Regional Interests at Work: How They Select Their Advocacy Tactics

How can we explain for the different advocacy tactics regional representations adopt concerning where, when and how to lobby in the multi-institutional and multi-level EU policy-making process? Theories focusing on the resource exchange relationship explain these differences in advocacy tactics by looking at the policymakers that need to provide access to them. However, interest groups do give careful thought about their advocacy tactics and make a cost-benefit analysis on a tactic’s chances of success to influence a proposal. Neo-pluralist theories make us expect that these differences can be explained by looking at the contextual embeddedness of an actor that influences’ cost-benefit analysis of the advocacy tactics. Plausible explanations originate from variables as member characteristics, organization format, issue prioritization (dimension), interest position and its network. To test the derived hypotheses explaining the different advocacy tactics, this paper will look at the activities of around 40 regional representations on 4 different policy processes, being TENT, CAP, Cohesion policy reform and Horizon 2020, collected during the Spring of 2012 when these processes were all under revision.