Universität zu Köln

Göhmann, Dominik (2015). ‚Farewell state by-passing, hello national government!‘ The preferred lobbying strategy of legislative regions in Germany and the United Kingdom in EU Competition, EU Environment and EU Education policies. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.

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Abstract

In EU daily politics, multi-level governance proponents consider legislative regions as active players which might even by-pass the Member State government in order to defend their individual interests autonomously, whereas liberal intergovernmentalists strongly reject that view and claim that the Member State government holds a gate-keeper position. Due to different empirical results and sometimes contradicting findings the debate among these scholars has still not come to an end. Until the present day, no scholar has provided hard evidence about regular state by-passing. Undeniably, a few regions do that once in a while. But is it possible to make general conclusions if this action is the exception rather than the rule? Against this background, the study raises the question of which is the preferred lobbying strategy of legislative regions (dependent variable). For theoretical reasons, the lobbying strategies will be distinguished between working with and working without the national government. Since scholarship has not identified the most important variable that affects regions’ EU lobbying activities, this work applies the situational approach, one of the most popular approaches in organizational sociology. The analysis will conclude that the legal and constitutional situation of the EU and the Member State (independent variable) is by far the most essential variable in this regard. With this in mind, the focus is on German and UK legislative regions in EU Competition, Environment and Education policies because of the different legal-political situation of both the Member States and the EU. I have conducted semi-structured expert interviews with policy advisers, heads and deputy heads of office of the regions’ representations in Brussels and several officials in the Committee of the Regions, the European Commission and Members of the European Parliament about (a) collecting and exchanging information with other organizations, (b) the procedures of lobbying and the mechanisms facilitating coalition-building as well as (c) the necessity, frequency and relevance of coalition-building. The results show that, despite of the different legal situation in the three selected policy areas, state by-passing is done very rarely because the national government is considered the most important and influential coalition-partner. Even in EU Education policy, a field in which the German Länder possess exclusive legal-political competences, state by-passing cannot be observed because the newly introduced ‘Inner-Circle’ format or the preference of national education ministers from other EU Member States to speak with their national counterparts makes it almost impossible for legislative regions to defend their regional interests autonomously.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD thesis)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Göhmann, Dominik d.goehmann@yahoo.de UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-61733
Date:	9 March 2015
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Management, Economy and Social Sciences
Divisions:	Weitere Institute, Arbeits- und Forschungsgruppen > Department of Political Science and European Affairs
Subjects:	Political science
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language legislative regions, lobbying, EU, by-passing, strategy, European Commission, Council, European Parliament, national government English
Date of oral exam:	3 June 2015
Referee:	Name Academic Title Wessels, Wolfgang Prof. Dr. Marhold, Hartmut Prof. Dr.
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/6173