German MPs and interest groups in EU multilevel policy-making: the politics of information exchange

Abstract

Policy-makers regularly interact with interest groups to exchange information. This provides, it is often argued, the former with input needed to formulate effective policies and the latter with political influence. This article shares this broad perspective. In contrast to large parts of the literature, however, the paper argues for a political perspective on information exchanges between parliamentarians and interest groups. This perspective builds on party politicians’ ideological positions to explain the scope of parliamentarians’ information exchanges with different types of interest groups. In order to move away from the idea that information is a scarce resource for parliamentarians their interactions with interest groups are put in the context of their intra-party information exchanges. The empirical analysis of original survey data of members of the German Bundestag broadly confirms the article’s main arguments.