Interest groups and the autonomy of regulatory networks

The autonomy of public organizations is usually framed with respect to a political "principal", e.g. the government. In the case of European regulatory networks, recent empirical research focused on their autonomy from European institutions and, respectively, from member states. Less attention has been given to interest groups that interact with these organizations as external stakeholders. They are less visible and their presence is less formalized. However, they could be very influent on decision-making processes. The study of their role is important to achieve a complete picture of network governance and its consequences on public policies. To this aim, this paper will map and examine the representation of interest groups in the European network of energy regulators during the pre-agencification period (2004- 2011).