The professionalization of European lobbying. Conditions, forms and consequences of the development of professional interest representation in the European Union

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Lobbying is part of the European Union and is an issue of controversial debates within the scientific community and the public sphere. In fact, while there is consensus about the fact that interest groups are an important element of the European Union and its integration process, there is concern about a lack of transparency, accountability and control. Previous research has widened our knowledge about organizations, organizational forms and fields. However, we still know very little about the personnel, i.e., the lobbyists themselves. The present research proposal aims to shed light on this much neglected field. Its objective is to provide empirical data that will help to fill this gap. More importantly, it aims to unlock new conceptual and theoretical insights, because the prevalent focus on organizations has provided important but limited evidence. The proposal makes use of the new sociology of professions in order to construct a theoretical framework that is able to answer the question about the evolution and formation of European lobbying in a different and new form. The proposal argues that the pluralization and fragmentation of public interest groups (as portrayed by the prevalent analysis of organizational fields) is being complemented by the integration, closure and internal differentiation of European lobbying as an occupational field of action. Possibly, this latter process is counterbalancing the developments within the field of interest groups, because we agree to the proposition of sociological research that professions and professionalization processes have a strong impact on the integration and homogenization of organizational fields. The research perspective of our proposal will help to enrich our theoretical and empirical understanding in at least three ways. First, it will enable us to analyze the evolution and formation of European lobbying as a gradually integrating, closing and differentiating occupational field that follows clearly identifiable processes of professionalization. Second, it allows identifying the actors and factors that help to explain these processes. And thirdly, it raises our awareness of the specific problems of these developments, e.g., the consequences a professionalization of lobbying has on the distribution of opportunities of societal interests to become part of the arena and being heard. The related research work will consist of three work packages: an analysis of the contextual factors, an exploratory study of occupational types and professionalization projects, and a representative survey amongst European lobbyists.