Expecting something special? Developing assumptions of involvement organised interests as a source of regulatory quality in the European Union

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1658
Date01 November 2017
Published date01 November 2017
AuthorMorten Jarlbæk Pedersen
ACADEMIC PAPER
Expecting something special? Developing assumptions of
involvement organised interests as a source of regulatory
quality in the European Union
Morten Jarlbæk Pedersen
Department of Political Science, University of
Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Correspondence
Morten Jarlbæk Pedersen, Department of
Political Science, University of Copenhagen,
Copenhagen 1353, Denmark.
Email: mjp@ifs.ku.dk
Funding information
Dansk Erhverv
Organised interests play a double role in policymaking: as representatives of societal interests and
as policy experts adding to regulatory quality. The former of these 2 roles has been examined
over and over again, whereas the latter has almost completely evaded scholarly interest for a
number of reasons. One reason is that it demands a focus on output rather than on traditional
darlings such as representation, input legitimacy, or influence. Another is that it demands an inter-
disciplinary approach as regulatory qualitythat which the involvement of organised interests
seek to furnishis a concept that includes elements from both law and political science. The
question of how to design involvement of organised interests in order to support regulatory qual-
ity, however, is a question with both academic and practical relevance. Building on an empirical
study, this paper attempts to spur theorising to address this relevant question. The result is 4
assumptions that describe the relationship between involvement of organised interests and
regulatory quality.
1|INTRODUCTION
Organised interests fulfil a double function in policymaking: as repre-
sentatives of societal actors and as policy experts adding to regulatory
quality. And this double role is long acknowledged by both practi-
tioners and scholars. In practice, elaborate systems of involvement
have been designed to allow both legitimate interest representation
and a flow of knowledge into the political system and, in the literature,
resource dependency theories such as Bouwen's (2002a, 2002b,
2004a, 2004b) idea of different logics of accessstress the multiple
roles of organised interests too.
From classical studies of corporatism (Molina & Rhodes, 2002;
Schmitter, 1974; Siaroff, 1999; Streeck, 1983) to modern day formal
modelling of influence (Dür, 2008a, 2008b; Klüver, 2009, 2011), a
common trait of studies or organised interests, however, is their preoc-
cupation with the input role of organised interest: What is their role in
democratic terms, representation issues, etc. (Pedersen, 2016b)? This
is not a critique of this vivid and diverse scholarly tradition nor is it
an attempt to belittle the relevance of debates of power structures,
representation, capture (Laffont & Tirole, 1991), and the like. It is
merely a note of the fact that the function that organised interests play
as sources of regulatory quality has yet to gain a place in academic
research that is parallel to the importance of this relationship in practi-
cal policymakingnot least in the European Union (EU) where output
is a major source of legitimacy (Majone, 1998, 1999). If we are to strike
a balance between the role of organised interests as influencers of
political objectives and their role of potential policy experts, we need
to understand both roles. However, only the first role has been
scrutinised in depth in the existing literature.
On that background and reacting to the challenge put forward by
Pedersen (2016b), this paper adds to the filling of that gap by asking a
seemingly simple and practical question: How to design the involve-
ment of organised interests if regulatory quality is the standard for
evaluation? The answer given in this paper may be conceived a one
sidedthat organised interests (can) play an important role in securing
regulatory qualitybut the objective is to investigate what has not
caught interests rather than to tap into existing debates on influence
of organised interests.
Resting on a problem driven (Shapiro, 2002) and pragmatic
approach, the paper seeks not to present a formal study that leaves
no questions remain and neither to give an account supported in mere
speculations. Rather, building on a qualitative study, the aim is rather
to articulate a range of assumptions that describe how we can design
the involvement of organised interests to gain regulatory quality.
Thereby, the paper hopefully enlighten our understanding of the dual
role of organised interests in policymaking or at least serve as a theo-
retical spark to further studies. As such, this is an attempt to theorise
on the basis of a prestudy as suggested by Swedberg (2012). Also, it
Received: 11 November 2016 Accepted: 13 April 2017
DOI: 10.1002/pa.1658
J Public Affairs. 2017;17:e1658.
https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1658
Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of8

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