Assessing interest group politics in EU governance

Abstract

"The literature on interest group politics in the European Union has come of age. The last ten years we have seen a remarkable shift from a literature consisting of mainly empirics driven studies that remained detached from sophisticated conceptual reflection, to a firmly theory-informed field of empirical political science. The study of EU interest group politics has become more professionalised, as researchers have moved away from studies that had their merits on their own but often suffered from theoretical grandstanding or idiosyncratic topics and/or sui generis explanations, to studies that link theoretical and conceptual development with sound empirical hypothesis testing. The reason for this transformation is to be sought in changes in the discipline of political science and adjacent disciplines, but certainly just as well in the transformation of European politics with its decline of electoral party politics and the migration of the 'authoritative allocation of values' into policy networks and negotiation systems in which interest groups and civil society organisations assume prominent positions." (excerpt)