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

游说是欧洲联盟的一部分，是科学界和公共领域内有争议的辩论问题。事实上，虽然人们一致认为利益集团是欧洲联盟及其一体化进程的一个重要因素，但人们对缺乏透明度、问责制和控制感到关切。以往的研究拓宽了我们对组织、组织形式和组织领域的认识。然而，我们对人员仍然知之甚少，即，游说者自己。目前的研究建议旨在阐明这一被忽视的领域。其目的是提供有助于填补这一空白的经验数据。更重要的是，它旨在揭示新的概念和理论见解，因为普遍关注组织提供了重要但有限的证据。该提案利用新的职业社会学，以构建一个理论框架，能够回答有关欧洲游说的演变和形成的问题，在一个不同的和新的形式。该提案认为，公共利益集团的多元化和分散化（如对组织领域的普遍分析所描绘的那样）正得到欧洲游说作为一个职业行动领域的一体化、封闭化和内部分化的补充。可能，后一个过程正在平衡利益集团领域内的发展，因为我们同意社会学研究的命题，即职业和专业化过程对组织领域的整合和同质化产生强烈影响。我们的建议的研究视角将有助于丰富我们的理论和经验的理解，至少在三个方面。首先，它将使我们能够分析欧洲游说的演变和形成，作为一个逐渐整合，封闭和分化的职业领域，遵循明确的专业化过程。第二，它允许确定有助于解释这些过程的行为者和因素。第三，它提高了我们对这些发展的具体问题的认识，例如，游说的专业化对社会利益参与竞技场并被倾听的机会分配的影响。相关的研究工作将包括三个工作包：背景因素的分析，职业类型和专业化项目的探索性研究，以及欧洲游说者之间的代表性调查。

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.