The political power of major business interests is often attributed to their economic position. The net result is said to be a ‘tilted playing field’ where regulatory regimes favor these powerful players, a phenomenon commonly referred to as capture. The idea of capture rests on two important assumptions. First, a high collective action potential and mutual coordination is assumed to be the main explanation for the perceived power of business interests vis-à-vis regulatory agencies. Second, regulatory agencies lack enough resources and independence to resist such regulatory demands. Yet, attempts to explicate such community characteristics and empirically relate them to agency responsiveness and autonomy have been rare. This paper aims to fill that void and examines if and how lobbying community and industry properties such as density, diversity, and market share relate to agency responsiveness and autonomy. It draws on a dataset of EU interest group populations and EU agency consultation data in the area of financial regulation to test hypotheses on community characteristics and agency responsiveness.
