Determinants of Upper-Class Dominance in the Heavenly Chorus: Lessons from European Union Online Consultations
Determinants of Upper-Class Dominance in the Heavenly Chorus: Lessons from European Union Online Consultations
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上层阶级在天国合唱团中的主导地位的决定因素：欧盟在线磋商的教训
DOI：
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发表时间：
2013
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
Brendan J. Carroll
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
A. Rasmussen;Brendan J. Carroll
社会科学文献中有大量的警告，即使存在一系列让外部利益参与决策的方法，外部利益仍然不一定有平等的机会表达他们的关切。Schattschneider经常被引用的对美国利益集团体系的控诉，即“多元天堂的缺陷在于天堂合唱团以强烈的上层阶级口音唱歌”，不仅在美国，而且在其他政治体系的后续研究中得到了回应。然而，即使文献发现强有力的支持的结论，即商业利益占主导地位的总体水平，这样一个调查结果掩盖了相当大的内部差异。天音合唱中的偏差并不是每次演唱都一样强烈，因为与表演本身相关的一些特征可能会影响偏差的程度。因此，令人惊讶的是，缺乏研究来解释和实证检验在何种条件下我们可能会看到在案件之间实质性利益的参与方面存在不同程度的偏见。此外，研究往往得出关于偏见的结论，而没有明确地将积极利益的分布与整个利益群体的分布联系起来。在本研究报告中，我们分析了过去十年中参与欧盟委员会在线磋商的新数据集，并将其与注册利益人群进行了比较。我们的综合调查结果表明，企业在咨询中的主导地位甚至高于注册群体的人口。此外，我们的研究结果提供了第一个系统的经验，大n测试的性质，不同类型的政策如何影响参与模式。我们发现，政策的特点和程度的偏见，在个别磋商之间的联系。对预算产生直接影响的支出问题的参与比监管问题更加多样化，监管问题主要由私人行为者承担成本。最后，成本集中的提案比成本由更广泛的利益攸关方承担的提案所调动的利益范围更窄。我们首先简要回顾了文献中的偏见在利益代表和考虑的条件下，我们应该期待它的变化。此后，我们将研究政策的性质如何影响动员模式。
Social science literature contains ample warning that even if a range of methods exists for involving external interests in policy making, external interests still do not necessarily have equal opportunities to voice their concerns. Schattschneider’s oft-quoted indictment of the American interest-group system that ‘the flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent’ has been echoed in subsequent studies not only of the United States but also of other political systems. However, even if the literature finds strong support for the conclusion that business interests dominate at the aggregate level, such a finding masks considerable internal variation. The bias in the heavenly chorus is not equally strong every time it sings, because a number of characteristics related to the performance itself may affect the degree of bias. It is, therefore, surprising to find a lack of studies explaining and empirically testing the conditions under which we are likely to see different levels of bias in the participation of substantive interests between cases. Moreover, studies often draw conclusions on bias without explicitly relating the distribution of active interests to that of the interest-group population as a whole. In this research note, we analyse a new dataset of participation in the European Commission’s online consultations during the last ten years and compare it to the population of registered interests. Our aggregate findings show that business dominance in consultations is even higher than in the population of registered groups. Moreover, our findings offer a first systematic empirical, large n test of how the character of different types of policy affects participation patterns. We find a linkage between characteristics of policies and degrees of bias in individual consultations. Participation on expenditure issues with direct consequences for budgets is more diverse than on regulatory issues, where private actors primarily cover the costs. Finally, a narrower range of interests mobilize on proposals with concentrated costs than on proposals whose costs are carried by a broader range of stakeholders. We start the note by briefly reviewing the literature on bias in interest representation and considerations of the conditions under which we should expect it to vary. Thereafter, we examine how the character of policy affects mobilization patterns.