Shaping a Committee's Negotiating Agenda: The Extent to Which Organized Interests are Able to Follow their Optimal Strategy.

Abstract The aim of the paper is to advance the understanding of the interface between organised interests and the legislative work of committees within the European Parliament. Hitherto the frontier of academic research has been the establishment of which categories of organised interests have the greatest committee access. This has stopped short of making a direct link between access and the EP's legislative output. This paper directly contributes to overcoming this disjuncture. Through ninety-four interviews with actively participating organised interests, a clear picture of their optimal strategies emerged. The next phase was to evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy and thereafter establish the extent to which the optimal approach was reflected in actual behaviour. Here the analysis of committee stage amendments was combined with interview data. The results indicate that interests correctly identify the optimal strategy but the quality of their informational message structured the extent to which they were able to adhere to its prescription. The 'quality threshold' is informally applied by a group of influential committee members on behalf of the wider committee. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]