Conventional wisdom has it that business lobbying is most effective when it is based on close collaboration with desk officers in charge of writing the detailed policy proposal. This view has been most pronounced among business associations operating in cooperative systems such as the German one but also has been prominent among EU business associations. This preference is well documented in our survey study which we did twelve years ago. When we started our new project, the first explorative interviews in the German business world indicated a change. The perception of our interview partners was that policy-making both at the national and at the EU level has become more and more politicized and, consequently, calls for an adjustment in lobbying strategies.
On the basis of a large data set the paper will test if this is just a minority view and if over the last decade there really has been a change in lobby strategies and in the perception of the importance of different kinds of decision-makers. In view of all the changes that happened during that time it sound reasonable to expect that the business world has altered its approach.
MZES Project: EUROLOB II - Europeanization of Interest Intermediation
