Influencing the Bureaucracy

Abstract

Bureaucracy has been a major – in many countries the major – venue for interest groups in pursuit of public policy influence. This may still be true, but the conditions for influencing bureaucracy as well as the composition of different venues may have changed during the last couple of decades. Influencing today’s bureaucracy may be different from influencing bureaucracy two or three decades ago for many different reasons: Europeanisation, mediatisation, changing role of parliaments, the advent of new groups, the upcoming of new policy issues etc. Whether a country has a corporatist legacy or not, bureaucracy may still be an important venue for interest groups or it may have been downplayed in favour of other venues. The panel will assess how interest groups approach and interact with today’s bureaucracies, in what forms and what frequencies this is done and on what conditions and with what consequences. Papers with a comparative perspective are particularly welcome: Comparative perspective may include cross-country comparisons, diachronic single country/case studies, comparison of policy sectors, cross sectoral studies, studies of the interplay between bureaucratic and other venues etc.

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