Direct Corporate Lobbying in the European Multilevel System

A central concern in the contemporary interest group literature is the increasing prevalence of direct corporate lobbying at the expense of associational representation. Yet the aggregate category „business“ obscures important differences between the political needs of corporations and business associations. These differences likely are particularly consequential in multilevel systems. However, systematic evidence on corporate political strategy across multiple levels remains scarce. In this paper, we open the business black box and compare corporations to other business interest organizations within the multilevel system of the European Union. Using data on 620 business actors from the interest group population of the German State of Baden-Württemberg and their presence in the transparency registers of the state parliament, the German federal lobby register, and the European Union transparency register, we assess their mobilization at three levels of government. Controlling for policy area, our analysis reveals, firstly, a regional and federal mobilization advantage for business associations. Secondly, conditional on being active, corporations display a monotonic compositional preference for higher levels, culminating in a three times higher probability of lobbying the EU institutions relative to business associations. Thirdly, pairwise contrasts confirm this variation formally: the corporation effect differs significantly at every step of the multilevel system. Fourthly, the within-business gap shows moderate variation across policy areas. Our findings suggest that direct corporate lobbying in the German case is selective and EU-oriented rather than a uniform displacement of associational voice.