The Fate of Diffuse Interests

Transcription

1 The Fate of Diffuse Interests Policy Framing and Lobbying Success in Multi-level Decision-Making: The Case of EU Consumer Protection Policy Paper prepared for the 2 nd Research Conference on Civil Society and Democracy Austrian Research Association Working Group on Democracy November 9 10, 2012 Vienna Work in progress Do not cite or circulate without the author s permission Jan Henning Ullrich, M.A. Doctoral Candidate Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences jan.ullrich@hu-berlin.de - 0 -

2 Abstract Convention has it that the multi-level governance structure of the EU political system enhances the chances of representatives of diffuse interests, such as consumer demands, to successfully compete with strong specific interests, e.g. producer interests, in the political arena. Some scholars argue that the fragmented decision making structures and dispersed authority distribution at and across many levels, which are characteristic of such a political entity, provide advocates of rather hard-to-mobilize societal demands with myriads of entry possibilities to the policy making process. Thus, multilevelness is considered to increase the chances for a broad range of interests to be heard by important political personnel when formulating new rules to govern social transactions. Yet political authorities at the supranational level are continually exposed to harsh criticism voiced by official consumer representatives with advocates pointing to the adoption of regulations and directives that mirror industry and producer interests, oftentimes at the expense of vital consumer interests. How can we account for this puzzling phenomenon given that EU policy makers frequently express the priority of consumer safety? What is further puzzling is that we lack theories that explain, firstly, why political actors take on positions revealed by particular non-state actors, and, secondly, why the latter actors would most likely be representatives of diffuse interests only? I argue that what has been fairly overlooked in the literature on lobbying success so far is the crucial importance of issue framing tactics employed by interest groups and the possibilities and determinants of policy calibration through such processes of collectively establishing images of issues and forming diverse lobbying coalitions that (temporarily) represent these policy images. Hypotheses which are derived from the theoretical model will (eventually) be tested against the case of the 2011 EU regulation on food labeling. For data collecting purposes detailed computer-assisted document analysis is used and I combine preference attainment with process tracing methods to reveal the crucial causal mechanisms behind lobbying success in EU consumer protection policy

3 1. Introduction Convention has it that so called multi-level governance structures can enhance the chances of representatives of marginalized, weak or, put in classical terms, diffuse interests, such as consumer demands, to successfully compete with strong specific interests, e.g. producer interests, in the political arena. Some scholars argue that the fragmented decision making structures and dispersed authority distribution at and across many levels, which are characteristic of such a political entity, provide advocates of rather hard-to-mobilize societal demands with myriads of entry possibilities to the policy making process. Thus, multilevelness is considered to increase the chances for a broad range of societal interests to be heard by important political personnel when formulating new rules to govern social transactions (Pollack 1997; Strünck 2006). What is puzzling, though, is that we lack theories that explain, firstly, why political actors take on positions revealed by particular non-state actors, and, secondly, why the latter actors would most likely be representatives of diffuse interests only. Here I argue that what has been fairly overlooked so far is the crucial importance of issue framing and, thus, the possibilities and determinants of policy calibration through processes of collectively establishing images of issues and forming diverse lobbying coalitions that (temporarily) represent these policy images. I build on a recently established research program on lobbying success and policy framing in the EU and the US (Baumgartner/Jones 2009 [1993]: Chap. 2; Baumgartner et al. 2009; Chong/Druckman 2007; Daviter 2007, 2011; Lowery 2009; Mahoney/Baumgartner 2010) and I argue that what is further needed is a theory that links established concepts developed by various interest group researchers with a framing approach that puts emphasis on the concerted selection of single aspects of a particular policy issue, to account for the understudied phenomenon of (un)successful lobbying efforts of diffuse interest groups in multi-level settings. Besides seeking to enhance the theoretical knowledge of how framing constitutes a major type of lobbying strategy and how it increases the chances to successfully sway policy outputs, I aim to show how argumentation in general has to be seen as a central element of politics (Mahoney/Baumgartner 2010: 8). 1.1 The significance of policy framing approaches in the analysis of lobbying success: Outline of the argument Policy issues are usually characterized by multidimensionality, i.e. the possibility of several policy images (Baumgartner/Jones 2009 [1993]: 25 27), readings or conceptualizations of the same issue (Chong/Druckman 2007: 104). I put forward the argument that whether a - 2 -

4 certain frame can successfully compete with other possible images of an issue voiced by other sides of the competitive regulatory spectrum is a crucial determinant of lobbying success. To successfully sway policy is highly contingent on whether a selected frame can survive political debates at the various stages of the policy-formulation process while other frames are omitted or remain rather irrelevant. I develop two theoretical concepts and argue that in conjunction they help explain lobbying success: the level of frame communality and the level of lobbying coalition (or side) heterogeneity. Still researchers also have to take into account the institutional particularities of political systems and their decision-making rules, especially when dealing with the EU s multi-level structure. Thus, my main research question reads as follows: Why and how exactly do advocacy groups collectively employ issue framing strategies to successfully shape decision-making processes in EU consumer protection policy? Or, put in simpler language: When and why does a frame help advocacy groups to successfully shape policy? Posing this question touches on further puzzles that will be investigated. Further questions are: Does the type of framing selected also have an impact on the success of lobbying efforts? Do lobbying sides increase their chances by collectively promoting one major reading of an issue that is communicated toward decision makers (leading to high levels of frame communality)? And does the composition of lobbying sides (i.e. their level of side heterogeneity) also play a role in these processes? To find answers I build on a new interest group success research program that brings together recently developed concepts of lobbying coalitions and policy framing. When it comes to measuring success, the analysis relies on a preferences attainment approach. Thus, a group is considered influential when its preferences are reflected at the various stages of the decisionmaking process and, most importantly, in the final policy output of this process. Mainly dealing with concepts used in the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) context, I develop my own approach to explain lobbying success that conceptualizes lobbying in the field of consumer protection policy as a process and a collective enterprise with interest groups forming temporary lobbying coalitions (or sides) with other non-state and state actors. Thus, when dealing with the question of the determinants of lobbying in general, relational aspects have to be considered rather than individual organizational properties of groups or structural attributes of interest group representation systems. I argue that in multi-level systems of governance in particular and, thus, in settings of complex policy-making processes, interest groups try to exploit the venues that are most promising for them to see - 3 -

5 their preferences represented by decision makers. They do so by forming lobbying coalitions with other interest groups at and across several levels to be able to establish powerful policy images which are less vulnerable to competing lobbying strategies which aim at establishing their own image of the same issue to have their preferences represented in the final policy output. Individual characteristics of interest groups, such as the resources they can provide or their informal and formal domestic and supranational ties to decision makers, can only be seen as necessary, but never as sufficient conditions of a broader explanatory framework to account for interest group or lobbying success. Accordingly, I argue building effective lobbying coalitions is also only one necessary condition to win the regulatory competition against counter-lobbying activities. Expert politicians who are responsible for drafting policy proposals and highly depend on interest groups policy specific technical expertise only follow the policy preferences of non-state actors and exert influence on their fellow nonexpert colleagues (Ringe 2010) when they are either already ideologically leaning toward their position, or adopt particular policy frames represented by advocacy groups that have high levels of both frame communality and lobbying side heterogeneity. That is, politicians rather listen to arguments posed by sides that, first, collectively highlight the same aspect(s) of an issue and, second, represent both private and public interest groups. It is crucial though to recognize again that whether powerful policy images can be employed and sustained throughout the entire policy process is contingent on institutional characteristics of the political system in general and it decision-making rules in particular. This important relationship between the dynamics of forming lobbying coalitions, framing strategies and the rules of the decision-making process has mainly been overlooked in interest group research so far. Thus, we have to combine the merits of the framing literature with those of interest group research (lobbying coalitions) to create satisfactory causal accounts that help to explain why groups are sometimes more successful than their competitors and why their roles can change over time (Baumgartner 2007). The paper will proceed with a selective overview of the recent literature on interest group politics and advocacy in the EU and the problematization of current approaches and empirical findings regarding the chances of diffuse interests representatives. I will concentrate on the EU since it is by far the best studied multi-level governance system and still attracts the most scholarly attention with regard to dynamics of multi-level interest group politics. I will then briefly discuss why a focus on consumer protection policy makes sense when the research focus is on the success of lobbying strategies, followed by a short part on consumer protection - 4 -

6 politics as an example of interest group based regulatory politics. I will then elaborate in more detail on the analytical framework and offer information on the conceptualization and measurement of the dependent and the independent variables eventually used in the empirical study. After the introduction of the concepts of frame communality and side heterogeneity I formulate testable implications in the form of hypotheses derived from this model of lobbying success. I then discuss conceptualizing and measuring lobbying success as preference attainment, followed by a section where I offer insights into issues of case selection, data collection, and methodology. The paper concludes with a short discussion of the new approach s potential to serve as a starting point for a true comparative theory of interest group influence in multi-level systems of governance and its links to recent research programs. The paper is completed by a brief outline of the case study (the 2011 EU food labeling regulation) which I will conduct eventually, and some information on the first results of this paper project. 1.2 Studying multi-level advocacy and diffuse interests in EU public policy: A brief selection of existing concepts and empirical research Input-oriented research perspectives Researchers who study interest group politics at the national level and in contexts of multilevel policy-making have relied on several theoretical strands in their empirical analyses. Among others, the availability of access goods, issue characteristics, venue shopping strategies, and factors that lead to the formation of ad hoc lobbying coalitions have been at the center of theoretical accounts and empirical research based on them. Before I turn to a broad selection of recent research on interest group activities mainly in the EU context, I will first briefly introduce some main theoretical concepts used in the literature and some of the related variables will also be taken into account as controls during the empirical analysis. Mahoney and Baumgartner (2008: 1264) emphasize different characteristics that help to explain why some polities produce certain public policies and some do not. Among others they introduce institutional and issue characteristics. For instance, policy-makers who were elected to enter their offices face electoral pressure under particular circumstances and are rather responsive to interest groups and their demands since the latter may have influence on policy makers constituencies and their voting behavior (also see Dür/de Bièvre 2007: 7; Dür 2008a: ; Mahoney 2008). Thus, they are approached differently by interest group representatives than appointed policy-makers who do not feel such pressures given that there is no re-election motive. The latter can thus be approached by offering them valuable - 5 -

7 information about policy feasibility and other policy-related knowledge (Mahoney/Baumgartner 2008: ; Mahoney 2008). Mahoney (2007b), for instance, studies the formation of ad hoc issue coalitions in the EU and the United States and argues that the institutional structure of the political system, interest group characteristics, and issue specific factors have to be considered to be able to explain why groups sometimes decide to join a coalition and sometimes do not. Her results indicate that US groups engage in ad hoc coalition-building more frequently than their European counterparts. She argues that this pattern can be explained with reference to the different levels of democratic accountability of policy-makers in the two systems. US policy-makers are mainly driven by the goal to be reelected, whereas the most important EU officials are usually appointed and do not feel any electoral pressure (also see Mahoney 2007a, 2008). Another institutional characteristic is whether policy-making rules rather contribute to revisions of policy proposals or to the complete killing of proposed changes (Mahoney/Baumgartner 2008: 1265; Mahoney 2008). Furthermore, multi-level systems of governance provide interest groups with more opportunities to venue-shop (Baumgartner/Jones 2009 [1993]) than centralized systems, since private actors can identify the level that is most promising to be used (or even created) in order to get the desired outcome (Richardson 2000: ; also see Dür 2008a: 1218; Verdun 2008: ). Princen and Kerremans point out: In most of the literature on venue shopping such shopping is seen as the result of a rational decision by political actors. Always on the search for the most attractive venue, they shift their attention to whichever location offers the best opportunities for achieving their objectives (Princen/Kerremans 2008: 1137). Some authors argue that this increased potential for vertical venue shopping (Princen/Kerremans 2008: 1137) particularly strengthens diffuse interests (Pollack 1997; Strünck 2006). However, multilevel systems can also create new hurdles for some interest groups, especially for representatives of rather diffuse interests, who lack the capacities to efficiently and successfully navigate the different tiers (Mahoney/Baumgartner 2008: 1266). Bouwen s (2002; 2004) analysis of the multitude of access opportunities for and the access goods used by private actors to exert influence in the EU s multi-level system finds that it is crucial for business associations to be able to provide EU institutions, such as the Commission, the Council, and the European Parliament, with information ( access goods ) - 6 -

8 that the latter demand 1. Otherwise organized interests will hardly manage to find access to EU decision-making processes. Looking at the cases of Germany, Great Britain, France, and the EU, Eising (2007a; 2007b) analyzes the determinants of business associations access to EU institutions and generally finds that institutional characteristics, resource dependencies, organizational structures, and tactical choices of interest groups have to be considered. He also finds that the EU s competences in regulatory politics are the major incentive for interest groups to lobby at the EU level. Only if national associations are affected by EU regulation and, thus, find the European Commission and the European Parliament important, they will try to find access to these supranational bodies. Another finding shows that well-endowed organizations have better chances to influence policy-making than poorer ones without significant resources. Therefore, Eising doubts that the EU, especially the Commission and the Council, can be seen as facilitating weaker interests of European civil society, although the European Parliament seems to be more attentive to diffuse interests. Yet the latter finding has recently been questioned by Smith s (2008) and Rasmussen s (2012) work on the role that EP committees play for organized interests. Especially under codecision, which has become the EU s ordinary legislative procedure, their analyses cast doubt on the assumption that representatives of diffuse interests can heavily rely on the support of the EP when facing major opposition voiced by the industry. In their empirical analysis of the determinants of direct corporate lobbying in the EU, Bernhagen and Mitchell (2009) find little support for theories that try to account for interest group behavior at the EU level by emphasizing national (corporatist or pluralist) traditions of interest intermediation. Applying a profit-seeking model to firm lobbying activities in the EU they find that firm size and involvement with governments help to explain direct lobbying strategies of large firms. The bigger a firm is, the more likely it is that it tries to lobby at the supranational level. Furthermore, the more a firm is affected by EU regulatory action, the more it tries to directly influence decisions taken at the supranational level. Here the authors report that such firms do not rely on national associations as representatives anymore, but more and more engage in individual activities to compensate the lack of support by these associations. Thus, notwithstanding national patterns of interest intermediation firms affected 1 Bouwen defines access goods as goods provided by private actors to the EU institutions in order to gain access. Each access good concerns a specific kind of information that is important in the EU decision-making process. The criticality of an access good for the functioning of an EU institution determines the degree of access that the institution will grant to the private interest representatives (2002: 370)

9 by EU regulations and large firms in general tactically adapt to the new environment to seek maximum profits. In an analysis of Belgian domestic interest groups and their European networks, Beyers (2002) also tests whether the latter should be interpreted as being built on already existing strong national networks that help to access the EU level ( persistence hypothesis ) or rather as a part of a compensation strategy to make up for the lack of access to decision-makers at the domestic level. Furthermore, he examines whether differences between diffuse and specific interest organizations can be identified. He finds that domestic structural conditions have indeed an important effect on policy-making processes at the EU level, and that specific interest organizations gain more domestic access than representatives of diffuse interests, with the result of the former being more successful in constructing EU level networks which operate in their favor. Beyers research contradicts the findings of Eising or Bernhagen and Mitchell, and thus supports arguments that interest group access to EU institutions and networks is dependent on domestic conditions and, with regard to specific interests, he points out that domestic access is mainly related to the robust institutionalised and neo-corporatist connections they seem to have with domestic public decision makers (Beyers 2002: 608). Diffuse interests, on the contrary, do not enjoy such historically evolved and institutionalized networks at the domestic level and, hence, are represented less effectively at the EU level. Unlike Bouwen, Beyers states that to hold access goods, in the sense of policy-relevant expertise and information, is not a necessary condition to obtain access since gaining access is not the same as having influence on concrete policy outcomes (Beyers 2002: 587). Most of the research reviewed in the preceding section mainly deals with interest group influence in terms of their own resource endowment or in terms of the access of non-state groups to decision makers. Only recently have scholars begun to deal explicitly with the question of interest group influence on policy-making processes and their outcomes. Hence now they pose the general question of who the non-state groups are that win in (regulatory) politics and why. What has been rather lacking so far is the sound analysis of the output dimension. Hence, what has to be studied more carefully is the degree to which these [interest group] efforts translate into policy outputs (Smith 2008: 79, FN 1; also see Daviter 2011: 9), and what factors have causal effects on it. Accordingly, I will now turn to a recent and still rather small body of research that approaches the question of interest group success in terms of preference attainment rather than from an input-oriented perspective. I will discuss the theoretical underpinnings of this new research program, which in part can be found in US

10 related research, and furthermore its hitherto empirical findings with regard to US and EU interest group politics Output-oriented research perspectives In their study of lobbying success in the United States, Baumgartner et al. s (2009) main finding is what they label the power of the status quo. Interest groups that simply try to defend the status quo usually win in Washington (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 239). Studying 98 different and diverse policy proposals and their longer-term fate over four years ( ) under two different presidents and administrations, the authors argue that every decision that is open to debates and disputes in Congress is linked to existing public policies, or status quo policies. The bias in favor of the status quo, as they put it, is already reflected in the status quo policy (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 240), making some groups in society more effective than their competitors who favor changing the way things are. Furthermore, they find that who wins and who loses in Washington cannot be attributed to the resources that lobbyists have at their disposal. Despite some privileges of the wealthier groups which can be turned into advantages, public policy may be moved sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another, with each individual shift not necessarily reflecting the overall bias in the system, but rather temporal fluctuations in power related to new information, attentionfocusing events, and the crush of other issues on the agenda (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 241). The lack of significant policy changes, the authors argue can oftentimes simply be explained by politicians scarcity of attention to new policies or proposals. They point out that what is most important for policy change to happen is the allocation of attention to new proposals which are in most cases kept out by influential gatekeepers: The barbarians at the gates cannot always be ignored, but congressional policy making is very much a competition between what will be heard by legislators and what will be left aside, and there are vastly more proposals for change than there are opportunities to discuss them ( ) Mobilization by advocates can push gatekeepers to promote their issues to active consideration, but most interests in Washington are not strong enough by themselves to force a proposal onto the agenda of a committee or an agency (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 245). Later the authors argue: In fact, the problem is rarely the scarcity of information, but rather its overabundance policy makers don t know how to make sense of it all, being overwhelmed with so much information coming at them from lobbyists on all kinds of issues (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 246). To overcome such equilibriums, two major thresholds have to be passed: first, policymakers as gatekeepers have to be convinced that a problem is really a problem and needs to - 9 -

11 be dealt with, and, second, advocates of the new view have to get party leaders on board, who control the committees, and especially what leaves these committees to be voted on. With regard to differences between specific and diffuse interests, Baumgartner et al. admit that their research strongly suggests that business, corporate, and trade groups have an advantage over labor or citizen groups. Even if the former do not always and automatically win, they still seem to be better equipped to set the lobbying agenda (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 257). But, that said, it should not be generally theorized that diffuse interests cannot win. The authors therefore write, studies of lobbying should not always be expected to show the continued power of the wealthy over the weak, the mobilized over the unmobilized, as these biases should already be apparent and there is no reason why the next step in the process should point in one direction or the other (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 259). Michalowitz (2007) analyzes under what conditions interest groups try to exert particular kinds of influence in EU decision-making to change legislative acts. Based on three case studies in the fields of transport and information technology she finds that the decisionmakers initial interests and technical rather than directional influence dominated the decision-making processes, meaning that interest groups might not always want to change the very core of a proposed legislative act ( directional influence ), but try to invoke a mind change in decision-makers, while this mind change does not touch upon the preference for the policy outcome (Michalowitz 2007: 136). The more congruent interest group preferences are with the initial interests of public actors, the more likely it is that strategies of exerting rather technical influence will be successful. Michalowitz generally concludes, that directional influence seems to be highly unlikely in the EU (2007: 149). With regard to issue specific characteristics which can affect lobbying activity, Mahoney and Baumgartner argue that the composition of the various sides on an issue influences advocacy behaviour (Mahoney/Baumgartner 2008: 1268), meaning that it definitely plays an important role whether one (supporting) lobbying coalition is the only relevant player, or another (opposing) interest group (coalition) tries to influence an upcoming decision as well. Thus, allies and opponents have to be taken into account when one tries to identify the results of an (probably intense) political fight over potential outcomes. A relational approach that emphasizes the role of lobbying coalitions and counter-lobbying dynamics seems to be a promising strategy to identify the mechanisms which make some winners and others losers. Mahoney and Baumgartner (2008: 1269; emphasis added) put it as follows: While most aspects of interest groups have been recognised and studied, it is important to remember that groups do not often work alone, they have allies, both in government and outside, so when

12 studying how a group s characteristics and resources impact on their advocacy and on the policymaking process it is imperative that we also consider the resources and characteristics of the others involved in the same debate. In a series of recent articles Klüver (2010; 2011a; 2011b; 2011c; 2012) shows that we have to consider patterns of building lobbying coalitions and counter-lobbying coalitions to explain who wins and who loses in EU legislation. Here the main question is how interactions between competing interest group coalitions and, thus, relational aspects rather than individual group characteristics shape outputs (Klüver 2011c: ). Building on the concept of lobbying coalitions, defined as a set of actors who share a policy goal (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 6), Klüver focuses her analyses on the policy formulation stage in the EU using an own large new dataset of interest group submissions to EU Commission consultations that covers more than 50 policy issues and positions of almost 2700 interest groups active in the EU s multi-level opportunity structure. In one of her latest contributions to the debate of interest group influence in EU decision-making processes, Klüver (2012) uses her new dataset and tests whether lobbying success in the EU differs according to different interest group types and finds that it is neither the type of a group that matters nor information supply or resources, but whether cause and/or sectional groups belong to the larger lobbying coalition concerning a policy proposal at hand. She points out that, based on her analysis different interest groups are equally capable of shaping policy formulation in the EU. Thus, lobbying success in the EU does not vary systematically with different interest group types, but with regard to the situational factor of what side a group is on. In another paper Klüver finds, more specifically, that the positive effect of lobbying coalition characteristics cannot be explained by the properties of a small number of strong groups (2010: 22) which would dominate a coalition of various interest groups. Diffuse interests or cause groups can be as successful as specific interests or sectional groups. In another recent article on interest group influence in the EU and building on the same own dataset, Klüver (2011c) shows again that lobbying success cannot be understood by solely looking at individual group characteristics, and instead that the relative size of lobbying coalitions has a robust positive effect (2011c: 499) on lobbying success. She basically sums up the main finding of her research project when she writes: Thus, in order to understand what makes an interest group a winner or a loser, we cannot simply refer to group characteristics, but we have to acknowledge the issuespecific grouping of interest groups into lobbying coalitions. More specifically, we have to take into account the aggregated efforts of likeminded interest groups that fight for the same policy objective on any given policy issue (2011c: ; also see Klüver 2011b: 12 13)

13 The main idea behind this new research on interest group influence is the conceptualization of interest group behavior as shaped by a unidimensional structure of conflict (Klüver 2011c: 491; also see Baumgartner et al. 2009: 7), meaning that whenever a policy proposal is debated by concerned interest and political groups, each group will more or less be on either the one or the other side of an issue at stake 2. Thus, interest groups are either a member of a lobbying coalition that is in favor of changing the status quo in their respective policy field of interest, or they are mobilizing their resources and members against a proposed change of the things as they are (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 7). The recent output-oriented literature discussed in the last section reveals the importance of considering relational aspects of lobbying activities and the crucial role that building lobbying coalitions plays. Combining these concepts with a theory of issue framing can enrich the analysis of lobbying success in multi-level governance settings. I argue that only if our models account for the dominant policy frames employed at every single stage of the entire policy process, we can come up with satisfactory causal explanations of policy outputs and how and by what interests they are actually shaped. I will get back to a more detailed discussion of issue framing in the theory section of this paper. Now I turn to answering the question why consumer protection serves as a good policy field to eventually test the theoretical propositions developed in the theory section. 2. Consumer protection policy as interest group based regulatory policy Again, one of my main research questions is, when and how exactly can different groups (especially public interest groups) actually make use of the EU s multilevelness, here defined as the existence of multiple access points at various levels? Why would 1) multiple levels which offer various non-state actors several potential venues or access points to the policy-making process, 2) a high level of territorial fragmentation, and 3) a complex system of the separation of powers between the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive help particular groups more than others? What does it take to successfully navigate one s own cause through the multi-level structure of such a system? And do diffuse interests really benefit significantly from the availability of multiple venues? I propose to study regulations in the field of consumer safety to answer these questions. 2 With regard to their own dataset, Baumgartner et al. (2009: 7) argue that despite the fact that in the real world [t]he number of sides per issue ranges from just one to as many as seven, the typical pattern only knows two sides that fight over whether to keep or to change the status quo

14 I first turn to the definition of regulation as interest group-based process and then to ways of distinguishing between competing types of interests. I will argue that consumer protection policy represents a major kind of regulatory politics in the EU which involves these interest types respectively and can thus serve as a policy field well-suited for comparisons within and across cases. Since the EU is a system ( ) based around regulation, in my analysis interest groups become significant actors due to the ways in which regulation typically distributes costs and benefits upon, and between, such actors (2011: 21). Regulation always brings with it high levels of interest activities (Lowi 1964) and thus a pattern of competitive lobbying and counter-lobbying activities, with business associations, companies and public interest groups lining up to build temporary lobbying coalitions or going against each other to become winners or, at least, to avoid being the loser after a regulatory decision has been decided upon. Especially with regard to consumer protection issues, the EU has gradually centralized regulatory policy-making (Vogel 2003: 577) with party competition playing only a minor role when deciding on regulatory measures. This development opens up a huge potential for regulatory competition between various (opposed) interest groups (Strünck 2006: 46 47). In general, I conceptualize regulatory politics as public interventions in market processes for the benefit of particular actors. I deliberately avoid the phrase in favor of the public good which is a common part of definitions of regulation (Döhler/Wegrich 2010: 31; Francis 1993: 5; Hood et al. 2001: 3; Majone 1994: 81). Regulation usually happens serving the interests of some member(s) of society but not all. Thus regulatory politics produces winners and losers, or beneficiaries and those who are disadvantaged. This concept of regulatory politics is particularly useful in the case of product safety regulation since here politicians are seen as primarily responsible to make sure that products are safe (to a certain degree and depending on definitions of safety standards ) and that the market functions as desired (Folke Schuppert 2006: ). Regulations are usually directed to economic actors who want to sell their products but whose actions (or better: whose neglect of compulsory actions) can now and then lead to market failures at the expense of consumers. In this regard John Francis states: Regulation is frequently associated with what is called market failure a situation in which the market fails to produce goods and services at appropriate prices (1993: 2) and/or at appropriate safety or transparency levels. Döhler and Wegrich (2010: 31) argue that regulation has thus become an increasingly dominant type of public actions and in another contribution Döhler defines regulation as binding public provisions and standards of behavior which are mainly directed at companies (2006: 208; own translation)

15 We can distinguish between economic and social regulation. While the former refers to state activities which are supposed to protect consumers from inappropriate prices, the latter targets market outcomes that are seen as involving risks to an individual s health and other risks (Francis 1993: 2 3; Mitropoulos 1997: 387). Social regulation, which is at the center of analysis here, occurs in two ways: on the one hand in the form of providing consumers with the necessary information to bridge the information asymmetry gap between producers and buyers (Mitropoulos 1997: 341; Schatz 1984). This usually happens via labeling products to inform about their contents. On the other hand social regulation can be directly targeted at the ways of production of certain products through defining binding minimum standards which have to be met by producers before putting their goods into the market. Such regulations can also include prohibitions of whole products and certain ingredients or the setting of maximum permissible values of ingredients or substances which run certain risks of damaging people s health (Schatz 1984: 32). The first way of social regulation can be referred to as informal strategies and the latter as prescriptive strategies (Francis 1993: 3, 10, 14-16). I put emphasis on the fact that decision making processes leading to particular types of regulatory actions have to be seen as involving high levels of conflict between the non-state actors involved. Thus, it can be argued that regulation cannot be assumed as being a neutral process whose outcomes aim at serving the common good of a society. Another argument that follows is that the common view of regulatory politics which gained momentum in academic discourses over the past two decades is plain wrong when it sees regulation as such neutral interventions in market procedures to overcome problems with products which are more and more characterized by complex production procedures, technologies and hard to oversee production chains (Czada et al. 2003). Instead the highly conflict-laden character of regulatory politics, especially in the case of consumer protection issues, suggests a focus on the strategies of competing organized interests within existing rules to exert influence on decision makers debating regulatory measures to account for particular regulatory outcomes. Thus the question why regulation takes the form it does becomes relevant in social analysis, rather than asking how regulation should be carried out. 2.1 Consumer protection policy as playing field for traditional types of interest groups In the concluding paragraphs of his seminal contribution to the logic of collective action Mancur Olson discussed those kinds of interests which he saw as unlikely to be organized efficiently and referred to them as the forgotten groups (Olson 1971: ). Among

16 others, for instance migrant and white-collar workers, peace activists and the taxpayers, he introduced the consumers as a major example for such a group. They are at least as numerous as any other group in the society, but they have no organization to countervail the power of organized or monopolistic producers (Olson 1971: 166). According to Olson s theory of collective action rational individuals who are members of such a large group, representing a rather common and thus diffuse interest, hardly ever start to act in order to advance this particular common goal or form organizations to do so. This view is built on the rationalist assumption that individuals do not take action if the expected gains from an individual contribution to achieving the common goal do not exceed the costs which result from acting in the first place (Olson 1971: 2). Another well-known interest group typology is quite similar to Olson s work and is used by Heike Klüver (2012) in her research on interest group characteristics and their impact on policy outputs. In general, two different kinds of interest groups can be distinguished: sectional groups and cause groups. While sectional groups represent special and, thus, concentrated or specific interests, for instance the ones of farmers or the pharmaceutical industry, cause groups, by contrast, usually represent rather diffuse interests, such as consumer, health or environmental related interests. These interests have different chances to be organized effectively and convention has it that sectional groups are usually more successful than cause groups. With regard to concepts of collective action and the problems that diffuse interests face in the EU context, Jordan and Maloney (2007: Chap. 2) discuss several incentives that can help marginalized or hard-to-mobilize interests to overcome the collective action dilemma of diffuse interests posed by Olson (also see 1995: 57 62). They argue that various membership generating incentives, such as, among others, selective material, solidarity, and/or general purposiveness can do the trick to motivate people to mobilize against all (theoretical) odds (Jordan/Maloney 2007: 46 49). Aspinwall and Greenwood (1998) also use collective action concepts and apply them to the European Union context to explain why national organizations decide to join and become an active member of a Euro group, i.e. an association active at the supranational level (also see the other contributions in Greenwood/Aspinwall (1998); (Sadeh/Howarth 2008: 1 2)). In their quantitative analysis of European social movements and protest Imig and Tarrow (2001a) find that contention strategies and campaigns still focus on the national level rather than on the new opportunity structures the supranational level of the EU offers. This phenomenon is referred to as a domesticated kind of reaction to European grievances

17 (Tarrow 2001: 235). Nevertheless, Tarrow (2001), summing up the major findings of an important edited volume on contentious politics in the EU (Imig/Tarrow 2001b), in general argued (in the early 2000s) that this domesticated mode of responding to European challenges involving rather diffuse interests could change in the years to come. While business associations seemed to have well-adapted to the new multi-level character of decision-making processes in the new European system of governance, representatives of public and, thus, rather diffuse interests could catch up by slowly learning how to use Europe s dispersed and competitive institutions (Tarrow 2001: 238). Here I also argue that it cannot be assumed that diffuse cause groups are usually or naturally less successful than their more specific counterparts, i.e. representatives of sectional groups. Their fate has to be studied empirically. And since consumer protection policy is a field involving numerous battles between sectional and cause groups, and since the EU has committed itself to consumer protection policy as one of its core tasks 3, it makes sense to pick cases from this policy area for the empirical analysis. Though, analyses have to be guided by sound theorizing. This is why I now turn to the theory section of this paper. 3. Theory, Conceptualization, and Measurement 3.1 Policy framing and lobbying coalitions: An analytical framework to study lobbying success in EU regulatory policy The main idea behind my analytical framework is that given the constraints imposed by different decision-making rules on all the actors involved in advocacy processes, policy calibration through policy framing and forming lobbying coalitions can happen at the various stages of the EU decision-making process. Thus, both representatives of diffuse and specific interests can be successful in shaping policies if they collectively manage to navigate their side s frames through the various policy arenas. As I will show in the following, the two most crucial and interrelated variables of my analytical framework are the communality of a frame adopted by a lobbying side and established at the different stages of the policy formulation process in the EU, and the composition of such a lobbying coalition which I refer to as the a side s level of heterogeneity. Thus, despite the fact that multiple access points at various 3 In the EU s Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), Article 12 says that consumer protection has to be generally applied when defining and implementing policy, and the first paragraph of Article 169 (Title XV) reads: In order to promote the interests of consumers and to ensure a high level of consumer protection, the Union shall contribute to protecting the health, safety and economic interests of consumers, as well as to promoting their right to information, education and to organise themselves in order to safeguard their interests

18 levels are available for different non-state actors, multilevelness may turn out to have different implications for actors depending on their argumentation and lobbying strategies. Before I turn to my own concept of lobbying success in more detail I will first introduce the main assumptions of framing approaches and why such an approach can enhance analyses of interest group activities and their impact on policy. In general, the concept of framing offers a way to describe the power of a communicating text (Entman 1993: 51). Thus, I follow Entman s (1993: 52; emphasis in the original) definition of framing who points out: To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described. Thus, framing implies that since policy issues are almost always multidimensional, interested groups can be expected to highlight certain aspects of an issue while deliberately omitting others to make sure that policy makers are pushed more toward their own frames of an issue and, at the same time, away from the images advocated by other competing proponents in a policy debate 4. For instance, when politicians deal with issues of environmental protection advocates of stricter regulations will try to emphasize that current practices lead to the loss of habitat while other sides of the debate point to the danger of job losses and significant negative impacts on the competitiveness of entire industries if new regulations are passed (Mahoney/Baumgartner 2010: 4). Hence, these competing perceptions, policy images or frames help to define a policy issue in particular ways and constitute how an issue is understood and discussed in a policy debate. This gives specialists in a particular area the advantage over others who depend on this expertise and have to rely on the information processed to them to come up with collectively binding decisions (Ringe 2010). Yet not every politician can have the same knowledge about an issue and the levels of decision-makers interest in certain rather non-political technical areas are usually quite low, which opens up opportunities for specialists who, [s]ince they know the issue better, ( ) are sometimes able to portray the issue in simplified and favorable terms to nonspecialists (Baumgartner/Jones 2009 [1993]: 25). Thus, information can be seen as the key currency in policy making interactions since [p]olicy-makers require scientific, technical, legal, economic and social (and implementation) advice and expertise as well as guidance on constituency preferences (Lowery 2009: 4). This information is presented in the form of arguments pushed forward by various interest groups. The latter direct their policy images to pivotal policy-makers through 4 For classical scholarship on issues of framing see Kahneman/Tversky 1984; Riker 1986; Schattschneider 1957, Schattschneider

19 a process of argumentation that is shaped by frames which simplify definitions and explanations of the debated phenomenon. Hence, how a problem, which has to be politically dealt with, is defined and linked to a possible governmental solution is conceptualized as a process of image making (Stone 1989: 282). Involved sides deliberately portray (Stone 1989: 282; emphasis in the original) issues in favorable ways to gain support for their cause and their policy position. Thus, at the heart of the policy process are advocacy group strategies that involve argumentation and the creation of particular understandings of an issue. To manipulate the allocation of attention can be a powerful strategy in policymaking (Baumgartner/Jones 2009 [1993]: 30)), a strategy that is most promising for interest groups who aim to sway policy. How many sides form around one particular issue can vary from case to case and has to be studied empirically. The amount of sides is usually linked to the number or set of (competing) policy images created in a policy debate which describe and understand the issue at hand in different ways. This brings me to the second major dimension of my own theoretical framework of lobbying success: the significance of lobbying sides or coalitions. How a policy issue is defined does not only structure political conflicts between various actors, it also influence[s] the formation and organisation of interests and shape[s] political coalitions and alliances (Daviter 2011: 3). One way of framing an issue almost always leads to other actors contesting it through promoting their own policy image. Thus, one lobbying coalition or side usually sees itself up against at least one competing group that engages in the same policy battle by constructing their own main image of the issue at stake (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 7). Studying lobbying success thus does not only demand that the researcher is aware of framing dynamics, it also requires studying the characteristics of the competing sides which form around a particular issue. How lobbying coalition and framing dynamics play out in a fragmented and multi-tiered political system can vary significantly from one issue to the next depending on the issue-specific grouping of interest groups and their framing efforts. Hence, taking into account advocacy strategies is the main task when dealing with the determinants of lobbying success. Again, we have to take into account the aggregated efforts of likeminded interest groups that fight for the same policy objective on any given policy issue (Klüver 2011c: 500). After this broad introduction to the benefits of framing analysis and the role lobbying coalitions play, I will now turn to a more precise elaboration on my own theoretical approach, its causal significance when studying lobbying success, and a specification of its measurement