Target groups: An overlooked actor in EU implementation research

Target groups figure prominently in research on public administration, implementation, and regulation. They do so for a good reason: target groups may influence the decisions, services, and demands made by public officials. A long line of research demonstrates that target groups may distort, delay, or hinder the implementation of public policy, or even be so powerful that they write their own regulation (Howlett 2018; Jakobsen et al. 2019; Stigler 1971; Weaver 2014). However, in research on the implementation of EU policies, target groups have been almost completely ignored (Martinsen et al. 2025). However, there is no obvious reason why target group behavior should not be as important for policy outcomes in the EU setting as in national settings. So, an important piece of the puzzle of understanding EU policy outcomes is missing. The purpose of our paper is to help bring target groups onto the agenda of EU implementation research. We offer three specific contributions. First, we provide a rationale why research into target groups is relevant for understanding EU policy outcomes. Second, based on a novel dataset comprising all binding EU legal acts adopted since 1973, a total of more than 164,000 acts, we map target groups of EU regulation. This mapping is done at the level of sentences within EU legal acts, so the resulting target group map is of unmatched precision and comprehensiveness and enables us to closely follow the development of target groups over time. Third, we make a first study into the antecedents of the composition of the EU target group universe. More specifically, we analyze how this universe is related to the EU legislators’ choice of legal instrument, their reliance on secondary or tertiary EU regulation, and the regulated policy area. Taken together, our paper establishes a solid foundation for future studies of the impact of target groups on EU policy outcomes. Cited literature: Howlett, Michael. 2018. “Matching policy tools and their targets: beyond nudges and utility maximisation in policy design”, Policy & Politics 46(1): 101-124. Jakobsen, Morten, Oliver James, Donald Moynihan and Tina Nabatchi. 2019. “JPART virtual issue on citizen–state interactions in public administration research”, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, e8-e15. Martinsen, Dorte Sindbjerg, Stein Arne Brekke and Silje Synnøve Lyder Hermansen. 2025. ”Targets Matter: Towards a Research Agenda on EU Policy Design and Application”, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Danish Political Science Association, Nyborg, Denmark, 24-25 November 2025. Stigler, George J. 1971. “The Theory of Economic Regulation”, The Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 2(1): 3-21. Weaver, Kent R. 2014. “Compliance Regimes and Barriers to Behavioral Change”, Governance 27(2): 243-265.