Abstract
As the United Kingdom (UK) begins to grapple with Brexit and its implications, understanding how the European Union (EU) engages with business is a topic that can only increase in importance over time. Business Lobbying in the European Union is a useful resource for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners alike. As the title suggests, it provides an in-depth overview of how business lobbying is enacted within the EU, and key questions asked include the following: (1) When and why do firms mobilize in Brussels? (2) When and how does business influence EU policymaking? (3) What is business’ role as a political actor in the EU? And finally, (4) When, why, and how do EU institutions grant business interests access to policymaking? (c.f. Coen et al., 2021a).
Most research on business lobbying focusses on questions of value judgment (e.g. should it be undertaken? Is it democratic?) or else zooms in on specific angles, such as climate policy (Godet, 2021). This book, however, focusses on an in-depth exploration of business-government relations through a macro, meso, and micro perspective across a multiplicity of industrial segments (Coen et al., 2021c). The macro perspective focusses on systemic features that have/are influencing the relationship between the EU and business corporations, as well as the evolution thereof over time. For example, the authors highlight the impact of numerous treaties and agreements on this relationship. Another interesting observation is that, similar to the US, businesses use political financing as a lobbying tool, however, over time a distinct lobbying style, based primarily upon the reputation and credibility of the firms’ government affairs directors, seems to have gained currency with Brussels (Coen et al., 2021a). Second, the meso perspective scrutinizes how public policy influences mobilization, for example, why regulatory policy fields have greater business activity than distributive fields, that is, why there is greater business activity in policy related to finance, the environment, trade, or public health; and conversely, less activity with regard to policy linked to culture, youth policy, or education (Coen et al., 2021a). Finally, the micro perspective evaluates strategic choices that particular firms make to maintain their competitive edge in the difficult lobbying environment of Brussels, for example, in terms of their investments in human capital (Coen et al., 2021a).
Additionally, the book also attempts to demystify the myths that surround business lobbying more generally, and specifically, in the EU’s complex context. Some key findings include the following: (1) contrary to popular perception that political financing gets companies a foothold, this may not be sufficient to grant access to policymakers, who are more interested in producing high-quality policy outputs, and hence require reliable and relevant expertise. The data presented shows that insiders that gained access were sometimes less resource-endowed, but who were able to supply expertise (Coen et al., 2021b). (2) Although business interests have a strong presence in Brussels, their mobilization does not cut across the board since companies have finite resources (Coen et al., 2021b). As such, successful business mobilization is targeted to supply information-legitimacy where it is needed the most. (3) Contrary to perceptions of business and EU government relations as a revolving door, there is little by way of personnel exchange between the two (Coen et al., 2021c). Although there may be some cases of this, the authors’ findings suggest that the phenomenon of revolving doors at the government affairs office level is not as pervasive as in the US-for example, in the authors’ sample, only 10% of the managers had experience in EU institutions, and managers were not parachuted from government into government affairs offices (Coen et al., 2021c).
Overall, the takeaway is that relationships of trust between the firm and the policymaker are most crucial, and this requires investing time in establishing contact and providing reliable expertise (Coen et al., 2021b).
In terms of application to business research, I believe this book answers the call for more research that integrates a variety of cross-disciplinary insights and methodologies (Frynas et al., 2017) to better understand the phenomena of corporate political activity. Harnessing insights from business studies, political science, legal studies, sociology, and history, this book provides an in-depth examination of business lobbying in the unique context of the EU, with an eye to its complex structure that combines intergovernmental bargaining with supranational authority, its diverse institutional system, and overlapping governance networks (Coen et al., 2021b). At the same time, the authors also attempt to provide directions for research on CSR, particularly in connection with corporate political activity. Many scholars have observed that, within business research, there is a longstanding lacuna in the CSR-CPA relationship. Few empirical studies have explored the nature of the interactions between CSR strategies and CPAs (Frynas et al., 2017). The authors do not attempt to resolve some debates found in extant literature, for example, whether integration, substitution, or mutual exclusion is the most common form of interaction between CSR and CPA. Instead, based on their data, which spans statistics on a population of approximately 12,000 interest groups, 30-year novel business and policy-maker surveys, case studies, sequence analysis on managers’ career paths and elite interviews, it appears that these three forms of interaction may all gain traction depending on what the situation may be. However, the authors do provide concrete, pragmatic suggestions on how EU companies can better integrate and position themselves. These lessons should also be of interest to researchers, who can pursue more in-depth inquiry as to how such processes work in-situ, as well as for government officials, who may wish to better equip businesses.
For example, some practical takeaways include the authors’ recommendations on how companies should interact with civil society organizations. Traditionally, companies have built coalitions with the latter, in the form of issue coalitions, that is, the theory of access clearly demonstrates that having the capacity to provide the Commission with “European interests” gains the firm access to decision-making processes (Coen et al., 2021c). However, these transversal coalitions have tended to be short-lived, because once the initial issue has been settled, they have tended to dissipate. Yet, having expert groups comprising societal actors for the long term may prove useful (Coen et al., 2021c), and collaborating with national representatives may be useful from a “conflict prevention” perspective, helping to avoid a stalemate endgame with member states (Quittkat and Finke, 2008, c.f. also Coen et al., 2021c). At the same time, societal actors can furnish valuable information on pan-European preferences, as well as support against domestic interests (Gornitzka and Sverdrup, 2008; c.f. also Coen et al., 2021c). Therefore, the authors recommend a long-term strategy of civil society representation being embedded in the firm’s hierarchy, for example, through representation on the advisory board.
This book is an extremely comprehensive look at what the authors term the “demand side of the equation,” that is, the role of government in shaping business activity, versus the “supply side,” that is, how the company’s inner workings and strategic choices mobilize and lobby the EU. However, as the authors note, the book also raises more questions than answers that other researchers would do well to explore. For example, more could be done to reconcile the contradictory findings in the business literature, on the (in)commensurability between CSR and CPR, or to highlight the dark side of lobbying if it does not go as planned. The authors also note that other researchers may be interested in doing further work on the firm’s micro-capabilities in connection with research on access, institutional capture, and demand/supply policy dynamics (Coen et al., 2021c). Overall, however, its integration of insights spanning decades of research work, its multiple disciplinary approaches, and its use of the theoretical lenses of resource dependence theory and institutional theory, should certainly inform our understanding, and suggest fruitful avenues for research inquiry.
