INVESTMENT IN POLITICAL INFLUENCE AT THE EU LEVEL

Public policy advocacy is generally defined as the attempted or successful influencing of legislative-administrative decisions made by public authorities through the use of interested representatives. A public policy advocate , or interest representative, is an individual or organization that seeks to influence policy.

Legitimacy can be broken down into two components: output legitimacy and input legitimacy. Output legitimacy of EU policy concerns the supply of information, ideas and expert resources for the technical quality of EU policies, and is associated with leveraging expert knowledge to produce effective legislation. However, legitimacy stems from more than the achievement of effective results; it is also rooted in the opportunities for citizens to help shape these results. Input legitimacy is the capacity of a diverse range of citizens and organizations to influence EU policy, which is measured as the proportion of EU citizens whose interests a public policy advocate can credibly allege to represent.

The European Commission has declared that public policy advocacy is a legitimate part of the democratic system, regardless of whether it is carried out by citizens, companies, or firms working on behalf of third parities, think tanks, lawyers, or public affairs professionals.

Interest representatives can bridge the democratic gap between Europe's institutions and its citizens by enhancing the legitimacy of EU legislation.

Interest groups contribute crucial resources such as factual data to support the policy formulation, implementation, and monitoring functions of EU institutions. Public policy advocates also use their resources to provide EU institutions with the expertise necessary to efficiently address European issues.

Public policy advocacy opens the complex EU policy process to a diverse range of citizens and organizations. In interacting with public policy advocates , EU institutions seek to integrate comprehensive and diverse input into legislation. Such interactions enhance popular identification with EU  policies, which bolsters EU legitimacy.

Further, investment in political influence provides voters with a way of expressing the intensity of their preferences, which, in turn, increases the efficiency of politicians. Public policy advocates perform the critical function of informing citizens about laws and regulations and can increase the average quantity of citizens' political knowledge.

European interest groups employ various strategic mechanisms and structural forms to gain access to EU institutions and steer policy. For instance, public policy advocates must select which institution, officials, and policy domains to target. While the optimal strategy varies widely across dossier, procedure, setting, and time, legislation involving concentrated costs and benefits is most attractive to interest group politics.

1. Because the EU is primarily a regulatory authority, much interest representation focuses on regulatory restrictions on competition and price.
2. Second, interest representatives must decide whether to devote resources toward pushing their own agenda or blocking opportunities for competing interests. The blocking strategy is typically easier, involves less cost, and carries less risk. Although EU public policy advocates exhibit a bias toward ease and low risk strategies, no pressure group can only play the negative game.
3. Third, public policy advocates must decide which EU officials to target. Public policy advocacy is primarily directed at the lowest possible level.  This is because less senior officials undertake most of the preparatory work in drafting legislation, and final commission proposals usually reproduce around 80% of the first draft. Furthermore, low-level officials constitute the majority of the EU's civil service and are relatively easy to access. The most senior officials, in contrast, are difficult to access, numerically scarce, and mainly involved during the later stages of the policy formation process. When a proposal reaches top officials, higher degrees of formality hamper public policy advocates'  attempt to push their respective interests.
4. Fourth, lobbyists must make strategic choices regarding policy domain.Most EU public policy advocacy activity clusters around committees that have the greatest regulatory output and competencies. Not surprisingly, the Directorate Generals facing the greatest number of interest groups are those with the greatest regulatory competencies: Enterprise, Environments and Agriculture.
5. Fifth, interest representatives must decide when to advocate because timing is considered essential for successful interest representation. Early access to EU institutions drives greater opportunities to influence the final laws by enabling groups to identify opportunities for networking, coalition formation, and bargaining.

Perhaps the most important strategic choice, however, is between direct and collective action. Each interest must find the "optimal form of a European collectivity or flock." Small groups and individual actors tout lower consensus building costs because they are selective in their membership and target specific goals. These benefits are clearly attractive, as 40% of all interest representatives advocate at the Commission and Parliament are individual actors.

Since participation in European associations enhances an actor's opportunities to influence EU policy, the prevalence of collective action in EU public policy advocacy is not surprising for several reasons. First, collective action enables firms to increase their capacity to supply input legitimacy because EU  institutions perceive collective associations as more representative of Europe's citizens. Leveraging natural alliances that enhance and refine reputation, as well as developing a broad political profile across diverse issues, are highly effective mechanisms to supply input legitimacy. Second, given the great number of actors advocating the EU, interests must possess mass and weight to attract the attention of policymakers. Finally, collective associations save on the cost of public policy advocacy because these expenses are distributed across several actors.

Political institutions are not mere arenas accepting citizen pleas," but "government officials are themselves participants in the process. Indeed, EU public policy advocacy is not characterized by  "unidirectional activity" of public policy advocates hassling  EU institutions. For example, the Commission attempts to forge long term relationships with interest groups that consistently supply valuable information by developing networks of relevant actors and subsequently "massaging" the way these networks operate." This results in the formation of long-term, trust based relationships between elite interest groups and Commission officials. Interest groups demand access to EU institutions because governments, empowered with the legal right to make binding decisions, enjoy a virtual monopoly on political influence. However, influence is very difficult to measure. Although access does not necessarily translate into influence, the two are closely intertwined. Public policy advocates cannot obtain influence absent access to the critical points of political decision-making. As such, access to political institutions becomes the "facilitating intermediate objective" of interest groups." In the EU, businesses demand access to the Commission, the Parliament, and the Council with the ultimate objective of securing favorable legislation and blocking adversarial regulations. Citizens' organizations, on the other hand, demand access with ultimate collective goals such as the protection of public health and the environment.

Parliament supplies access to interest representatives to enhance its output legitimacy because public policy advocates constitute a critical source of information that bolsters the autonomy of Parliament relative to the Commission, the Council, and national governments. As a result, compensating for the perceived bias of the Commission toward private interests in policy proposals becomes a critical access point for public policy advocates . The complexity of issues on the agenda of the European Parliament compels MEPs to seek specific industry expertise.

EU institutions are themselves key players in creating a distinct EU lobbying system. While trust and credibility remain strong lobbying currencies in Brussels, successfully lobbyists must provide technical information to bolster the output legitimacy of EU legislation and develop pan-European credentials to support input legitimacy of EU policies. Technical information and representation - input and output legitimacy - in the aggregate represent the "price" that EU institutions obtain in exchange for granting lobbyists access to the EU policymaking process. As such, EU institutions come to depend on public policy advocates for expertise, information, and reputation in the European public policy process.