Multilevel venue-shopping in Europe: A comparative analysis of interest organizations in four EU member-states

Beyers, Jan (2009) Multilevel venue-shopping in Europe: A comparative analysis of interest organizations in four EU member-states. [Conference Proceedings] (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This paper describes and explains the variable extent to which domestic interest organizations seek access to the multiple venues provided by the EU system of governance. Our in-depth analysis of four member-states – France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany – reveals substantial variance in multilevel venue-shopping, differences that disconfirm some descriptive accounts reported in the Europeanization literature. Surprising is that French organizations develop extensive Europeanized network strategies whereas the political strategies of Dutch interest organizations are, compared to other countries, rather weakly Europeanized. Our multivariate analysis reveals that the nature of policy issues significantly explains the extensiveness of multilevel venue-shopping and that generic information on policy sector or the interest organization’s political capabilities has little explanatory power. These conclusions are due to a fine-grained measurement instrument that takes into consideration the actors involvement in specific policy issues as well as the fragmented nature of the demand-side of interest group politics.

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