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This paper analyzes the relation between different forms of civic engagement and corruption. This first of all extends earlier analysis linking generalized trust to corruption by incorporating another element from the social capital complex (namely formal forms of civic engagement). Second, based on the idea that social networks' beneficial or harmful impact may depend on their characteristics, it investigates how the structure of social networks (i.e., inclusive vs. exclusive and isolated vs. connected) matters. Evaluating the engagement - corruption nexus for a cross-section of 20 European democracies in 2002/2003, we confirm that social networks are linked to corruption even when controlling for the effect of generalized trust, and that their relation to corruption is typespecific. These findings survive under various model specifications and robustness checks.

"Interest Organizations and European Union Politics" published on by Oxford University Press.

In corridor and dining-room conversations during the past eight years among national representatives and Secretariat officials in the handsome Chateau de la Muette on the western edge of Paris, it has often been boasted that the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) is the most successful of the many postwar experiments in international organization. The boast is supported with a variety of comparisons, some inevitably invidious.

This paper analyzes the relation between different forms of civic engagement and corruption. This first of all extends earlier analysis linking generalized trust to corruption by incorporating another element from the social capital complex (namely formal forms of civic engagement). Second, based on the idea that social networks' beneficial or harmful impact may depend on their characteristics, it investigates how the structure of social networks (i.e., inclusive vs. exclusive and isolated vs. connected) matters. Evaluating the engagement - corruption nexus for a cross-section of 20 European democracies in 2002/2003, we confirm that social networks are linked to corruption even when controlling for the effect of generalized trust, and that their relation to corruption is typespecific. These findings survive under various model specifications and robustness checks. (author's abstract)

International organization — Officials — Discrimination on grounds of sex — European Space Research Organization — Powers of the Appeals Board

Interest representation plays a systemic role in EU policy making and integration, recognised as such in the Treaty on European Union. Interest organisations supply technical and political information to the EU institutions, and EU institutions use interest organisations as agents of political communication. Interest organisations act as a proxy for an otherwise largely absent civil society, with a teeming population of groups advocating for every imaginable cause. Where groups are absent, so EU institutions have stimulated their formation. The result is a pluralist system of checks and balances, although the literature includes findings of 'islands' resembling corporatist practice. EU institutions have designed a range of procedures in support of 'an open and structured dialogue between the Commission and special interest groups,' now largely packaged as a 'Better Regulation' programme. Measures include funding for NGOs, consultation procedures accompanied by impact assessments, a Transparency Register to provide lobbying transparency, and measures for access to documents that enable civil society organisations to keep EU institutions accountable. A multi-level governance system further strengthens pluralist design, making it impossible for any one type of interest to routinely capture the diversity of EU decision making. A key controversy in the literature is how to assess influence, and whether lobbying success varies across interest group type. EU public policy making is regulatory, making for competitive interest group politics, often between different branches of business whose interests are affected differently by regulatory proposals. There are striking findings from the literature, including that NGOs are more successful than business organisations in getting what they want from EU public policy making, particularly where issues reach the status of high salience where they attract the attention of the European Parliament. A key innovation of the Lisbon Treaty involves a European Citizens' Initiative, ...