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The Participation of Slovenian Civil Society Organisations in EU Policymaking: Explaining their Different Routes
Abstract and Figures
While discussing the inclusion of civil society organisations (CSOs) in EU policymaking, academic research has chiefly focused on EU-level umbrella CSOs and activities organised at the EU level. In this article, we show that the activities of national CSOs involved in EU politics are also relevant when it comes to EU policymaking. Some scholars note that national CSOs may use different routes to advocate their interests in EU policymaking. In this article, we take an empirical approach and examine the routes to which Slovenian CSOs are turning their attention and activities on EU issues during the policy formulation and policy implementation stages. The Europeanization process has transformed national CSOs to make them become involved in EU policymaking in different ways. The results show that, despite CSOs being characterised as weak in Central and Eastern Europe and as only rarely contacting EU institutions directly, they participate in EU policymaking by engaging in other ways: either through membership in EU-level umbrella CSOs or by becoming more active at the national level by directing their activities to national decision-makers. Some differences can also be observed among the policy fields under study. © 2018 University Association for Contemporary European Studies.
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... There has also been a notable shift in the scholarly literature from a focus on Brusselsbased CSOs towards domestic civil society mobilization in Europe (Sánchez-Salgado and Demidov 2018;Wunsch 2018;Novak and Lajh 2018;Odasso 2018;Buzogány 2018). Indeed, we posit that the domestic context plays a fundamental role for the transnational mobilization of CSOs. ...
This article examines how and under what conditions Italy’s civil society organizations (CSOs) have resorted to transnational activism and to what extent these efforts translate into impactful political advocacy. The analysis focuses on the action strategies of these civil society actors that have come under considerable pressure through the resurgence of populist–nationalist actors in the domestic arena. Developing an actor-centred perspective from below, this article draws on a series of 27 interviews conducted with these organizations’ representatives working primarily on issues related to migration and refugees in Italy. The empirical study examines some key initiatives that see domestic CSOs as protagonists in the transnational realm and explicates their motivations, approaches, and experiences. Conceptually, the article distinguishes between the vertical and horizontal Europeanization of CSOs. While there are notable opportunities for CSOs to engage in Brussels-centred governance and policy making, the effectiveness of horizontal Europeanization in the form of cross-border networking is—at first sight paradoxically—limited by the EU’s system of multi-level governance. The central argument about Europeanizing civil society activism is that these processes are primarily driven by a pragmatic pursuit of solutions to concrete political challenges that could not be properly addressed in an increasingly hostile domestic environment.
... They also prefer to contact institutions with national representatives such as national members of the European Parliament or Council of the EU where they can contact the permanent representation of the country to the EU in Brussels, or national ministries and officials. Another preference for inclusion in EU policymaking is participation in the process of preparing national positions on legislative proposals of the European Commission (Novak & Lajh, 2018). ...
The 2004 EU enlargement and related Europeanisation processes supported the development of stagnated interest group systems in many ways, including with respect to the professionalisation of mainly voluntary-based organisations in Central and Eastern Europe. In the pre-membership period and initial years after joining the EU, national interest groups from Central and Eastern Europe chiefly relied on EU-level interest groups for important information, knowledge, and know-how concerning EU policymaking, whereas 20 years of membership has today established them as equal partners and co-decision-makers. The article elaborates on the Europeanisation of interest groups in the Central and Eastern Europe region from the start of the process of accession to the EU, with three case studies in focus: Lithuania, Poland, and Slovenia. The main research question is: In which different ways has the Europeanisation process influenced interest groups in the region? To address it, the article builds on Johansson and Jacobsson’s (2016) typology of the Europeanisation of interest groups. Six exploratory factors were examined in this regard: (a) contacts with EU policymakers and institutions, (b) interest in EU policymaking, (c) funding received from EU projects and programmes, (d) networking with EU umbrella organisations, (e) participation in open consultations, and (f) the relationship of the group with members. To study the effects of Europeanisation processes in selected countries, web survey data gathered from national interest groups as part of the Comparative Interest Groups Survey project were used. Our results show that interest groups from Central and Eastern Europe have become “European” in a range of ways. Regulatory and discursive Europeanisation is most typical for Polish interest groups, identity Europeanisation for Lithuanian interest groups, and financial and participatory Europeanisation for Lithuanian and Polish interest groups, while organisational Europeanisation has the strongest effect on interest groups in Slovenia.
... If the main strategic goals are not set and clearly defined, it is, in theory, not possible to implement all public policy cycle stages and, consequently, improve the quality of PPPPs (Keping, 2018). This demonstrates that effective public policymaking on the national level is not possible without a balanced and well-thought-out strategic framework (Novak and Lajh, 2018). These results show that even though strategic factors were identified by the interviewees as the most critical of all factors (Mencinger et al., 2017), normative factors have an unprecedented role due to the deeper socio-political national context. ...
"Policy processes are complex systems and require an in-depth and comprehensive analysis. Especially, factors that affect public policy design and implementation, as two important stages of the public policy cycle, have not been sufficiently explored. The aim of the paper is to analyze the relationship between two critical factors that influence the design and implementation of public policies in the case of Slovenia, namely strategic factors and normative factors, and offer a basis for comparison with similar countries. Based on twenty-two structured interviews with prominent public policy experts in Slovenia and content analysis of the responses, the findings reveal that, although strategic factors are identified by the interviewees as the most critical, the role of normative factors is also important and should not be underestimated. For various reasons, in practice, normative factors often turn out to be crucial."
... The existing literature on the role and specifics of IGs in the CEE region focuses on the main aspects of the quality of democracy (Roberts 2009), the weakness of civil society and citizen participation (Howard 2003;Ekiert and Foa 2011), bureaucracy and collective action patterns (Cox and Vass 2020;Duvanova 2007), Europeanization and democratization (Fink-Hafner et al. 2015;Maloney et al. 2018), social movements character (Císař 2020), density dependence (Labanino et al. 2020), political opportunity structures (Vráblíková 2014), various systems of interest representation (Borragán 2004;Fink-Hafner 2011) and, last but not least, the capacity for participation in EU governance (Obradovic et al. 2008;Novak and Lajh 2018). ...
In many democratic systems, there is a tradition of interactions between political parties and interest organizations. However, for the CEE region, the factors driving such contacts remain partially undiscovered. Therefore, taking the organized interests’ perspective, we examine what factors influence the frequency of contacts with political parties, what types of parties are most attractive to groups and what kind of interest groups’ resources facilitates such contacts. The study relies on data from a large-scale survey of organized interests, bringing in a comparative perspective of the four selected countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. The results show that nearly half of interest groups in the region do not form any lobby routines with political parties, which is similar to the results of recent research in long-established democracies. However, regarding the other half, we see different patterns of contact depending on the country. The article finds strong support for the importance of the dominant party status for interest groups, but not necessarily for the number of seats that party holds in the parliament. Against the background of a fairly balanced picture of the Czech Republic and Slovenia, our results indicate extremely different attitudes of interest groups toward political parties in Hungary and Poland, countries willingly juxtaposed with each other in recent years. The results for Poland clearly show that the stronger the party's position and the greater the number of its seats in parliament, the greater the interest of the groups in contact. On the contrary, in Hungary groups rather declare contacts with opposition parties and those with a small and medium number of seats in parliament. Regarding the importance of resources, we found that among the three types of analyzed resources—financial horizon, different types of expertise and participation in umbrella organizations—only the last two are relevant.
... This is even more so the case when it comes to interest groups as key civil society actors in the region. Indeed, various authors have offered insights on interest groups in CEE politics (Cox and Vass 2000;Cox and Gallai 2014;Fink-Hafner 1998;Novak and Fink-Hafner 2019), their interactions with the state (Cox and Vass 2000; Heyes and King 2020), parliamentary representation (Fink-Hafner 2011) as well as their activity in the European arena (Obradovic and Pleines 2007;Novak and Lajh 2018) and subsequently the impact of Europeanization on them (Fink-Hafner et al. 2015). Until recently though, most previous studies limited themselves to individual countries or policies and lacked a broader comparative perspective. ...
This introduction presents the general outline of this special issue and elaborates on the context in which most of the contributions originated. The central question, common to all papers, is the position of organized interests as an element of civic society in post-communist and post-transition settings, their forms of advocacy, contestation and preference realization. The articles engage with organized interests and advocacy patterns in four post-communist states across three policy fields—energy, healthcare and higher education. Certainly, a limited collection of papers can only address some of the research gaps existing in this thematic area. However, the perspectives presented here considerably differ from the mainstream of empirical and conceptual work on post-communist civil society and interest groups, which until recently has generally lacked a comparative perspective and, for the most part, has yet to take into account the ongoing democratic backsliding tendencies in the region.
... Indeed, numerous existing studies have grappled with the role of interest groups in CEE politics (Cox & Vass, 2000;Fink-Hafner, 1998;Gallai et al., 2015;Novak & Fink-Hafner, 2019), their relations with the state (Cox & Vass, 2000) and parliamentary representation (Fink-Hafner, 2011). Other scholars have explored the activities of interest groups from the post-communist region in the European policy-making arena (Obradovic & Pleines, 2007;Pleines, 2010;Novak & Lajh, 2018), or vice versa, the impact of Europeanization on CEE interest groups (Fink-Hafner et al., 2015). However, most previous studies focus only on individual countries (most frequently Slovenia) or policies (see Roberts, 2009, for healthcare) and thus often lack a comparative focus. ...
... In addition, the fact that Montenegrin interest groups contact EU affair officers more often than groups from Slovenia do illustrates the non -democratic elements of their political culture and the need to seek external legitimacy, which, in Montenegro, is stimulated by both the lack of trust in institutions and the role of international community in building democracy. On the other hand, Slovenian interest groups, operating in an EU member state, may take advantage of other access points in the multi -level system of the EU when they try to influence EU policymaking, so they do not rely only on EU affairs officers (Novak -Lajh 2018). Indeed, in their involvement in national policy making, Slovenian interest groups turn more towards national civil servants working for departmental ministries. ...
Despite the joint history of Montenegro and Slovenia as republics of the former Yugoslavia, the development of the interest groups system has been different in these countries. While in Slovenia, these groups started to develop from the 19 th century, in Montenegro the interest groups system was almost non-existent in the pre-socialist period with only a few participative elements, such as the use of tribal assemblies. Socialism did not support associational life, since most of the organizations that were founded at the time were under some form of government control. As a consequence, the interest groups system in Slovenia shrank during socialist rule, while in Montenegro it remained at the same level. During the 1980s and after the collapse of the socialist regime the interest group system in Montenegro finally starts to develop, being heavily influenced by international donor and assistance programmes, while in Slovenia the system had a new opportunity to flourish. In this article we are in particularly interested in how the interest group system contributes to the quality of democracy. Although Montenegrin interest groups have been a tool of influence and democratisation primarily on behalf of the international community, their internal democracy is less sophisticated than is the case in Slovenia. The results show that the origin of the interest groups system and the distinct histories of the specific political cultures seem to be embedded in the functioning of contemporary interest groups. This in turn, determines the strength or weakness of these groups in facing the challenges of de-democratisation.
This chapter examines the phenomenon of backsliding in the post-accession process of Europeanisation in Slovenia as one of the Central and Eastern European member states of the EU. It seeks to explain the rise of compliance problems with the EU's values (i.e., de-Europeanisation) in Slovenia, which turned a former EU star pupil into a troublesome member state. The chapter analyses sources of economic and democratic backsliding in times of polycrises in the EU that stem from the state's domestic environment and confirms the determining role of decision-makers over the political system. Given the importance and widely shared image of Slovenia as a role model for the candidate states in the Western Balkans, the chapter also addresses the potential impact of Slovenia's de-Europeanisation turn for its role as a bridge between the EU and the Western Balkans region.
This chapter looks into the unprecedented increase in the number of interest organizations during the accession process to the European Union dating from the early 1990s up to 2004. We argue that faced with the competitive pluralistic and multilevel governance of the EU, interest groups in CEE countries went through a ‘crash course’ in lobbying professionalization. We look into different forms of engagement in the European policy process, both at the European and national levels, analyzing the existing institutional framework for consultations in European policy-making, the stakeholders approached, the expenditures of organizations, and their membership of umbrella organizations. The comparative analysis allows us to elaborate on similarities and differences between the old and new Members States of the European Union.
Mainstream research on the roles and contribution of civil society in the EU is characterised by a strong focus on European civil society in Brussels. Studies looking at activities and roles of national CSOs in the European Union (EU) depart from mainstream analytical and conceptual perspectives and rarely talk to each other. The contributions of this special issue attempt to bridge empirical and analytical gaps between existing studies on European civil society beyond Brussels. They show that the involvement of national CSOs in EU policymaking and democratisation is broader and more diverse than is usually thought. They approach the object of study from an original analytical perspective: a research agenda inspired by sociological approaches. This agenda hinges on an interactionist and pragmatic analytical framework, a pluralist approach to causality and takes into account the peculiarities and effects of context. Moving beyond Brussels and adopting diverse analytical perspectives, the contributions provide new evidence on the diversity of functions, roles and responses of national CSOs to the EU, and the roles and motivations of national CSOs implementing EU policies. © 2018 University Association for Contemporary European Studies.
The article addresses the bias in interest representation within the EU by examining the lobbying
strategies of national interest organisations within the EU’s multilevel political system. Both our theoretical
framework, which includes the determinants of a national interest organisation’s decision to act at the
EU level, and the data analysis from the INTEREURO Multi-Level Governance Module (MLG) (www.intereuro.
eu) reveal three main findings. Firstly, the greatest differentiation among interest organisations (IOs)
appears to be between those IOs from the older member states (Germany, the UK and the Netherlands), which
exhibit above-average levels of activity, and those from the newer EU member states (Sweden, Slovenia), which
exhibit below-average levels of activity. Secondly, the variations in IO activity levels are much greater from
country to country than from one policy field to another. Thirdly, although the IOs from all five countries in
our study are more likely to employ media and publishing strategies (information politics) than to mobilise
their members and supporters (protest politics), we can still observe national patterns in their selection of strategies and in the intensity of their instrumentalisation. Key words: EU, interest groups, interest organisations, lobbying, strategies.
The contribution analyses whether the factors affecting perceived interest group influence on political agendas differ depending on whether groups lobby in their own domestic context or seek influence at the European Union (EU) level. Findings from a multinomial logistic regression analysis based on survey responses from 1,723 domestic interest groups in the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Netherlands do not indicate that differences in the national setting are important for perceived group influence at the two levels. However, they underline how the decision-making level acts as a contextual factor, which conditions the explanatory potential of other crucial variables: Embeddedness into domestic decision-making is primarily an asset for securing perceived influence on the national rather than the EU agenda, whereas group resources matter more at the EU than the national level. In this way our multi-level design underlines how the state-of-play for securing perceived influence varies across lobbying contexts.
During the last decade, the EU has had an explicit strategy to include civil society organizations
(CSOs) in European public policy. However, the extent to which domestic CSOs are oriented towards
the EU in their policy interests and strategies is influenced by various factors. This article examines to
what extent and in what ways CSOs acknowledge the impact of the EU on their substantive policy
agenda and under what conditions they would prioritise EU-level contacts and/or lobbying in their
strategies. We are particularly interested in finding out which institutional linkages – if any –
determine the extent to which domestic CSOs direct their policy activity towards the EU level. The
article is based on a survey of 880 Swedish CSO’s as well as qualitative interviews with 17 CSOs
within the policy areas of anti-discrimination, immigration and asylum in Sweden, United Kingdom
and the Netherlands. The results show that although CSOs recognise the importance of the EU-level
and also try to influence EU policy, their priorities and orientation are primarily directed towards the
domestic level. From our empirical findings, we argue that in order to understand the limited
Europeanization of CSOs, national dependency on financial support and to some extent formal
embedding in national welfare systems are key factors. The findings indicate some differences
between the organizations’ approaches, which to some extent can be attributed to policy area and
organizational character. Policy areas with strong EU legislation implemented at national levels such
as anti-discrimination seemingly underpins stronger linkages to local and national governments and
thus less EU orientation.
The European Union (EU) has clearly made a difference for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). EU officials and European political entrepreneurs have been crucial in the promotion of funding and access opportunities, but they have been proven to have little capacity to create CSOs from scratch or to use CSOs too bluntly for their own purposes. This book brings Europeanization studies closer to society by providing a sociologically-informed analysis, which challenges current assumptions and highlights neglected areas of study. It also addresses many of the methodological challenges in the empirical study of the Europeanization of interest groups, including a comparative analysis over a long time period. The book provides a comparison across three countries, France, UK and Spain, and two policy sectors, international solidarity and social CSOs.
EU policy shapes all areas of our lives -- from our money, to our food, to our welfare. Yet we know little about how EU decisions are made, and who benefits from them. This book is a critical guide to the policies of the EU. Raj Chari and Sylvia Kritzinger argue that there is an agenda that underlies EU policy making. Some policies -- those that aim to create a competitive economy -- are prioritized, while others are effectively ignored. Setting the EU in a proper economic and theoretical context, the authors provide a chapter-by-chapter analysis of each of the EU's major policy areas. Arguing that traditional accounts of EU integration are inadequate, the authors develop an innovative new perspective. Written with clarity and precision, this book is ideal for students of the EU and anyone looking for an incisive critique of the role of corporate capital in the development of EU policy.
Over a decade has passed since the collapse of communism, yet citizens of post-communist countries are still far less likely to join voluntary organizations than people from other countries and regions of the world. Why do post-communist citizens mistrust and avoid public organizations? What explains this distinctive pattern of weak civil society? And what does it mean for the future of democracy in post-communist Europe? In this engaging study, Marc Morjé Howard addresses these questions by developing a provocative argument about the powerful and enduring impact of the communist experience on its countries and citizens. Howard argues that the legacy of the communist experience of mandatory participation in state-controlled organizations, the development and persistence of vibrant private networks, and the tremendous disappointment with developments since the collapse of communism have left most post-communist citizens with a lasting aversion to public activities. In addition to analyzing data from over 30 democratic and democratizing countries in the World Values Survey, Howard presents extensive and original evidence from his own research in Eastern Germany and Russia, including in-depth interviews with ordinary citizens and an original representative survey.
Chapter 4 considers the European Union as a system of multi-level governance and a central arena for transnational co-operation and supranational problem solving, where institutions at different levels regulate policies with a wide range of instruments and procedures on an expanding scope of policy fields. The dynamic evolution of new and refined treaty provisions has lead (a) to an ever increasing set of communitarized frameworks for policy-making, (b) to sectoral differentiation concerning an increasing variety of policy fields, (c) to institutional differentiation with regard to the variety of interaction styles, and (d) to procedural differetiation, which increases the need of national actors to improve their procedural skills. The chapter's puzzle is how Europeanization works within the member states, i.e. how institutional actors in differentnational settings coined by different national traditions adapt to commonchallenges, constraints and opportunities, for which they are mainly responsible themselves. The article scrutinizes different national institutions (governments and administrations, parliaments, regions, courts) to see how they cope with the challenges of the integration process and comes to the conclusion that adaptation occurs in many ways but has not, so far, produced fundamental change.
