Learning to Lobby the European Union: 20 Years of Change

Abstract

Abstract It is universally accepted that there has been a huge growth in European Union (EU) lobbying, at the EU and national levels, over the past two decades. There is now a dense EU interest group system and a concurrent explosion of EU interest groups studies (Mazey and Richardson 1993; Kohler-Koch and Eising 1999; Coen 2007; Beyer et al. 2008). However, while much progress has been made in collating interest group populations (Butt Philip 1989; Greenwood 1997, 2005; Berkhout and Lowery 2008), discussing mobilization strategies (Coen 1998; Beyers 2002; Eising 2004), and identifying access criteria to institutions (Bouwen 2002; Broscheid and Coen 2003), few studies have explained the full ‘EU lobbying footprint’ in a multilevel and institutional environment. This volume seeks to understand the role of interest groups in the policy process from agenda-setting to implementation.