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Democracy and Lobbying in the European Union

Can interest groups and lobbyists—arguably undemocratic institutions—operate in democratic systems without hindering the people’s interests? Karolina Karr’s Democracy and Lobbying in the European Union explores the role and potential impact of interest groups on democracy, both in theory and practice, in the context of a changing continent. This timely volume explores how the power of interest groups has developed due to the growing distance between elected representatives and the European people and forecasts what this development might mean for the vitality of government.

240 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 3/8

Political Science: Diplomacy, Foreign Policy, and International Relations


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Reviews

"A concise theoretical and scholarly analysis of concepts such as democracy, interest groups, common good, consociational democracy, corporatism and pluralism. Specifically, it examines the European Union (EU) system and the workings of democratic principles in that system via various theoretical tools, revealing the consociational system as one of the most important features of the EU system and the democratic deficit as one of its most serious problems. . . . The book will be attractive to scholars and students of European Studies in particular and political science in general."

Ahmet Arabaci | Political Studies Review

Table of Contents

Introduction
 
I           Theoretical concept
 
1          Democracy
1.1.      Cornerstones of democratic governance – a normative model
1.2       Comparative model of consociational democracy
1.2.1    Corporatism and consociational democracy
1.3       Democracy beyond the nation-state
 
2          Interest groups
2.1       The common good
2.2       Systems of interest intermediation
2.3       Interest group terminology and systematics
2.3.1    Interest groups and lobbies, intermediation and lobbying
2.3.2    Classification of interest groups
2.3.3    Addressees
2.3.4    Methods and resources
 
3          Legitimacy and boundaries of interest representation in democracy
 
II          The European Union
 
4          Democracy in the European Union
4.1       The democratic deficit in perspective
4.1.1    Challenges to the normative model
4.1.2    Institutional backdrop and the EU policy process
4.1.3    Alleviating the democratic deficit
4.2       The consociational system           
4.2.1    Multi-level governance and policy networks
4.3       New challenges
4.3.1    May 2004 enlargement and beyond
4.3.2    Establishing a constitution for Europe
 
5          EU lobbying
5.1       Interest organization in Brussels
5.2       EU institutions as lobbying addressees
5.3       Lobbying process
5.4       Regulatory environment
 
6          Reconciling EU democracy and lobbying – opportunities and limits
6.1       Lobbying impact on EU democracy
6.2       Expected developments in EU lobbying
6.3       Institutional, procedural, and regulatory opportunities
 
List of abbreviations
List of tables
Bibliography

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