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The imposition of the 1989 EU framework directive resulted in new Danish legislation on workplace assessment (WPA) to establish a mandatory participatory process to regulate the work environment in all firms. Initial studies of the legislation's implementation show that while smaller firms are not complying with the new requirements, larger firms are. A closer analysis, however, shows that the ambitions behind the law are still not being fully realized. By analysing the results from the perspective of different theories, this article addresses which strategies can be followed in order to develop WPA activities and thereby the participatory programme established by the Danish law on work environment.

The paper focuses on the link between the two 'channels of political influence that exist in most liberal democracies: the electoral‐parliamentary channel with political parties as the crucial structures intermediating between citizens and decision‐makers, and the organizational‐corporate channel with interest groups as intermediating structures. Although the two avenues open to citizens' demands may often function as alternatives, they are not independent of each other. Thus, the involvement of organizational and institutional interests affects the level of partisan conflict in the law‐making process. The main assumption is that if bills are drafted by the active participation of external actors, they are likely to be passed at a relatively low level of conflict in parliament. A number of specific hypotheses based on this assumption are tested on data pertaining to Government bills passed by the Danish parliament 1972–74. The hypotheses relate to different types of bill preparation, subsequent outside contacts to parliamentary committees indicating societal disagreement on bills, and different areas of public policy. While the evidence gives strong support to the hypotheses it also indicates limits to the influence of external actors. This suggests an important difference between the two channels: like the corporate channel the parliamentary channel is one of influence, but unlike the corporate channel, it is also one of national responsibility.