Michele Crepaz

• PhD
• Vice Chancellor's Illuminate Fellow at Queen's University Belfast

Studies of lobbying typically look at the extent to which interest groups realize political goals on issues they actively lobby for. Little is known, however, about the extent to which interest groups attain their political goals without making an active lobbying effort. In this paper, we analyze potential biases in perceived preference attainment...

The regulation of lobbying serves the dual ambition of ensuring a level playing field for participation in policymaking while reducing risks of corruption and undue influence. International organisations, such as the EU, OECD and Council of Europe, have promoted this regulation by relying on such different agendas and frames. This variation is magn...

This forum article provides an overview of the sampling and survey design of the publicly available InterCov dataset. The two-wave cross-country survey includes items on lobbying mobilisation, strategies, access and influence after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and other measures of organisational factors. We discuss design choices conside...

The question of the legitimacy of government funding of interest groups as a democratic practice has been extensively discussed by scholars. On the one hand, research suggests that well‐resourced interest groups are better equipped to capture European Union (EU) funds, raising some questions regarding the elitist character of the EU system of inter...

Despite the growing interest for lobbying in public opinion research, little is known about citizen’s attitudes towards interest groups, especially after legislation making lobbying transparent is passed. Using data from a pre-registered survey experiment conducted with a panel of 569 participants from the Republic of Ireland, this study shows that...

The UK has a fragmented, partial and weak system of lobbying regulation. The system creates a self-reinforcing cycle of ‘exposure’ and worsening public attitudes. In order to make the case for reform and indicate possible paths, this article reviews the system’s faults and weaknesses and then analyses how the lack of political will for reform in We...

Scholars interested in political elites and policy professionals only sporadically rely on focus group methods. In this article, we argue why this is a missed opportunity. Based on our own recent research experience, we suggest three innovations to the focus group method that should make it appealing for political scientists who study professionals...

Central theories of public policy imply that lobbying is demand‐driven, meaning highly responsive to the levels of access that political gatekeepers offer to interest organizations. Others stress drivers at the supply side, especially the severity of disturbances which affect an organization's constituency. We test these central arguments explainin...

Scholarly evidence of transparency's beneficial effects on trust and perceptions of corruption remains debated and confined to the study of public administration. We contribute to this debate by extending the study of its effects to transparency legislation concerning members of parliament (MPs), political parties, and business interest groups. In...

Advocacy intelligence is a critical organizational resource fostering long‐term survival and policy success. Policy‐active interest groups such as non‐profits, business associations and labor unions, seek to maintain their competitive advantage among peers and therefore have incentives to remain secretive about the details of their lobbying strateg...

The first mover advantage is a critical factor for the productivity of firms that enter new markets. Surprisingly, however, the importance of timing is rarely explored in studies of interest groups and their influence on new policy agendas. In this article, we therefore develop a theory of first mover advantages in lobbying. We argue that especiall...

There are more than 2,000 interest groups in Ireland that play a key role in policy development. This paper explores which of these groups have access to Irish policymaking across various political arenas. It does so by examining original data from 2018, gained through large-N survey research on over 300 active interest groups, including business g...

In this study we test whether interest organizations that are confrontational towards EU institutions are less successful than their more cooperative counterparts in obtaining funding from the European Commission (EC). The transfer of public funds to interest organizations is a key dynamic in state-civil society relationships. Research shows that o...

The outbreak of Covid-19 provoked a massive shock for political institutions and societal groups. A crucial question is how such an external event affects the balance of access to political gatekeepers. In particular: Are organizations, which are highly affected by the crisis, able to increase their political voice? To address this, we focus on cha...

Transparency in public institutions is relevant only in so far as the disclosed information is useful for the stakeholders who access it. Hence, we ask: what do users do with the information they obtain through transparency laws? Despite the growing interest in transparency research, the ways transparency portals are used to gather information rema...

The implementation of unprecedented crisis management policies in response to the spread of COVID-19 has attracted the attention of scholars interested in exploring the link between pandemic politics and political trust. However, while the disclosure of information about the pandemic constitutes an important aspect of crisis management policies, th...

The implementation of unprecedented crisis management policies in response to the spread of Covid-19 has attracted the attention of scholars interested in exploring the link between pandemic politics and political trust. However, while the disclosure of information about the pandemic constitutes an important aspect of crisis management policies, th...

Governments claim to establish lobbying registers with the intent of giving citizens and the media the opportunity to see who is lobbying whom and for what purpose. This external scrutiny is expected to help prevent undue influence and corruption. Scholars, however, have noted that transparency might also serve internal scrutinizers by providing in...

Scholars have recently shown renewed interest in the study of party‐interest group ties. According to previous studies, traditional ties between parties and organized interest are a matter of the past. Globalization, deindustrialization, and neoliberalism have posed serious challenges to their survival. Recent contributions suggest that, while thes...

Are government funds an opportunity or a threat to interest groups’ participation in policy making? In answering this question, previous research has raised the question of the interrelatedness between access to policymakers and funding of interest groups’ activities. A popular argument represents funding opportunities as inhibitors of interest gro...

Governmental subsidies are demand-side factors, which allow governments to ‘mould’ interest group communities. The EU is the worlds’ largest donor and has claimed to use public funds to promote the participation of organized interests in public policy. Previous studies found support for this claim and concluded that EU subsidies help to alleviate e...

EU governmental subsidies to interest groups are a form of financial support of civil society organizations. EU officials often claim that these funds serve as a mechanism of associative democracy aimed at promoting a level playing field for interest representation. Previous studies based on the analysis of the allocation of EU funds find support f...

Regulating lobbying is a rather recent concept in the majority of EU member states. Currently, only seven member states (France, Ireland, Lithuania, Austria, Poland, Slovenia and the UK) have legislation on lobbying activities, as well as a mandatory register of lobbyists. The most recent law has been adopted in France on 8 November 2016. Lobbying...

Read only version: http://rdcu.be/t1aI. Why do political systems introduce lobbying rules? Previous literature has analysed the determinants of the introduction of lobbying laws in the US states. However, the last 15 years have witnessed a booming popularity of lobbying laws across the world. Building upon the existing literature, this study seeks...

A substantial aspect of scientific research involves the exercise of linking concepts to observations using measurements. This exercise has often raised the question among researchers of whether or not measurements ‘truly’ and ‘reliably’ capture ideas and observations. In this paper, we wish to address this question by setting out a methodological...

The robustness of a lobbying law is defined as the capacity of the regulation to increase transparency and accountability. Differences in the robustness of lobbying laws are common among regulated political systems. The aim of this work is to explain this variation. The analysis develops a set of hypotheses based on political agenda-setting effects...

p>El Registro conjunto de transparencia (JTR) representa un cambio positivo con respecto a sus predecesores que puede explicarse basándose en el “aprendizaje de normas/legislaciones”. En este artículo apoyamos dicho argumento, proporcionando resultados en dos dimensiones: en primer lugar, midiendo la fuerza de la ley de ‘lobbying’ en la UE en compa...

In clientelistic democracies, the legitimacy of the party system is fundamentally tied to the distribution of material rewards, rather than to ideology, identity, or some other factor. Citizens and the state are linked through a network of patronage ties. Where subnational units of government are administrative off-shoots of the national government...