Comparing the domestic and the EU lobbying context: perceived agenda-setting influence in the multi-level system of the European Union

Abstract:

The contribution analyses whether the factors affecting perceived interest group influence on political agendas differ depending on whether groups lobby in their own domestic context or seek influence at the European Union (EU) level. Findings from a multinomial logistic regression analysis based on survey responses from 1,723 domestic interest groups in the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Netherlands do not indicate that differences in the national setting are important for perceived group influence at the two levels. However, they underline how the decision-making level acts as a contextual factor, which conditions the explanatory potential of other crucial variables: Embeddedness into domestic decision-making is primarily an asset for securing perceived influence on the national rather than the EU agenda, whereas group resources matter more at the EU than the national level. In this way our multi-level design underlines how the state-of-play for securing perceived influence varies across lobbying contexts.

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