Interest Groups and the Ministerial Bureaucracy in Germany: Studying lobbying success at the administrative stage (MINISTERIALLOBBY)

德国的利益集团和部长级官僚机构：研究行政阶段的游说成功（MINISTERIALLOBBY）

• 批准号: 455518367
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Heike Klüver
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Fachgebiet Politikwissenschaft
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/455518367?language=en
• 关键词: Interest; Groups; Ministerial; Bureaucracy; Germany

Ministries are central players in German policy-making as one of their major tasks is drafting legislative proposals. It is therefore no surprise that they are an important lobbying target for interest groups that seek to influence legislation in Germany. Even though ministries regularly interact with interest groups, there is no systematic research on the extent to which interest groups are able to successfully lobby the drafting of legislative proposals in Germany. In this research project, we therefore aim to close this important gap in the literature by pursuing two major objectives. First, we will develop a comprehensive theoretical framework in order to explain lobbying success. We conceptualize lobbying as an exchange process in which the minister, as the central political actor in a ministerial department, trades influence on policies for information, public, especially electoral support, and economic resources, while bureaucrats trade openness first and foremost for information. We expect that interest groups that can deliver these goods are in a particularly good position to successfully lobby policy-making. In addition, we argue that the decisive level of analysis is not an individual interest group. Instead, lobbying success can only be understood if we take into account the aggregated supply of these goods by issue-specific lobbying coalitions. Finally, we theorize that the issue context affects the exchange relationship as the effect of information supply is expected to increase with the complexity of policy proposals. Second, we will test our theoretical expectations by compiling a new dataset on the lobbying success of interest groups with regard to 50 selected policy proposals introduced to the Bundestag throughout the year 2019. We will measure the preferences of interest groups and the location of the policy output before and after the agenda-setting and policy formulation stage, in order to draw conclusions about the winners and losers of decision-making processes at the ministerial stage. Our findings will have major implications for our understanding of policy-making and political representation in Germany.

各部委是德国政策制定的核心参与者，因为它们的主要任务之一是起草立法提案。因此，它们成为寻求影响德国立法的利益集团的重要游说目标也就不足为奇了。尽管各部委经常与利益集团互动，但对于德国利益集团能够在多大程度上成功游说立法提案的起草，目前还没有系统的研究。因此，在这个研究项目中，我们的目标是通过追求两个主要目标来缩小文献中的这一重要差距。首先，我们将开发一个全面的理论框架来解释游说的成功。我们将游说概念视为一种交换过程，在该过程中，部长作为部级部门的核心政治行为者，通过对政策的影响力来换取信息、公共（特别是选举支持）和经济资源，而官僚们则首先以开放性换取信息。我们预计，能够提供这些产品的利益集团在成功游说政策制定方面处于特别有利的地位。此外，我们认为分析的决定性层面不是个人利益集团。相反，只有考虑到针对特定问题的游说联盟对这些商品的总供应量，才能理解游说的成功。最后，我们的理论是，问题背景会影响交换关系，因为信息供应的效果预计会随着政策建议的复杂性而增加。其次，我们将通过整理2019年向联邦议院提交的50项精选政策提案的利益集团游说成功率的新数据集来检验我们的理论预期。我们将在议程设置和政策制定阶段前后衡量利益集团的偏好和政策输出的位置，以得出部长阶段决策过程的赢家和输家的结论。我们的研究结果将对我们理解德国的政策制定和政治代表产生重大影响。