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

各部委是德国决策的核心角色，因为它们的主要任务之一是起草立法提案。因此，毫不奇怪，他们是试图影响德国立法的利益集团的重要游说目标。尽管各部委经常与利益集团互动，但在德国，利益集团在多大程度上能够成功地游说起草立法提案，这方面没有系统的研究。因此，在本研究项目中，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，我们将发展一个全面的理论框架，以解释游说的成功。我们将游说概念化为一个交换过程，在这个过程中，部长作为一个部级部门的核心政治行动者，为信息、公众（特别是选举支持）和经济资源交换对政策的影响力，而官僚们首先为信息交换开放性。我们预计，能够提供这些产品的利益集团处于一个特别有利的地位，能够成功地游说决策者。此外，我们认为，分析的决定性水平不是一个单独的利益集团。相反，只有当我们考虑到特定问题游说联盟对这些商品的总供应时，我们才能理解游说的成功。最后，我们的理论，问题的背景影响的交换关系的信息供应的效果，预计将增加与政策建议的复杂性。其次，我们将通过编制一个关于利益集团在2019年全年向联邦议院提出的50项选定政策提案的游说成功的新数据集来测试我们的理论预期。我们将衡量利益集团的偏好和政策产出的位置之前和之后的政策设定和政策制定阶段，以得出结论，赢家和输家的决策过程中，部长级阶段。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性产生重大影响。

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.