Jan Beyers

• PhD Social Sciences
• Professor (Full) at University of Antwerp

This article explains varying levels of transnational advocacy initiated by domestic organized interests. Theoretically, we integrate the constraining and enabling impact of the domestic context with factors related to global opportunity structures. We test our hypotheses with an original dataset consisting of all national organized interests that...

What triggers the information exchange among the regional offices in Brussels? To answer this question, we develop a framework based on network theory and present the first large-N quantitative study on EU-level inter-regional networks. Our results show that information exchanges take place predominantly among regions from the same member state. Fu...

The interaction between organized interests and policymakers is an important ingredient of contemporary political systems. In earlier work, interest group scholars have distinguished groups who enjoy access to consultation arrangements from those who are bound to stand on the sideline. Frequently, these insiders are considered to be equally connect...

In most political systems, the community of policy insiders represents a small subset of the total interest group population. Therefore, one key question is which factors explain why some mobilized interests become insiders and others remain outsiders. By contrasting a bottom-up registration of interest groups with a top-down census of all groups t...

The degree to which interest groups gain access to policymakers has often been explained by focusing on the exchange of resources in a dyadic relation between interest groups and policymakers. This article argues that the position an interest group occupies within a coalition and the relations it has outside its coalition, substantially affect the...

This article analyses to what extent and under which conditions revolving door practices relate to access to the European Commission (EC). The revolving door hypothesis is analysed by combining two data sources: a dataset with publicly available records about the meetings between interest organizations and senior EC officials and evidence collected...

Why do some interest group systems provide group members with more elaborate voice opportunities than other systems? We argue that evaluating membership voice is important for understanding the representative potential of interest group systems. An adequate understanding of “voice” forms the basis of “context”-embedded assessments of benchmarks suc...

This paper examines how public support affects interest groups’ advocacy success across three distinct stages in the legislative process. We hypothesize that public support is vital for advocacy success when coalition agreements are negotiated, has a weaker effect when legislation is introduced in parliament by the governing majority but becomes ag...

This article discusses the methodology and practice behind planning and executing the Comparative Interest Group-survey project (CIG-survey). The CIG-survey includes surveys among national populations of organized interests in 9 European countries and at the European Union level. Although surveys are a useful and reliable way to collect data on a v...

Agencies consult extensively with stakeholders such as industry associations, nongovernmental organizations, and trade unions. One rationale for consultations is that these improve procedural legitimacy and lead to greater acceptance of regulatory outcomes by citizens and the regulated industry. While this presumption of a positive relation between...

Interest Representation in Belgium This article assesses the size and diversity of Belgium’s interest group population by triangulating four data sources. Combining various sources allows us to describe which societal interests get mobilised, which interest organisations become politically active and who gains access to the policy process and obtai...

While many scholars have postulated the decline of membership influence as an important consequence of the professionalisation of civil society organisations (CSOs), other analysts have argued that traditional membership-driven CSOs are resilient and that hiring professionals does not necessarily diminish membership influence. This study sheds ligh...

To facilitate stakeholder representation, European Union (EU) agencies use a range of procedures, including closed consultation or advisory committees and open or public consultations. For analysing what kind of stakeholders gain access to advisory committees, we compare these two particular procedures. Two theoretical perspectives guide this analy...

The past decades have been characterized by a growing number of nonstate actors (NSAs) involved in global governance. However, despite this growth, only a small number of NSAs have been able to maintain a prolonged global presence over a substantial period of time. To explain why some NSAs are more active, we rely on resource dependence theory. We...

To design regulatory policies, agencies depend on information from the industries they are tasked to regulate. Therefore, agencies can organise consultations with the aim of obtaining information from different perspectives. This article focuses on stakeholder diversity in agency public consultations. We ask to what extent is information provided b...

In their pursuit of political influence, interest groups face the choice to contact policy elites directly or to generate pressure indirectly by appealing to the public at large. This article examines whether interest groups should prioritize inside or outside lobbying tactics in order to materialize their policy objectives, with a specific focus o...

Contemporary studies on interest group politics have mainly used single interest organizations as their central objects of study. This has led to a rich body of knowledge on the motivations of interest group mobilization, strategy development and even policy access and influence. The focus on single interest groups, however, has resulted in limited...

Communities of civil society organizations are characterized by substantial volatility, as new organizations are continuously established and old ones are regularly disbanded. This article aims to improve our understanding of the dynamic nature of civil society by focusing on a particular aspect of organizational maintenance, namely, mortality anxi...

This article analyzes the formation of lobbying coalitions in European Union legislative politics. Specifically, we investigate whether interest organizations establish coalitions and under which conditions business interests and non-business interests join a coalition. Our explanatory framework emphasizes three factors that drive coalition formati...

Scholars of mobilisation and policy influence employ two quite different approaches to mapping interest group systems. Those interested in research questions on mobilisation typically rely on a bottom-up mapping strategy in order to characterise the total size and composition of interest group communities. Researchers with an interest in policy inf...

The growing attempts by non-state interests to influence global policy processes has attracted much scholarly interest in recent years. One important question thereby is what characterizes and explains the interactions of non-state advocates with policymakers. In order to clarify this matter, we analyse the advocacy strategies of non-state actors,...

This research agenda starts from the observation that in most political science research, the salience which citizens, interest groups, policymakers and the media attach to policymaking processes on specific policies is usually measured for just one actor type. As a consequence, it is difficult to assess the extent to which the salience attribution...

Interest group research has focused extensively on political access. While access does not guarantee influence, it is customarily seen as a crucial step towards gaining political influence. It is argued that groups with access are, all else equal, more likely to be influential than groups without access. Biased access may thus result in biased infl...

The multi-level system of the EU (European Union) constrains the institutionalized representation of the regional tier of government. Consequently, SNAs (sub-national authorities) seek to represent their interests through various lobbying practices, including taking part in the European Commission's open consultations. In this article, we argue tha...

There is consensus in the literature that policymaking in the United States (US) and Europe generates different lobbying styles. Two explanations for these differences have been developed so far. The first posits that distinct lobbying styles reflect different political cultures . The second attributes distinct lobbying styles to variation in the i...

What affects lobbying patterns in trade policymaking? Existing explanations focus mainly on economic determinants, like the rise of intra-industry trade. We argue that the international trade institutions of the WTO themselves are also key for understanding which type of interest aggregation of firm and interest group preferences is likely to arise...

This article seeks to explain the use of inside and outside lobbying by organised interests at global diplomatic conferences. At first sight, the lobbying at these venues is puzzling as it does not seem to be a very fruitful way to acquire influence. The use of outside strategies especially is perplexing because most aspects of international negoti...

Political science research on EU interest groups and parties represents two separate study fields and both literatures convey a somewhat different image of EU legislative policymaking. While most scholars of party politics endorse the notion that parties politicize EU legislative politics, scholarship of interest groups tends to portray EU policyma...

The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg are well-known cases of consensus politics. Decision-making in the Low Countries has been characterized by broad involvement, power sharing and making compromises. These countries were also founding member states of the European Union (EU) and its predecessors. However, the relationship between European integ...

The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg are well-known cases of consensus politics. Decision-making in the Low Countries has been characterized by broad involvement, power sharing and making compromises. These countries were also founding member states of the European Union (EU) and its predecessors. However, the relationship between European integ...

We outline a conceptual framework that identifies and characterizes the contextual nature of interest group politics in the European Union to better understand variation in interest group mobilization, lobbying strategies and interest group influence. We focus on two sets of contextual factors that affect EU interest group lobbying. First, we argue...

The number and scope of transnational organizations has risen markedly during the past decades. According to the Union of International Associations (UIA), each year over a thousand transnational organizations are established, and as a result in 2012 the UIA estimated the existence of no less than 7,608 intergovernmental and an astonishing number o...

While sub-national authorities are well mobilized in Brussels, they do not lobby all EU-level venues to the same extent. This article explains the extent to which regional offices interact with various EU-level policymaking venues when seeking to influence EU policies. Theoretically, we complement an exchange-based perspective with political-instit...

We outline a conceptual framework that identifies and characterizes the contextual nature of interest group politics in the European Union to better understand variation in interest group mobilization, lobbying strategies and interest group influence. We focus on two sets of contextual factors that affect EU interest group lobbying. First, we argue...

Proper sampling is the foundation for all scientific enquiry aimed at making generalizable claims about a wider set of cases. Indeed, inferential statistical analysis presupposes representative samples and units of analysis that can be considered as independent observations. Establishing a sample of issues on which lobbying may take place, which is...

This article sheds light on the practice and method of expert interviewing in research projects on interest group politics. We first discuss the rationale of interviewing as a data collection instrument, arguing that a careful combination and cross-validation of behavioral and observational data improves the quality of interviews as well as provide...

This article outlines both the overall structure of the INTEREURO Project (Comparative Research on Interest Group Politics in Europe) and the theoretical foci, research activities and data sets generated by its several modules. We provide this description for two purposes. First, it provides a necessary backdrop for understanding the remaining essa...

One conclusion in the literature on domestic European Union (EU) coordination is that the formal institutional properties of countries—devolved versus centralized or unitary—affect the nature of coordination practices. Basically, the view has emerged that domestic coordination is a largely bureaucratic process in which political control mechanisms...

The literature on territorial lobbying in the European Union (EU) has paid much attention to the interaction between regional representations in Brussels and the member-state central governments, and the relations of these representations with the European institutions. Surprisingly, far less systematic research has been conducted on the policies t...

This article examines the coverage of legislative lobbying in European news media. The starting point thereby is that lobbying in the crowded EU-level interest community is not only a struggle for direct access to policymakers, but that in order to realize policy goals many interest groups rely on political attention generated by the media. Our mai...

The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg are well-known cases of consensus politics. Traditionally, decision-making in the Low Countries has been characterized by broad involvement, power sharing and making compromises. These countries were also founding member states of the European Union (EU) and its predecessors. However, the relationship between...

This paper disentangles the impact of various dimensions of European integration on different aspects of the Belgian federal polity. We discern two opposite trends. While the institutional embeddedness of Belgium as an EU member state results in domestic centralizing tendencies and co-operative political practices, economic integration stimulates p...

The principal idea of this paper is that the European socialisation of domestic political actors as a result of the growing involvement in European policy-making settings is not as self evident as early and current neofunctionalists often assume. Rather we suggest that the European socialisation of national actors is mediated by factors that relate...

The central purpose of this paper is to explain why some officials involved in Council working groups have a more positive disposition towards European integration than others. The paper is inspired by the fact that many studies on European integration deal only occasionally with the attitudes and ideas of the men and women involved in daily negoti...

Subnational authorities (SNAs) are increasingly mobilized at the European level and much research has been conducted on the liaison offices that represent these substate jurisdictions. Yet liaison offices are only one of the available organizational forms SNAs rely on in Brussels. In this article we investigate multiple organizational forms—such as...

The openness of the World Trade Organization (WTO) towards non-state actors has led to much debate among scholars and practitioners. The objective of this paper is to add empirical knowledge to this ongoing debate. In particular, we examine the effects of allowing interest groups to participate at WTO Ministerial Conferences (MCs) during 1996–2009...

The relationship between the World Trade Organization (WTO) and interest groups has been and still is a contentious topic in many political and scholarly debates.1 One of the key issues in these debates is the access that the WTO offers to a variety of interest groups wanting to participate in trade policy making. Although access to the WTO’s prede...

The openness of the World Trade Organization (WTO) towards non-state actors has led to much debate among scholars and practitioners. The objective of this paper is to add empirical knowledge to this ongoing debate. More in particular, we examine the effects of allowing interest groups to participate at WTO Ministerial Conferences (MCs) during 1996-...

This article describes and explains the variable extent to which domestic interest organizations seek access to the multiple venues provided by the European system of governance. A multivariate analysis of data collected in four member states—France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany—reveals substantial variance in multilevel venue shopping, di...

Socialization is an important concept in contemporary empirical studies on European integration and politics. However, the existing empirical research differs substantially in terms of research design, operationalization and measurement as well as analytical categories. Yet, despite these divergences, some relevant conclusions can be drawn from thi...

Contemporaneously, the study of EU lobbying appears somewhat disconnected from other sub-areas within the study of EU politics. Research tends to be focused on single issues – either particularistic or directional – and concentrates on communicative interaction modes that emphasise network governance, ignoring the electoral side of politics. This e...

While understanding interest group systems remains crucial to understanding the functioning of advanced democracies, the study of interest groups remains a somewhat niche field within political science. Nevertheless, during the last 15 years, the academic interest in group politics has grown and we reflect on the state of the current literature. Th...

Although EU institutions and policies create additional opportunities for national interest groups to influence policy-making, not all domestic groups make use of the extended niche provided by the EU. Lagging Europeanization has often been explained by resource-based accounts; for instance, the group's staff resources or financial strength determi...

During the last decade trade has become a fertile laboratory for studying interest group politics and agenda-setting. This paper illustrates the mechanisms through which trade issues become prominent on the media agenda. Our analysis resorts to two datasets. First, we use comparative data (covering Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands) on...

Since the path-breaking work of Karl Deutsch on security communities and Ernst Haas on European integration, it has been clear that international institutions may create senses of community and belonging beyond the nation state. Put differently, they can socialize. Yet the mechanisms underlying such dynamics have been unclear. This volume explores...

This article investigates the impact of European integration on the Belgian federal polity. In particular, we substantiate two propositions. First, we show that European integration stimulates Regions, Communities and central government to cooperate. Second, Europe prevents the central government level from disappearing. Europeanisation seems to ha...

Neofunctional, supranationalist, and constructivist scholars studying European integration hypothesize that social interactions cutting across national borders lead individual actors to shift their allegiance toward the European level. This strong socialization hypothesis presumes that, as a result of prolonged exposure and interactions, individual...

"Dieser Bericht stellt erste Ergebnisse der deutschen Teilstudie des Forschungsprojekts 'Access and legitimacy' vor. Ausgehend von der wachsenden Bedeutung europäischer Politik untersucht dieses Projekt, wie Interessengruppen und soziale Bewegungen auf die EU-Politik im Allgemeinen und die EU-Handelspolitik im Besonderen reagieren. Der Bericht präs...

Often it is argued that the EU depoliticizes political issues as bureaucrats and nonmajoritarian institutions are key in the policy-making process. However, recent research rejects this perspective and shows that domestic political cleavages organize the European political space. This article demonstrates that (a) political cleavages affect the org...

This article analyses how differences in domestic institutional constellations shape the representational roles of member state officials when attending the EU Council of Ministers. The conceptual framework used draws on theories of political representation, institutional theories and the Europeanisation literature. Our primary argument is that rol...

This article examines to what extent European interest associations combine public political strategies with traditional forms of inside lobbying or the seeking of access to public officials. I compare two theoretical perspectives: a resource-based explanation focusing on the nature of the mobilized interest and an institutional account emphasizing...

This article analyses the genesis of formal procedures and institutional conditions within the agriculture policy domain in federal Belgium. Our process tracing star ts in 1988 when a small number of agriculture competencies were handed over to the regions and ends in 2002 with the almost complete de-federalisation of agriculture. In par ticular we...

The multilevel governance literature on European politics argues that supranational governing arrangements have increased their autonomy vis–à–vis national governments. As private interests increasingly bypass national levels and become active in transnational Euro–level policy networks, national governments are no longer the sole interface between...

This article examines to what extent interest associations combine public political campaigning with seeking access to policy networks. Two theoretical approaches explaining choice of influence strategies are presented; one focusing on the interest association itself and another considering the institutional context in which political activities ar...

This book is the second of two volumes in which leading scholars examine the way in which European Union (EU) member states co-ordinate their European policies, and investigates the structures, institutions and processes put in place by national governments in Brussels. The companion volume, published in 2000, examines the national co-ordination of...

MLG implies that different policy levels are structurally interdependent. We investigate the consequences of this for the relation between private and public actors. A short review of the literature results in two competing hypotheses. The persistence-hypothesis says that multilevel networks of private actors with a strong national institutional em...

Multi-level governance en de toegang tot de Europese beleidssettings : Een onderzoek naar de manier waarop de "multi-level" de "governance" beïnvloedt MLG implies that different policy levels are structurally interdependent. We investigate the consequences of this for the relation between private and public actors. A short review of the literature...

Teaching Public Administration in Belgium , Jan Beyers and Yves Plees The Teaching of Public Administration in the UK , Chris Bellamy Teaching Public Administration in Ireland , Bernadette Connaughton Regionalism: a Review Article , Martin Rhodes Shrinking the State. The Political Underpinnings of Privatization , Harvey Feigenbaum, Jeffrey Henig an...

This article analyses the performance of Belgian civil servants in the working groups of the European Council of Ministers. If one takes the evaluation by their peers and the success of their networking efforts as criteria, one has to conclude that they perform comparatively well. This is all the more surprising because these ‘Euro‐Belgian’ civil s...

The central purpose of the paper is to explain why some officials involved in Council working groups have a more positive disposition towards European integration than others. The paper is inspired by the fact that many studies on European integration deal only occasionally with the attitudes and the ideas of the men and the women involved in daily...

Business cycles in different regions of the United States tend to synchronize. This study investigates the reasons behind this synchronization of business cycles and the consequent formation of a national business cycle. Trade between regions may not be strong enough for one region to "drive" business cycle fluctuations in another region. This stud...

Belgium is generally perceived as being one of the most fervent supporters of European integration. It is supposed that this is equally true for both, the Belgian political elite and the Belgian population. Unlike in other EU member states, no large public discussion on EU integration has taken place. Therefore, it is generally supposed that Lindbe...

Permissieve consensus, maatschappelijk debat en het draagvlak van de Europese Unie bij de Belgische maatschappelijke organisaties Belgium is generally perceived as being one of the most fervent supporters of European integration. It is supposed that this is equally true for both, the Belgian political elite and the Belgian population. Unlike in oth...

This article explores the communication networks of negotiators in the working groups of the Council of Ministers of the European Union. We employ data collected by interviewing diplomats and civil servants involved in these working groups. These data enable us to explore the role of discretion in a more systematic fashion. We show that negotiation...

This contribution deals with the consequences of European integration for the relation between civil servants and policians. Data of Belgian senior servants who are not involved in European policy networks are compared with data of Belgian officals who are in charge of European negotiations.This comparison shows firstly that officials are more cent...

De verhouding tussen politiek en bestuur in het Belgisch Europees beleid This contribution deals with the consequences of European integration for the relation between civil servants and policians. Data of Belgian senior servants who are not involved in European policy networks are compared with data of Belgian officals who are in charge of Europea...

The 'new' Belgium, following the protracted process of state reform, presents a fascinating context for observing sub-national engagement with European decision-making. Following a radical process of federalization, the Belgian sub-national entities - regions and communities - now have the right of representing Belgium externally in the fields whic...

In spite of its importance in European Union decision making, research on the functioning of the Council is scarce (Wessels, 1991). Based on empirical findings this article gives some new insights in the way Council decision making is institutionalized. The first part focusses on the characteristics of Council working groups and the different posit...