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Whom do European corporations lobby? The domestic institutional determinants of interest group activity in the European Union

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2017

Sean D. Ehrlich*
Affiliation:
Florida State University — Political Science, Tallahassee, FL, USA
Eryn Jones
Affiliation:
Florida State University — Political Science, Tallahassee, FL, USA
*
Corresponding author: Sean D. Ehrlich, e-mail: sehrlich@fsu.edu
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Abstract

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The complicated and multi-layered policymaking process in the European Union presents private interests, such as business firms, with an interesting strategic choice of whom and how to lobby. As the costs of lobbying at the domestic level increase, firms are expected to, instead, devote their resources to lobbying at the European level. Specifically, this article examines how domestic access points and domestic partisanship affect the costs and benefits of lobbying at the domestic versus European level. Using data on firm-level decisions to lobby the EU, this research finds that in countries where is it more costly (or less beneficial) to lobby domestically, firms are more likely to lobby at the EU level.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 

Footnotes

Article note: A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.

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