Lobbying for better or for worse?
The GovLis Project is hosting a workshop in April. If you have any questions get in touch with Linda or Jeroen.
Date
25 April – 26 April 2019
Location
Campus the Hague, Leiden University
Keynote speakers
Raj Chari & Michele Crepaz
Trinity College Dublin
You can download the full call for papers here.
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Here you can find more practical information
Here you can find more information for the academic part
Here you can find more inforamtion regarding the outreach event
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Abbreviated call for papers
The responsiveness of policy-making to demands in society is a central tenet of representative democracies (Dahl, 1971). Politicians and policy-makers alike have to take into account the preferences and interests of the general public. There are reasons to believe that traditional mechanisms for securing policy responsiveness have become less effective in recent decades. For example, political party membership has declined strongly and there is a growing skepticism towards governments. Moreover, there is an increased tendency to locate policy-making authority in regulatory agencies that enjoy greater independence of the political arena. In response to these developments, there has been an increase in the extent to which policy-makers involve interest groups in policy-making in the EU and at the national level. Yet, their involvement is not without risk as unequal opportunities and undue influence may bias political outcomes towards special interests. Such unbalanced policy input may lead to a mismatch between public preferences and policy.
The purpose of this workshop is to bring together scholars who take different approaches to study fundamental questions about the role of interest groups in contemporary governance and the extent wo which they can contribute to the legitimacy public policy. The participants will discuss current and future research projects and papers, as well as conceptual and methodological approaches to studying these phenomena. The goal is stimulate dialogue between scholars and research projects who take different approaches to this central question. We therefore invite abstracts that address these questions at both the national and EU level. The symposium will also include an afternoon session with practitioners who will share their perspectives and experiences on the role of interest groups in policy processes.