Interest Groups and EU Policymaking: The Role of Interest Groups’ Members

Interest groups are in general understood as a link between the public and the government. As such they represent a possible channel for citizens to influence the policy outcomes, which contributes to the legitimacy of adopted public policies and strengthens the democracy. Such understanding supports the thesis - more diverse interest group system is, more interests it represents, and more it contributes to democracy. Taking into consideration the observations of EU democratic deficit, the European Commission has started to rely more on participatory democracy. But not all interest groups are proficient to participate in EU policymaking. One of important factors that determine the success of interest groups in public policymaking is the level of professionalization. The activity of the organization is mostly led by the staff, while members are becoming less and less involved and the link between the organization and its constituency is becoming weak. However, if the interest groups want to be a relevant part of Europeanization processes and ensure inclusion of European citizens into EU policymaking, they need to act internally democratic. On contrary, we might face inequalities in representation. The objective of this paper is to observe the role of interest groups’ members in the involvement of interest groups in EU decision-making processes. Main research questions are: (1)To what extent are members included in activities of organization? (2) How important are members in decision-making within the organization and (3) in influencing the public policymaking process? We will limit our analysis to the case of Slovenia. Slovenia as one of the smallest newer EU Member-States is often neglected in the systematic studies of impact of interest groups on EU public policymaking. The statistical analysis will be performed on Web survey data gathered among the population of national interest groups as part of Comparative Interest Group Survey project.