Universität zu Köln

Mertens, Armin (2019). Business Power in European Politics. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.

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Abstract

This dissertation is guided by a general interest in the organisation of business interests and their power and success in achieving optimal outcomes in policy-making processes. One of the main results of this dissertation is that business interests should not be studied as a homogeneous unit. Challenging contemporary quantitative research on interest group lobbying that usually treats business actors as uniformly lobbying for the same policy outcome, the findings indicate that it makes sense to contextually differentiate between different kinds of business actors. Another main result is the highly contextual nature of business success in influencing policy processes. While researchers try to make their findings as general as possible, the literature review as well the empirical analyses make it clear that it is difficult to generalise across a wider range of cases. More specifically, the studies featured in this dissertation discuss the role of issue characteristics such as salience and issue-specific ad hoc coalitions on interest group success in preference attainment as well as the effect of financial expertise of the respective counter-party to business in policy-making processes. Last, this dissertation confirms previous findings that large business organisations do not always get what they want and, in fact, often have considerable difficulties and constraints in attaining their preferences and in creating large coalitions of actors lobbying for the same outcome.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD thesis)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Mertens, Armin mertens@wiso.uni-koeln.de UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
Contributors:	Contribution Name Email Author in quotations or text extracts Trampusch, Christine UNSPECIFIED Author in quotations or text extracts Fastenrath, Florian UNSPECIFIED Author in quotations or text extracts Wangemann, Rebecca UNSPECIFIED Author in quotations or text extracts Abel, Dennis UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-112675
Date:	2019
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Management, Economy and Social Sciences
Divisions:	Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Political Science > Cologne Center for Comparative Politics
Subjects:	General statistics Political science Economics
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language Business Power English Interest Groups English Lobbying English Coalitions English Policy-Making English European Union English Network Analysis English Financialisation English Political Economy English Policy Diffusion English
Date of oral exam:	7 April 2020
Referee:	Name Academic Title Trampusch, Christine Prof. Dr. Kaiser, André Prof. Dr.
Funders:	Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
Projects:	Municipalities and their Expectations on Pay-Offs of Swap Deals (Prof. Dr. Christine Trampusch)
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/11267