Explaining interest groups’ influence on the design of informal institutions in the EU: the case of the Joint Transparency Register

Regulating lobbying activities and interest groups’ access to formal and informal decision-making at European level by establishing a Joint Transparency Register (JTR) represents a key yet contentious issue in the debates over political legitimacy and policy effectiveness in the context of the EU supranational institutional setting. High levels of inter-institutional conflict and intense public and policy debates accompanied the set up of JTR in 2007 and its subsequent reform in 2014, especially with respect to its voluntary (versus mandatory) nature and the amount and quality of information asked from private actors about their organizational and economic characteristics as part of the registration process. In light of this debate, the study asks the following: what factors explain the institutional outcomes of the design and redesign process of the EU Joint Transparency Register? The study answers this question by testing empirically three competing explanations of institutional emergence and change: a theory of institutions as social conventions; a theory of exchange and competitive selection of institutions; and a theory of bargaining and distribution of institutional outcomes (Knight 1995). The empirical analysis is conducted on an original dataset recording information about the set of preferences key public and private actors hold over different institutional arrangements concerning the set up and reform of the Joint Transparency Register and the observed institutional outcomes. The results of the statistical analyses indicate support for the bargaining approach to explaining institutional development, and provide new insights about the balance of power among EU institutional actors, and between ‘designing actors’ and ‘implementing/affected actors’ in designing EU informal institutions.