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This book presents the first large-scale study of lobbying strategies and outcomes in the United States and the European Union, two of the most powerful political systems in the world. Every day, tens of thousands of lobbyists in Washington and Brussels are working to protect and promote their interests in the policymaking process. Policies emanating from these two spheres have global impactsthey set global standards, they influence global markets, and they determine global politics. Armed with extensive new data, Christine Mahoney challenges the conventional stereotypes that attribute any di

Scholars have avoided studying interest group influence because of the difficulty operationalising the concept. The research presented here introduces a new way of measuring lobbying success and lays out a model of its determinants. To understand why interest groups sometimes succeed and at other times fail, we must consider the institutional structure of the political system within which the advocates are operating; the characteristics of the issue at hand; and finally the characteristics of the interest group itself and their lobbying strategy. I test these factors with original data based on interviews with 149 advocates in Washington D.C. and Brussels active on a random sample of 47 policy issues. From the results, issue context emerges as a much more important determinant of lobbying success than institutional differences. The institutional differences that do emerge suggest that direct elections coupled with private campaign finance lead to winner-take-all outcomes biased in favour of wealthier business interests, while the lack of these institutional characteristics leads to more balanced policy compromises with more advocates achieving some of their policy goals.

This article investigates the ways in which government activity, or demand-side forces, influence interest mobilization and formal inclusion in the policy-making process in the European Union. Drawing on an original dataset of nearly 700 civil society groups active in the European Union, the paper provides empirical evidence of three routes by which the EU institutions influence interest group activity: (1) direct interest group subsidy; (2) manipulation of the establishment and composition of formal arenas of political debate; and (3) broader, system-wide expansion of competencies and selective development of chosen policy areas.

AbstractFraming plays an important role in lobbying, as interest groups strategically highlight some aspects of policy proposals while ignoring others to shape policy debates in their favour. However, due to methodological difficulties, we have remarkably little systematic data about the framing strategies of interest groups. This article therefore proposes a new technique for measuring interest group framing that is based on a quantitative text analysis of interest group position papers and official policy documents. We test this novel methodological approach on the basis of two case studies in the areas of environmental and transport policy in the European Union. We are able to identify the frames employed by all interest groups mobilised in a debate and assess their effectiveness by studying to what extent decision-makers move closer to their policy positions over the course of the policy debate.