers, this article shows that bureaucracy–interest group interactions are likely to be dictated by routine behavior and anticipating future consequences as well. By drawing on survey and face-to-face interview data of Dutch senior civil servants and interest groups, the analyses reveal that a practice of regular consultations, the need for political support, and a perceived influential position together explain why bureaucrats maintain interactions with interest groups. The combination of these behavioral logics adds important explanatory leverage to existing resource-exchange explanations and shows that organizational processes as well as long-term strategic considerations should be taken into account to fully explain bureaucracy–interest group interactions.

The literature offers individually valid yet collectively inconsistent hypotheses concerning the nature of public agencies' responsiveness to interest groups. This article analyzes the nature of this responsiveness by examining the brokerage potential of public agencies among interest groups. Such a brokerage potential is hypothesized to follow from agencies' preferences for policy goods as well as the tendency of interest groups to seek access to public agencies. It combines analyses of agencies' demand for policy goods with interest groups preferences for seeking access to specific policy venues. The analyses are based on survey data of national civil servants and interest groups in the United Kingdom and in the Netherlands. The findings suggest that both strategic preferences as well as organizational routines positively correlate with a brokerage potential while interaction patterns within and with the organizational environment of public agencies can constrain their brokerage potential in several distinct ways.

AbstractA recently emerging literature demonstrates that reputational concerns explain why regulatory agencies strategically communicate and engage with their manifold audience. We complement this literature by examining the potential of strategic communication as a reputational and regulatory strategy. Based on a reputational approach to public agencies, we assume agencies to strategically diversify between proactively or reactively engaging with public concerns raised by their audiences, depending on whether a core or evolving competency is at stake. We test these assumptions empirically by examining frame alignment between formal communication of the European Central Bank (ECB) and public concerns raised by ECB audiences. Our analysis yields two key findings. First, our findings indicate external frame alignment signaling a strategic reactive strategy by the ECB to diversify its timing in responding to concerns raised by its audiences. Second, we find a pattern of internal frame alignment between the ECB's core competencies and evolving competencies, indicating strategic linkage of attention to various competencies. Our study demonstrates how analyzing an agency's formal communication in tandem with public concerns of its audiences via machine learning techniques can significantly improve our understanding of agency responsiveness and yields significant insights into the democratic legitimacy of regulatory agencies.

AbstractThe European Commission's outreach to interest groups implies that they function as 'transmission belts' that aggregate and articulate interests as policy‐relevant information for policy‐makers. Operating as a transmission belt, however, requires an organizational design fit for this purpose. We offer one of the first systematic analyses of how organizational design affects interest group access to public officials. We draw from a novel dataset of 248 EU‐level interest groups including data on several dimensions of organizational design. One of our key findings is that qualified majority and consensus‐facilitating decision‐making procedures help interest groups gain access to administrative and political officials, whereas functional differentiation is important to get access to administrative officials, but not to political officials. Our findings thus demonstrate the relevance of organizational design in gaining access as well as the need to incorporate varying informational demands of public officials to properly explain interest group access to public decision‐making.

The degree to which interest groups gain access to policymakers has often been explained by focusing on the exchange of resources in a dyadic relation between interest groups and policymakers. This article argues that the position an interest group occupies within a coalition and the relations it has outside its coalition substantially affect the likelihood of gaining access to policymakers. Our empirical focus is on the Dutch interest group system for which we examine how coalitions among groups and the network position of interest groups within and between such coalitions shape access. The analysis, based on data collected among 107 Dutch interest groups and 28 policymakers, leads to the conclusion that network positions count differently for elected and non-elected officials, and that network ties that bridge different coalitions add significant explanatory leverage to resource-based explanations of access. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThe degree to which interest groups gain access to policymakers has often been explained by focusing on the exchange of resources in a dyadic relation between interest groups and policymakers. This article argues that the position an interest group occupies within a coalition and the relations it has outside its coalition substantially affect the likelihood of gaining access to policymakers. Our empirical focus is on the Dutch interest group system for which we examine how coalitions among groups and the network position of interest groups within and between such coalitions shape access. The analysis, based on data collected among 107 Dutch interest groups and 28 policymakers, leads to the conclusion that network positions count differently for elected and non-elected officials, and that network ties that bridge different coalitions add significant explanatory leverage to resource-based explanations of access.

AbstractCriminological literature has often pointed to the absence or weakness of existing international regulation as important explanatory factors of corporate crime in global markets. This paper addresses the presence of multiple parallel, nested and overlapping regulatory regimes, and explores how such international regime complexity creates pathways to corporate crime. We use the Volkswagen diesel fraud case as a plausibility probe to illustrate such pathways to corporate crime. Our tentative analysis suggests that Volkswagen's fraud in the US cannot be seen as independent of the EU regulatory regime, which was more lenient and offered various opportunities for creative compliance. We conclude that a regime complexity perspective is a promising addition to existing explanations of corporate crime in international settings and suggest a research agenda for future in-depth analyses of the implications of parallel and conflicting regulatory regimes for corporate crime.

Consultation of major interest groups is a widespread administrative practice in many EU member states. To date it is unclear, however, how advancing European integration influences domestic consultation practices. This article examines the impact of European integration on domestic consultation practices by conceptualizing how the underlying rationales of government–interest group interactions and the level of involvement of interest groups are affected by European integration. The study draws on original survey data on senior civil servants in Britain and the Netherlands to empirically examine these effects. European integration is related in a limited way to domestic consultation practices, both in Britain and the Netherlands. This small but significant effect is mostly observed during the process of domestic preference formulation in EU‐level policy making. Our findings suggest that intra‐organizational processes, for example organizational routines and task‐specialization, potentially play a greater role than has thus far been appreciated in Europeanization studies.