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How does governing in coalitions affect coalition parties' responsiveness to voters? In this article, we seek to understand the relationship between political parties' participation in multiparty governments and their responsiveness to voters. We argue that the extent to which coalition parties respond to policy priorities of voters is influenced by the divisiveness of policy issues within the cabinet and the ministerial responsibility for policies. To test our hypotheses, we combine data on the issue attention of 55 coalition parties from the Comparative Manifestos Project with data on government composition and data on the policy priorities of voters from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and various election studies in 45 elections across 16 European countries from 1972 to 2011. While we find that intra-cabinet divisiveness decreases coalition parties' responsiveness, we find no effect for portfolio responsibility. Our findings shed light on the relationship between party competition and coalition governments and its implications for political representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We outline a conceptual framework that identifies and characterizes the contextual nature of interest group politics in the European Union (EU) 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 that interest group activities are shaped by several policy-related factors, namely the complexity, the policy type, the status quo, the salience and the degree of conflict characterizing legislative proposals and the associated issues. Second, we posit that lobbying in the EU is affected by institutional factors that vary within the EU political system, such as the institutional fragmentation within the European Commission and the European Parliament and across different national political systems depending on the patterns of interest intermediation or the vertical and horizontal distribution of powers. Finally, we theorize about the interrelationship between contextual features and interest group properties and summarize the findings of the collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framing plays an important role in public policy. Interest groups strategically highlight some aspects of a policy proposal while ignoring others in order to gain an advantage in the policy debate. However, we know remarkably little about how interest groups choose their frames. This contribution therefore studies the determinants of frame choice during the policy formulation stage in the European Union. We argue that frame choice is a complex process which is simultaneously affected by interest groups as well as contextual characteristics. With regard to interest group characteristics, we expect that frame choice varies systematically across actor type. With regard to contextual characteristics, we hypothesize that the frames that interest groups employ are specifically tailored towards the DGs in charge of drafting the proposal. Our theoretical expectations are tested based on a new and innovative dataset on frame choice of more than 3,000 interest groups in 44 policy debates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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How does ideological congruency affect the speed of legislative decision-making in the European Union? Despite the crucial importance of actor preferences, the effect of partisan alignments and ideological composition of the European institutions has largely been neglected. However, we argue that the ideological congruence between legislative bodies has an important effect on the duration of policy-making. We test our theoretical expectations based on a large new dataset on decision-making speed in the European Union using event history analysis. The findings confirm our theoretical claim indicating that the ideological distance between the European institutions slows down policy-making which has important implications for the problem-solving capacity of political systems more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While Europarties have received increasing attention in recent years, little is known about how they arrive at common policy positions, given their strong internal ideological heterogeneity. In order to explain position formation within Europarties, this article argues that national parties compete with each other in an attempt to upload their own policy positions to their Europarty. The article hypothesizes that their ability to succeed in these attempts depends on their legislative resources. The argument is tested by analysing position formation within the four major Europarties for all European Parliament elections between 1979 and 2004. The empirical results confirm that position choice is skewed towards parties with a large seat share, which has important implications for political representation in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Why does lobbying success in the European Union (EU) vary across interest groups? Even though this question is central to the study of EU policy-making, only few have dealt with it. The small number of existing studies is moreover characterized by a multitude of hypotheses and contradictory findings. This article aims to overcome these shortcomings by presenting a theoretical exchange model that identifies information supply, citizen support and economic power of entire lobbying camps as the major determinants of lobbying success. The hypotheses are empirically evaluated based on a large new dataset. By combining a quantitative text analysis of interest group submissions to Commission consultations with an online survey among interest groups, the theoretical expectations are tested across a large number of policy issues and interest groups while controlling for individual interest group and issue characteristics. The empirical analysis confirms the theoretical expectations indicating that lobbying is a collective enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Information supply is an important instrument through which interest groups can exert influence on political decisions. However, information supply to decision-makers varies extensively across interest groups despite the common objective to influence policy-making. Drawing on resource mobilisation and organisational theory, a new theoretical framework is developed that identifies organisational characteristics, more specifically the resources, the functional differentiation, the professionalisation and the decentralisation of interest groups as determinants of information supply. These theoretical expectations are tested based on a large new dataset. Using multilevel modelling, this article examines information supply to the European Commission across a large number of policy issues and interest groups by combining an analysis of consultation submissions with a survey conducted among interest groups. The findings confirm the theoretical expectations suggesting that interest groups cannot equally exploit their access to decision-makers, but that resource endowment and organisational structures play a crucial role for effective informational lobbying. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]