Lobbying activity and fora creation in the EU: empirically exploring the nature of the policy good

This paper presents a quantitative look at lobbying activity and the emergence of institutional fora in the European Union (EU). Specifically, the paper explores why the number of interest representatives differs across policy domains, and why we find institutionalized fora for interest representation for some policy issues but not others. Building on a strategic lobbying model, the paper shows empirically that Commission activity influences interest group activity, and that increased activity leads to the creation of fora. This conforms to our assertion that the creation of lobbying insiders is a reaction to lobbying overload. We also find that distributive policy domains have fewer lobbying groups than regulatory policy domains. This is unsurprising, considering that regulation is the area of greatest EU policy output. Conversely, lower levels of lobbying activity in distributive policy domains indicate that these are still highly intergovernmental and encourage multi-level venue shopping.