Designed for Difficulties: A Case Study of the Institutional Design of a European Level Youth Lobby Group from a Post-Socialist State (with Zoe Onutu)

Abstract

This paper is presented in four parts. The first part introduces the specific European lobby group literature and the recent research results that suggest the four key factors that negatively impact post-socialist lobby group efforts at a European level. The second part introduces the focus of the case study, IAPSS, and presents a short precis of the Association, the goals it maintains for lobbying at a European level and the means through which these goals are pursued. The third part considers the institutional design of IAPSS in relation to the four factors outlined in part one and finds that the design of the institution itself hampers the success of its European level lobbying efforts. The fourth part of the paper is both a discussion of the findings in part three and a series of suggestions by which IAPSS might address their lobbying difficulties.