Lobbying Across Multiple Levels: German Federal Institutions, European Union, and the Länder

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Patrick Bernhagen
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 455518560

The proposed research project investigates how organized interests coordinate their political activities across different levels of multilevel systems. Investigating legislative lobbying by business interest groups, associations representing diffuse interests, and firms, these organized interests are conceptualized as rational actors. Applying the arena framework common to the research unit, we consider routes of advocacy beyond the two principal routes – the national and the Brussels route – even when the focus is on legislation over which national policymakers have legal jurisdiction. Based on resource dependence and exchange theoretical perspectives, we identify additional routes in the context of conflicts that would be located at the national level unless and until one or more actors succeed in re-routing this conflict to the EU or subnational arena. If an interest group fails to overcome a national mobilization bias against its preferences, it can expand the conflict to, e.g., the EU level to compensate for the lack of national responsiveness to its needs. Once a piece of EU legislation returns to the national arena, its content likely differs from what the national government would have favored. Under these circumstances, interest groups seek to carry their agendas and/or circumvent conflict at the national level via the Brussels route first, aiming to influence its substance before the legislation reaches the national transposition or implementation process. Empirically, we will analyze a subsample of the 50 legislative proposals common to the research unit. The main unit of analysis is the interest organization in the context of the German multilevel system of government. The cases will vary with respect to policy area and their reach across the three levels of government to identify when, where, and how interest groups become active. The empirical analysis consists of two major components: (a) the identification and measurement of group behavior across these levels for a subsample of the research unit’s set of legislative proposals (in cooperation with P1), and (b) three detailed case studies on the strategic choices made by interest groups in navigating the multilevel system. The findings will contribute deeper insights to research on subnational lobbying and lobbying in federal systems, the literature on lobbying in the multilevel system of Europe, and research on venue choice and arena entry.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants