‘It’s What’s Inside That Counts’ − How Intra-Group Factors Shape Interest Group Lobbying in the European Union

This paper argues that, in order to better understand national interest groups’ lobbying activities in European Union (EU) politics, intra-group organisational factors and processes need to be taken into account. Drawing on organisational theory and the literature on EU interest group politics, the theoretical framework proposed in this paper addresses three interconnected questions: firstly, how do national interest groups internally organise EU-related affairs? Secondly, why do they internally organise their European affairs in this way? And thirdly, what effect does this have on their European-level activity in general? By analytically focusing on the effects of domestic groups’ internal organisation on their EU related activities, the paper moves away from structural explanations, which externalise the causes for differing patterns of group activity at the European level. The paper proposes to theoretically capture intra-group dynamics through eight independent variables, such as centralisation, member relations and leadership autonomy, which will be grouped under two types of players, which interest groups can enact in the European arena. Interest groups’ EU-related lobbying activities are analytically seized by three dimensions of lobbying, namely ad hoc vs. structured, political vs. technocratic and public vs. non-public lobbying. The framework finally presents six hypotheses, which link groups' intra-organisational factors to their lobbying activity in the European Union.