European Union, neo-corporatist, and pluralist governance arrangements: lobbying and policy-making patterns in a comparative perspective

Abstract

Legislative and policy-making processes within democratic structures are multi-agent, collective decision processes. Interest representation, including lobbying, may have a substantial effect not only on policy outcomes, but also on the structure of democratic institutions themselves. In view of current trends and challenges facing democratic institutions, better understanding of the processes and mechanisms by which policy-making and lobbying operate is particularly important. This paper applies the new institutionalism to the comparative analysis of governance and policy-making in different political systems, particularly those in Europe and the US. Pluralist and neo-corporatist arrangements of influence articulation are distinguished and contrasted. It is argued further that these do not correspond to or fit EU (European Union) arrangements for policy-making and lobbying. A model of EU arrangements is outlined. The article considers the degree of openness, flexibility, extent of predictability, and patterns of policy production and development in the different systems. The EU system, which is a type of ‘organic’ or informal democracy, operates with highly flexible but well-organized procedures to engage interest groups from industry and civil society as sources of information and expertise and to act as brokers in EU policy-making; deliberation and negotiation typically result in consensus. We conclude that many of the advantages of the EU system with its flexibility and adaptability to sectoral specific issues and conditions are a source of its problems of non-transparency and ‘democratic deficit.’