- 0 - The Fate of Diffuse Interests Policy Framing and Lobbying Success in Multi-level Decision-Making: The Case of EU Consumer Protection Policy Paper prepared for the 2 nd Research Conference on Civil Society and Democracy Austrian Research Association – Working Group on Democracy November 9–10, 2012 Vienna Work in progress – Do not cite or circulate without the author’s permission Jan Henning Ullrich, M.A. Doctoral Candidate Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences [email protected]
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The Fate of Diffuse Interests Policy Framing and Lobbying Success in Multi-level Decision-Making:
The Case of EU Consumer Protection Policy
Paper prepared for the 2nd Research Conference on
Civil Society and Democracy
Austrian Research Association – Working Group on Democracy
November 9–10, 2012
Vienna
Work in progress – Do not cite or circulate without the author’s permission
Convention has it that the multi-level governance structure of the EU political system enhances the chances of representatives of diffuse interests, such as consumer demands, to successfully compete with strong specific interests, e.g. producer interests, in the political arena. Some scholars argue that the fragmented decision making structures and dispersed authority distribution at and across many levels, which are characteristic of such a political entity, provide advocates of rather hard-to-mobilize societal demands with myriads of entry possibilities to the policy making process. Thus, multilevelness is considered to increase the chances for a broad range of interests to be heard by important political personnel when formulating new rules to govern social transactions. Yet political authorities at the supranational level are continually exposed to harsh criticism voiced by official consumer representatives with advocates pointing to the adoption of regulations and directives that mirror industry and producer interests, oftentimes at the expense of vital consumer interests. How can we account for this puzzling phenomenon given that EU policy makers frequently express the priority of consumer safety? What is further puzzling is that we lack theories that explain, firstly, why political actors take on positions revealed by particular non-state actors, and, secondly, why the latter actors would most likely be representatives of diffuse interests only? I argue that what has been fairly overlooked in the literature on lobbying success so far is the crucial importance of issue framing tactics employed by interest groups and the possibilities and determinants of policy calibration through such processes of collectively establishing images of issues and forming diverse lobbying coalitions that (temporarily) represent these policy images. Hypotheses which are derived from the theoretical model will (eventually) be tested against the case of the 2011 EU regulation on food labeling. For data collecting purposes detailed computer-assisted document analysis is used and I combine preference attainment with process tracing methods to reveal the crucial causal mechanisms behind lobbying success in EU consumer protection policy.
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1. Introduction Convention has it that so called multi-level governance structures can enhance the chances of
representatives of marginalized, weak or, put in classical terms, diffuse interests, such as
consumer demands, to successfully compete with strong specific interests, e.g. producer
interests, in the political arena. Some scholars argue that the fragmented decision making
structures and dispersed authority distribution at and across many levels, which are
characteristic of such a political entity, provide advocates of rather hard-to-mobilize societal
demands with myriads of entry possibilities to the policy making process. Thus,
multilevelness is considered to increase the chances for a broad range of societal interests to
be heard by important political personnel when formulating new rules to govern social
transactions (Pollack 1997; Strünck 2006). What is puzzling, though, is that we lack theories
that explain, firstly, why political actors take on positions revealed by particular non-state
actors, and, secondly, why the latter actors would most likely be representatives of diffuse
interests only. Here I argue that what has been fairly overlooked so far is the crucial
importance of issue framing and, thus, the possibilities and determinants of policy calibration
through processes of collectively establishing images of issues and forming diverse lobbying
coalitions that (temporarily) represent these policy images. I build on a recently established
research program on lobbying success and policy framing in the EU and the US
level systems can also create new hurdles for some interest groups, especially for
representatives of rather diffuse interests, who lack the capacities to efficiently and
successfully navigate the different tiers (Mahoney/Baumgartner 2008: 1266).
Bouwen’s (2002; 2004) analysis of the multitude of access opportunities for and the access
goods used by private actors to exert influence in the EU‘s multi-level system finds that it is
crucial for business associations to be able to provide EU institutions, such as the
Commission, the Council, and the European Parliament, with information (“access goods”)
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that the latter demand1. Otherwise organized interests will hardly manage to find access to EU
decision-making processes.
Looking at the cases of Germany, Great Britain, France, and the EU, Eising (2007a; 2007b)
analyzes the determinants of business associations’ access to EU institutions and generally
finds that institutional characteristics, resource dependencies, organizational structures, and
tactical choices of interest groups have to be considered. He also finds that the EU’s
competences in regulatory politics are the major incentive for interest groups to lobby at the
EU level. Only if national associations are affected by EU regulation and, thus, find the
European Commission and the European Parliament important, they will try to find access to
these supranational bodies. Another finding shows that well-endowed organizations have
better chances to influence policy-making than poorer ones without significant resources.
Therefore, Eising doubts that the EU, especially the Commission and the Council, can be seen
as facilitating weaker interests of European civil society, although the European Parliament
seems to be more attentive to diffuse interests. Yet the latter finding has recently been
questioned by Smith’s (2008) and Rasmussen’s (2012) work on the role that EP committees
play for organized interests. Especially under codecision, which has become the EU’s
ordinary legislative procedure, their analyses cast doubt on the assumption that
representatives of diffuse interests can heavily rely on the support of the EP when facing
major opposition voiced by the industry.
In their empirical analysis of the determinants of direct corporate lobbying in the EU,
Bernhagen and Mitchell (2009) find little support for theories that try to account for interest
group behavior at the EU level by emphasizing national (corporatist or pluralist) traditions of
interest intermediation. Applying a profit-seeking model to firm lobbying activities in the EU
they find that firm size and involvement with governments help to explain direct lobbying
strategies of large firms. The bigger a firm is, the more likely it is that it tries to lobby at the
supranational level. Furthermore, the more a firm is affected by EU regulatory action, the
more it tries to directly influence decisions taken at the supranational level. Here the authors
report that such firms do not rely on national associations as representatives anymore, but
more and more engage in individual activities to compensate the lack of support by these
associations. Thus, notwithstanding national patterns of interest intermediation firms affected
1 Bouwen defines access goods as “goods provided by private actors to the EU institutions in order to gain access. Each access good concerns a specific kind of information that is important in the EU decision-making process. The criticality of an access good for the functioning of an EU institution determines the degree of access that the institution will grant to the private interest representatives” (2002: 370).
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by EU regulations and large firms in general tactically adapt to the new environment to seek
maximum profits.
In an analysis of Belgian domestic interest groups and their European networks, Beyers
(2002) also tests whether the latter should be interpreted as being built on already existing
strong national networks that help to access the EU level (“persistence hypothesis”) or rather
as a part of a “compensation strategy” to make up for the lack of access to decision-makers at
the domestic level. Furthermore, he examines whether differences between diffuse and
specific interest organizations can be identified. He finds that domestic structural conditions
have indeed an important effect on policy-making processes at the EU level, and that specific
interest organizations gain more domestic access than representatives of diffuse interests, with
the result of the former being more successful in constructing EU level networks which
operate in their favor. Beyers research contradicts the findings of Eising or Bernhagen and
Mitchell, and thus supports arguments that interest group access to EU institutions and
networks is dependent on domestic conditions and, with regard to specific interests, he points
out that domestic access is “mainly related to the robust institutionalised and neo-corporatist
connections they seem to have with domestic public decision makers” (Beyers 2002: 608).
Diffuse interests, on the contrary, do not enjoy such historically evolved and institutionalized
networks at the domestic level and, hence, are represented less effectively at the EU level.
Unlike Bouwen, Beyers states that to hold access goods, in the sense of policy-relevant
expertise and information, is not a necessary condition to obtain access since gaining access is
not the same as having influence on concrete policy outcomes (Beyers 2002: 587).
Most of the research reviewed in the preceding section mainly deals with interest group
influence in terms of their own resource endowment or in terms of the access of non-state
groups to decision makers. Only recently have scholars begun to deal explicitly with the
question of interest group influence on policy-making processes and their outcomes. Hence
now they pose the general question of who the non-state groups are that win in (regulatory)
politics and why. What has been rather lacking so far is the sound analysis of the output
dimension. Hence, what has to be studied more carefully is “the degree to which these
[interest group] efforts translate into policy outputs” (Smith 2008: 79, FN 1; also see Daviter
2011: 9), and what factors have causal effects on it. Accordingly, I will now turn to a recent
and still rather small body of research that approaches the question of interest group success
in terms of preference attainment rather than from an input-oriented perspective. I will discuss
the theoretical underpinnings of this new research program, which in part can be found in US-
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related research, and furthermore its hitherto empirical findings with regard to US and EU
interest group politics.
1.2.2 Output-oriented research perspectives
In their study of lobbying success in the United States, Baumgartner et al.’s (2009) main
finding is what they label “the power of the status quo”. Interest groups that simply try to
defend the status quo “usually win in Washington” (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 239). Studying
98 different and diverse policy proposals and their longer-term fate over four years (1999-
2002) under two different presidents and administrations, the authors argue that every
decision that is open to debates and disputes in Congress is linked to existing public policies,
or “status quo policies”. The bias in favor of the status quo, as they put it, “is already reflected
in the status quo policy” (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 240), making some groups in society more
effective than their competitors who favor changing the way things are. Furthermore, they
find that who wins and who loses in Washington cannot be attributed to the resources that
lobbyists have at their disposal. Despite some privileges of the ‘wealthier’ groups which can
be turned into advantages, “public policy may be moved sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, with each individual shift not necessarily reflecting the overall bias in
the system, but rather temporal fluctuations in power related to new information, attention-
focusing events, and the crush of other issues on the agenda” (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 241).
The lack of significant policy changes, the authors argue can oftentimes simply be explained
by politicians’ scarcity of attention to new policies or proposals. They point out that what is
most important for policy change to happen is the allocation of attention to new proposals
which are in most cases kept out by influential gatekeepers: “The barbarians at the gates
cannot always be ignored, but congressional policy making is very much a competition
between what will be heard by legislators and what will be left aside, and there are vastly
more proposals for change than there are opportunities to discuss them (…) Mobilization by
advocates can push gatekeepers to promote their issues to active consideration, but most
interests in Washington are not strong enough by themselves to force a proposal onto the
agenda of a committee or an agency” (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 245). Later the authors argue:
“In fact, the problem is rarely the scarcity of information, but rather its overabundance –
policy makers don’t know how to make sense of it all, being overwhelmed with so much
information coming at them from lobbyists on all kinds of issues” (Baumgartner et al. 2009:
246). To overcome such equilibriums, two major thresholds have to be passed: first, policy-
makers as gatekeepers have to be convinced that a problem is really a problem and needs to
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be dealt with, and, second, advocates of the new view have to get party leaders on board, who
control the committees, and especially what leaves these committees to be voted on. With
regard to differences between specific and diffuse interests, Baumgartner et al. admit that their
research strongly suggests that business, corporate, and trade groups have an advantage over
labor or citizen groups. Even if the former do not always and automatically win, they still
seem to be better equipped to set the lobbying agenda (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 257). But,
that said, it should not be generally theorized that diffuse interests cannot win. The authors
therefore write, “studies of lobbying should not always be expected to show the continued
power of the wealthy over the weak, the mobilized over the unmobilized, as these biases
should already be apparent and there is no reason why the next step in the process should
point in one direction or the other” (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 259).
Michalowitz (2007) analyzes under what conditions interest groups try to exert particular
kinds of influence in EU decision-making to change legislative acts. Based on three case
studies in the fields of transport and information technology she finds that the decision-
makers’ initial interests and technical rather than directional influence dominated the
decision-making processes, meaning that interest groups might not always want to change the
very core of a proposed legislative act (“directional influence”), but try “to invoke a mind
change in decision-makers”, while “this mind change does not touch upon the preference for
the policy outcome” (Michalowitz 2007: 136). The more congruent interest group preferences
are with the initial interests of public actors, the more likely it is that strategies of exerting
rather “technical influence” will be successful. Michalowitz generally concludes, that
“directional influence seems to be highly unlikely in the EU” (2007: 149).
With regard to issue specific characteristics which can affect lobbying activity, Mahoney and
Baumgartner argue that “the composition of the various sides on an issue influences advocacy
behaviour” (Mahoney/Baumgartner 2008: 1268), meaning that it definitely plays an important
role whether one (supporting) lobbying coalition is the only relevant player, or another
(opposing) interest group (coalition) tries to influence an upcoming decision as well. Thus,
allies and opponents have to be taken into account when one tries to identify the results of an
(probably intense) political fight over potential outcomes. A relational approach that
emphasizes the role of lobbying coalitions and counter-lobbying dynamics seems to be a
promising strategy to identify the mechanisms which make some winners and others losers.
Mahoney and Baumgartner (2008: 1269; emphasis added) put it as follows: “While most
aspects of interest groups have been recognised and studied, it is important to remember that
groups do not often work alone, they have allies, both in government and outside, so when
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studying how a group’s characteristics and resources impact on their advocacy and on the
policymaking process it is imperative that we also consider the resources and characteristics
of the others involved in the same debate”.
In a series of recent articles Klüver (2010; 2011a; 2011b; 2011c; 2012) shows that we have to
consider patterns of building lobbying coalitions and counter-lobbying coalitions to explain
who wins and who loses in EU legislation. Here the main question is how interactions
between competing interest group coalitions and, thus, relational aspects rather than
individual group characteristics shape outputs (Klüver 2011c: 499–500). Building on the
concept of lobbying coalitions, defined as “a set of actors who share a policy goal”
(Baumgartner et al. 2009: 6), Klüver focuses her analyses on the policy formulation stage in
the EU using an own large new dataset of interest group submissions to EU Commission
consultations that covers more than 50 policy issues and positions of almost 2700 interest
groups active in the EU’s multi-level opportunity structure. In one of her latest contributions
to the debate of interest group influence in EU decision-making processes, Klüver (2012) uses
her new dataset and tests whether lobbying success in the EU differs according to different
interest group types and finds that it is neither the type of a group that matters nor information
supply or resources, but whether cause and/or sectional groups belong to the larger lobbying
coalition concerning a policy proposal at hand. She points out that, based on her analysis
different interest groups are equally capable of shaping policy formulation in the EU. Thus,
lobbying success in the EU does not vary systematically with different interest group types,
but with regard to the situational factor of what side a group is on. In another paper Klüver
finds, more specifically, that “the positive effect of lobbying coalition characteristics cannot
be explained by the properties of a small number of strong groups” (2010: 22) which would
dominate a coalition of various interest groups. Diffuse interests or cause groups can be as
successful as specific interests or sectional groups. In another recent article on interest group
influence in the EU and building on the same own dataset, Klüver (2011c) shows again that
“lobbying success cannot be understood by solely looking at individual group characteristics”,
and instead that “the relative size of lobbying coalitions has a robust positive effect” (2011c:
499) on lobbying success. She basically sums up the main finding of her research project
when she writes: “Thus, in order to understand what makes an interest group a winner or a
loser, we cannot simply refer to group characteristics, but we have to acknowledge the issue-
specific grouping of interest groups into lobbying coalitions. More specifically, we have to
take into account the aggregated efforts of likeminded interest groups that fight for the same
policy objective on any given policy issue” (2011c: 499–500; also see Klüver 2011b: 12–13).
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The main idea behind this new research on interest group influence is the conceptualization of
interest group behavior as shaped by a “unidimensional structure of conflict” (Klüver 2011c:
491; also see Baumgartner et al. 2009: 7), meaning that whenever a policy proposal is debated
by concerned interest and political groups, each group will more or less be on either the one
or the other side of an issue at stake2. Thus, interest groups are either a member of a lobbying
coalition that is in favor of changing the status quo in their respective policy field of interest,
or they are mobilizing their resources and members against a proposed change of the things as
they are (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 7).
The recent output-oriented literature discussed in the last section reveals the importance of
considering relational aspects of lobbying activities and the crucial role that building lobbying
coalitions plays. Combining these concepts with a theory of issue framing can enrich the
analysis of lobbying success in multi-level governance settings. I argue that only if our
models account for the dominant policy frames employed at every single stage of the entire
policy process, we can come up with satisfactory causal explanations of policy outputs and
how and by what interests they are actually shaped. I will get back to a more detailed
discussion of issue framing in the theory section of this paper. Now I turn to answering the
question why consumer protection serves as a good policy field to eventually test the
theoretical propositions developed in the theory section.
2. Consumer protection policy as interest group based regulatory policy
Again, one of my main research questions is, when and how exactly can different groups
(especially public interest groups) actually make use of the EU’s “multilevelness”, here
defined as the existence of multiple access points at various levels? Why would 1) multiple
levels which offer various non-state actors several potential venues or access points to the
policy-making process, 2) a high level of territorial fragmentation, and 3) a complex system
of the separation of powers between the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive help
particular groups more than others? What does it take to successfully navigate one’s own
cause through the multi-level structure of such a system? And do diffuse interests really
benefit significantly from the availability of multiple venues? I propose to study regulations in
the field of consumer safety to answer these questions.
2 With regard to their own dataset, Baumgartner et al. (2009: 7) argue that despite the fact that in the real world “[t]he number of sides per issue ranges from just one to as many as seven”, the “typical” pattern only knows two sides that fight over whether to keep or to change the status quo.
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I first turn to the definition of regulation as interest group-based process and then to ways of
distinguishing between competing types of interests. I will argue that consumer protection
policy represents a major kind of regulatory politics in the EU which involves these interest
types respectively and can thus serve as a policy field well-suited for comparisons within and
across cases.
Since the EU is a “system (…) based around regulation”, in my analysis “interest groups
become significant actors due to the ways in which regulation typically distributes costs and
benefits upon, and between, such actors” (2011: 21). Regulation always brings with it high
levels of interest activities (Lowi 1964) and thus a pattern of competitive lobbying and
counter-lobbying activities, with business associations, companies and public interest groups
lining up to build temporary lobbying coalitions or going against each other to become
“winners” or, at least, to avoid being the loser after a regulatory decision has been decided
upon. Especially with regard to consumer protection issues, the EU has gradually centralized
regulatory policy-making (Vogel 2003: 577) with party competition playing only a minor role
when deciding on regulatory measures. This development opens up a huge potential for
regulatory competition between various (opposed) interest groups (Strünck 2006: 46–47).
In general, I conceptualize regulatory politics as public interventions in market processes for
the benefit of particular actors. I deliberately avoid the phrase in “favor of the public good”
which is a common part of definitions of regulation (Döhler/Wegrich 2010: 31; Francis 1993:
5; Hood et al. 2001: 3; Majone 1994: 81). Regulation usually happens serving the interests of
some member(s) of society but not all. Thus regulatory politics produces “winners” and
losers”, or beneficiaries and those who are disadvantaged. This concept of regulatory politics
is particularly useful in the case of product safety regulation since here politicians are seen as
primarily responsible to make sure that products are safe (to a certain degree and depending
on definitions of “safety standards”) and that the market functions as desired (Folke Schuppert
2006: 584–585). Regulations are usually directed to economic actors who want to sell their
products but whose actions (or better: whose neglect of compulsory actions) can now and then
lead to market failures at the expense of consumers. In this regard John Francis states:
“Regulation is frequently associated with what is called “market failure” – a situation in
which the market fails to produce goods and services at appropriate prices” (1993: 2) and/or at
appropriate safety or transparency levels. Döhler and Wegrich (2010: 31) argue that
regulation has thus become an increasingly dominant type of public actions and in another
contribution Döhler defines regulation as “binding public provisions and standards of
behavior which are mainly directed at companies” (2006: 208; own translation).
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We can distinguish between economic and social regulation. While the former refers to state
activities which are supposed to protect consumers from inappropriate prices, the latter targets
market outcomes that are seen as involving risks to an individual’s health and other risks
(Francis 1993: 2–3; Mitropoulos 1997: 387). Social regulation, which is at the center of
analysis here, occurs in two ways: on the one hand in the form of providing consumers with
the necessary information to bridge the information asymmetry gap between producers and
buyers (Mitropoulos 1997: 341; Schatz 1984). This usually happens via labeling products to
inform about their contents. On the other hand social regulation can be directly targeted at the
ways of production of certain products through defining binding minimum standards which
have to be met by producers before putting their goods into the market. Such regulations can
also include prohibitions of whole products and certain ingredients or the setting of maximum
permissible values of ingredients or substances which run certain risks of damaging people’s
health (Schatz 1984: 32). The first way of social regulation can be referred to as “informal
strategies” and the latter as “prescriptive strategies” (Francis 1993: 3, 10, 14-16). I put
emphasis on the fact that decision making processes leading to particular types of regulatory
actions have to be seen as involving high levels of conflict between the non-state actors
involved. Thus, it can be argued that regulation cannot be assumed as being a neutral process
whose outcomes aim at serving the common good of a society. Another argument that follows
is that the common view of regulatory politics which gained momentum in academic
discourses over the past two decades is plain wrong when it sees regulation as such neutral
interventions in market procedures to overcome problems with products which are more and
more characterized by complex production procedures, technologies and hard to oversee
production chains (Czada et al. 2003). Instead the highly conflict-laden character of
regulatory politics, especially in the case of consumer protection issues, suggests a focus on
the strategies of competing organized interests within existing rules to exert influence on
decision makers debating regulatory measures to account for particular regulatory outcomes.
Thus the question why regulation takes the form it does becomes relevant in social analysis,
rather than asking how regulation should be carried out.
2.1 Consumer protection policy as playing field for traditional types of
interest groups
In the concluding paragraphs of his seminal contribution to the logic of collective action
Mancur Olson discussed those kinds of interests which he saw as unlikely to be organized
efficiently and referred to them as the “forgotten groups” (Olson 1971: 165–167). Among
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others, for instance migrant and white-collar workers, peace activists and the taxpayers, he
introduced the consumers as a major example for such a group. They are “at least as
numerous as any other group in the society, but they have no organization to countervail the
power of organized or monopolistic producers” (Olson 1971: 166). According to Olson’s
theory of collective action rational individuals who are members of such a large group,
representing a rather common and thus diffuse interest, hardly ever start to act in order to
advance this particular common goal or form organizations to do so. This view is built on the
rationalist assumption that individuals do not take action if the expected gains from an
individual contribution to achieving the common goal do not exceed the costs which result
from acting in the first place (Olson 1971: 2).
Another well-known interest group typology is quite similar to Olson’s work and is used by
Heike Klüver (2012) in her research on interest group characteristics and their impact on
policy outputs. In general, two different kinds of interest groups can be distinguished:
sectional groups and cause groups. While sectional groups represent special and, thus,
concentrated or specific interests, for instance the ones of farmers or the pharmaceutical
industry, cause groups, by contrast, usually represent rather diffuse interests, such as
consumer, health or environmental related interests. These interests have different chances to
be organized effectively and convention has it that sectional groups are usually more
successful than cause groups.
With regard to concepts of collective action and the problems that diffuse interests face in the
EU context, Jordan and Maloney (2007: Chap. 2) discuss several incentives that can help
marginalized or hard-to-mobilize interests to overcome the collective action dilemma of
diffuse interests posed by Olson (also see 1995: 57–62). They argue that various membership
generating incentives, such as, among others, selective material, solidarity, and/or general
purposiveness can do the trick to motivate people to mobilize against all (theoretical) odds
(Jordan/Maloney 2007: 46–49). Aspinwall and Greenwood (1998) also use collective action
concepts and apply them to the European Union context to explain why national organizations
decide to join and become an active member of a Euro group, i.e. an association active at the
supranational level (also see the other contributions in Greenwood/Aspinwall (1998);
(Sadeh/Howarth 2008: 1–2)).
In their quantitative analysis of European social movements and protest Imig and Tarrow
(2001a) find that contention strategies and campaigns still focus on the national level rather
than on the new opportunity structures the supranational level of the EU offers. This
phenomenon is referred to as a “domesticated” kind of reaction to European grievances
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(Tarrow 2001: 235). Nevertheless, Tarrow (2001), summing up the major findings of an
important edited volume on contentious politics in the EU (Imig/Tarrow 2001b), in general
argued (in the early 2000s) that this domesticated mode of responding to European challenges
involving rather diffuse interests could change in the years to come. While business
associations seemed to have well-adapted to the new multi-level character of decision-making
processes in the new European system of governance, representatives of public and, thus,
rather diffuse interests could catch up by slowly learning “how to use Europe’s dispersed and
competitive institutions” (Tarrow 2001: 238).
Here I also argue that it cannot be assumed that “diffuse” cause groups are usually or
“naturally” less successful than their more “specific” counterparts, i.e. representatives of
sectional groups. Their “fate” has to be studied empirically. And since consumer protection
policy is a field involving numerous battles between sectional and cause groups, and since the
EU has committed itself to consumer protection policy as one of its core tasks3, it makes sense
to pick cases from this policy area for the empirical analysis. Though, analyses have to be
guided by sound theorizing. This is why I now turn to the theory section of this paper.
3. Theory, Conceptualization, and Measurement
3.1 Policy framing and lobbying coalitions: An analytical framework to
study lobbying success in EU regulatory policy
The main idea behind my analytical framework is that given the constraints imposed by
different decision-making rules on all the actors involved in advocacy processes, policy
calibration through policy framing and forming lobbying coalitions can happen at the various
stages of the EU decision-making process. Thus, both representatives of diffuse and specific
interests can be successful in shaping policies if they collectively manage to navigate their
side’s frames through the various policy arenas. As I will show in the following, the two most
crucial and interrelated variables of my analytical framework are the communality of a frame
adopted by a lobbying side and established at the different stages of the policy formulation
process in the EU, and the composition of such a lobbying coalition which I refer to as the a
side’s level of heterogeneity. Thus, despite the fact that multiple access points at various
3 In the EU’s „Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union“ (TFEU), Article 12 says that consumer protection has to be generally applied when defining and implementing policy, and the first paragraph of Article 169 (Title XV) reads: “In order to promote the interests of consumers and to ensure a high level of consumer protection, the Union shall contribute to protecting the health, safety and economic interests of consumers, as well as to promoting their right to information, education and to organise themselves in order to safeguard their interests“.
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levels are available for different non-state actors, “multilevelness” may turn out to have
different implications for actors depending on their argumentation and lobbying strategies.
Before I turn to my own concept of lobbying success in more detail I will first introduce the
main assumptions of framing approaches and why such an approach can enhance analyses of
interest group activities and their impact on policy.
In general, the concept of framing “offers a way to describe the power of a communicating
text” (Entman 1993: 51). Thus, I follow Entman’s (1993: 52; emphasis in the original)
definition of framing who points out:
To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating
text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation,
and/or treatment recommendation for the item described.
Thus, framing implies that since policy issues are almost always multidimensional, interested
groups can be expected to highlight certain aspects of an issue while deliberately omitting
others to make sure that policy makers are pushed more toward their own frames of an issue
and, at the same time, away from the images advocated by other competing proponents in a
policy debate4. For instance, when politicians deal with issues of environmental protection
advocates of stricter regulations will try to emphasize that current practices lead to the loss of
habitat while other sides of the debate point to the danger of job losses and significant
negative impacts on the competitiveness of entire industries if new regulations are passed
(Mahoney/Baumgartner 2010: 4). Hence, these competing perceptions, policy images or
frames help to define a policy issue in particular ways and constitute how an issue is
understood and discussed in a policy debate. This gives specialists in a particular area the
advantage over others who depend on this expertise and have to rely on the information
processed to them to come up with collectively binding decisions (Ringe 2010). Yet not every
politician can have the same knowledge about an issue and the levels of decision-makers’
interest in certain rather non-political technical areas are usually quite low, which opens up
opportunities for specialists who, “[s]ince they know the issue better, (…) are sometimes able
to portray the issue in simplified and favorable terms to nonspecialists” (Baumgartner/Jones
2009 [1993]: 25). Thus, information can be seen as “the key currency in policy making
interactions” since “[p]olicy-makers require scientific, technical, legal, economic and social
(and implementation) advice and expertise as well as guidance on constituency preferences”
(Lowery 2009: 4). This information is presented in the form of arguments pushed forward by
various interest groups. The latter direct their policy images to pivotal policy-makers through
4 For classical scholarship on issues of framing see Kahneman/Tversky 1984; Riker 1986; Schattschneider 1957, Schattschneider 1960.
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a process of argumentation that is shaped by frames which simplify definitions and
explanations of the debated phenomenon. Hence, how a problem, which has to be politically
dealt with, is defined and linked to a possible governmental solution is conceptualized as a
The level of frame communality for each lobbying side of an issue is measured on an ordinal
scale ranging from levels of “low”, to “medium” and “high”. To decide in which category a
side falls, I will again use Atlas.ti to code interest group documents in a qualitative way to
identify the kind of argumentation used by the various actors which enables me to track the
types of frames present. The more the member organizations of one side collectively rely on
one and the same policy image in a debate, the better the chances that this side is assigned the
value of “high” on the frame communality variable. Low levels correspond with the presence
of a greater number of different types of arguments across the various side members.
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Side heterogeneity measures are also presented on an ordinal scale from “low”, to “medium”
and “high”. A side is considered to have a high level of heterogeneity when its members
represent different types of interests, thus both public and private or cause and sectional
groups. Very homogenous coalitions score low on this dimension.
The other variables presented in Table 1 will be used as controls in the empirical analysis.
Their operationalization and measurement can be found in the table, too. I will not further
elaborate on each control variable in more detail here, and will now turn to the general idea
behind my way of conceptualizing and measuring lobbying success. After that I continue with
information on my case, the data sources used, and on the methods I apply.
3.3 Conceptualizing and measuring lobbying success: Preference
attainment or influence as “control over outputs”
In their introduction to a 2007 special edition on interest group influence in Europe, Dür and
De Bièvre argue that despite the recent “demise of research on the influence of interest
groups” (2007: 2), which they ascribe to difficulties with identifying and measuring the
effects of concepts such as “influence” and “power” (Dür 2008a, 2008b; also see Mahoney
2007a), scholars should adopt a pragmatic approach when dealing with several concepts of
lobbying activity. As long as researchers are aware of what their concepts and research
designs do not cover and they explicitly refer to these shortcomings in their publications,
problems of generalizing findings become minor issues. Hence, we can emphasize that
instead of avoiding tackling the problem of measuring lobbying success altogether, scholars
should openly admit difficulties when studying phenomena of interest group power in policy-
making processes, but pragmatically conduct empirical research nevertheless (Dür/de Bièvre
2007: 1–3; Daxhammer 1995: 29).
Power can have different “faces”, ranging from controlling resources and/or actors to the
control over policy-making outcomes (Dür 2008a: 1220–1221). I prefer the last
conceptualization to the former two and define power as control over political outputs. Thus,
power is assessed by looking at its effects and, according to this, if actors can achieve to make
sure that a particular outcome is close to their original ideal position at the outset of a
decision-making process they are considered powerful. I see actors as having clearly defined,
but not necessarily fixed, preferences over particular (potential) outputs and my concept of
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lobbying success “focuses on its empirically observable effects in actual public policy, as if
actors were really powerful” (Dür/de Bièvre 2007: 3)5.
To measure the degree of lobbying success in decision-making processes three main ways of
assessing success have been put forward in the literature: process tracing, measuring
attributed influence, and assessing the distance between an interest group’s initial preferences
and the actual outcome of a policy-making process (Dür 2008a: 1223–1225, 2008b; also see
Klüver 2011c: 489–490). The power over outputs or preference attainment approach prefers
the last method over the two others, and especially criticizes the attributed influence method
for its liability to be biased by subjective perceptions (Dür 2008a: 1224; Klüver 2011a: 490).
Furthermore, many of its advocates remain skeptical of process tracing methods since, they
argue, process tracing makes generalizations of findings almost impossible due to the fact that
only a few cases can be covered qualitatively and important variables have to be held constant
which could be crucial for causal explanations of policy outputs (Dür 2008a: 1223–1224;
Klüver 2011c: 490).
I argue that process tracing can significantly enrich ways of measuring lobbying success.
Instead of seeing preference attainment and process tracing as mutually exclusive methods,
we should consider combining them to study interest group behavior as thorough as possible.
4. Case selection, data, and methods
4.1 Ontological and methodological foundations of the study and their
implications
My concept and understanding of social science follows a community of researchers who, in
reaction and response to the publication and the impact of “Designing Social Inquiry” (King
et al. 1994), put emphasis on the autonomy of positivist qualitative research methods and
research designs (Brady 2004; George/Bennett 2005; Mahoney 2010). The ontology of this
research branch differs significantly from the one King et al. (1994) represent (see Hall 2003),
since it is not based on a view of “the political world as a sphere governed by immutable
causal regularities based on a few forceful variables” (Hall 2003: 387). This old ontology,
which is still built on the assumption of parsimonious, rather abstract theories which help to
identify causal variables that are conceptualized as being independent of each other, can be
challenged by a new one that is built on the general assumption that context matters and, thus,
5 Dür and De Bièvre are even convinced that their “control over outcomes approach” is “the epistemologically most sound and empirically most pragmatic route towards assessing interest group influence” (2007: 3) despite admitted limitations (Dür/de Bièvre 2007: 7–8).
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that causal relations between factors identified in one case might not carry the same
explanatory power in another.
Thus, I rely on a case study design (George/Bennett 2005; Gerring 2004, 2007) that
investigates one configuration of the case selected (i.e. one EU policy in the field of consumer
safety) in detail over a longer period of the decision-making process and advocacy coalition
activity. The goal is to identify the causal mechanisms which connect each explanatory
variable with the others in a chronologically sound way to establish the causal chain that links
these explanatory factors with the dependent variable. The analytical framework of lobbying
success through policy framing and forming lobbying coalitions will guide this endeavor as a
kind of “typological theory” (George/Bennett 2005).
Thus, building on this theoretical model I first focus on identifying causal mechanisms which
Jon Elster (2007: 36) defines as “frequently occurring and easily recognizable causal patterns
that are triggered under generally unknown conditions or with indeterminate consequences”.
This implies, as Hedström convincingly argues (2008: 41–49; also see Hedström/Swedberg
1998; Tilly 2008), a skepticism towards explanations that rely on deductive-nomological
reasoning or statistical analysis. Instead, I will track down causal tendencies that contribute to
the explanation of concrete events on a case basis, without the ultimate goal of generalizing
correlations between variables or case-specific conjunctions to identify “covering laws” (Hall
2003: 377).
When it comes to lobbying activities, such ontological and methodological assumptions make
sense. To study lobbying activities within systems requires thinking of potential explanatory
factors not as independent variables which have single effects on the outcome to be explained
across a large number of cases. Context matters and it shapes multiple combinations of factors
which exert causal power simultaneously eventually leading to a particular outcome
(Baumgartner et al. 2009: 251). I doubt that statistical regression analysis can account for
these characteristics of lobbying activities and their results (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 252).
Instead, to uncover the many complex interdependencies and interactive effects at work I will
process trace different policy proposals and each one over a longer period of time.
Furthermore, as the discussion of lobbying coalitions has shown, different actors who are
involved in one particular policy process should not be seen as independent of each other.
Instead, their strategic lobbying and counter-lobbying activities have to be accounted for by
paying attention to their interactions and how they relate and respond to each other during
decision-making processes (Baumgartner et al. 2009: 253).
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4.2 Mapping the research site: Case selection and the configurations of
the cases
In qualitative research researchers have to pay close attention to carefully constituting the
population (or the universe) of their cases to select the right cases for the study and to arrive at
valid causal inferences (Gerring 2007: 21–22; also see George/Bennett 2005: 83–84;
Mahoney 2007c: 128–131). It has to be clear of what the cases studied are instances of.
Furthermore, the scope conditions of the theoretical framework applied in a case study have to
be spelled out clearly and at the outset of the research. This identification of the scope
conditions of a theory is not only necessary when designing sound qualitative research in
general, but it also offers the researcher the possibility to clearly assess the causal arguments
made with regard to the particular cases under investigation. Whether an explanatory variable
really mattered to a particular outcome can thus be studied with confidence if the scope
conditions of the theory that predicted the causal effect of this variable are clear. But it has to
be kept in mind that while case study designs are strong when the goal is identifying that a
certain factor mattered for a particular outcome, they run into severe (but manageable)
problems when it comes to measuring how much, i.e. to what degree, a variable contributed to
the occurrence of outcomes across various cases (George/Bennett 2005: 25).
Recently qualitative researchers have found their own ways to constitute populations, to
establish the scope of their theories, and to make sure that case homogeneity, which is another
condition for the comparativeness of cases, can be assumed (Mahoney 2007c: 130). Here, the
contextualized, case-intensive knowledge of the researcher will be at the best secured by
detailed content analysis and provides for the achievement of measurement stability within
the case studied and for constituting fairly homogenous case populations. Hence, “by virtue of
developing contextualized knowledge about each of their cases, qualitative researchers are
less likely to exclude key variables or misspecify the interrelations among included variables”
(Mahoney 2007c: 131).
Table 2 shows a very preliminary version of my dissertation’s general comparative case study
design from which I select the EU food labeling regulation as single case study. Since I treat
the European Union as a multi-level political system that can be seen as similar and thus
comparable to federal states, the population, thus the universe of all the potential cases that
could have been picked (besides the United States), comprises the federal states around the
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globe6. Since all these systems offer multiple access points at various governance levels,
findings regarding lobbying success identified in multi-level systems such as the EU and the
US could furthermore be put to the test in other multi-level environments. My dissertation’s
overall sample consists of the EU and the US. Several “configurations of these cases”, or what
Gerring calls “groups of observations” (2007: 22) make these two selected cases. Hence, here
“configurations” refer to the regulatory decisions made in each of the two systems.
Table 2: Preliminary comparative case study design7
“Population” (Multi-level
political systems)
“All potential
cases”
“Sample” (Subjects
of the study)
“Selected
cases”
“Case 1”
(EU)
“Configurations” (Regulatory Decisions)
Explanatory variable I (Frame
communality)
Explanatory variable II
(Side heterogeneity)
Control variables
(Resources, Issue
characteristics, institutions)
Dependent variable
(Lobbying Success)
Food information to consumers
(Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011)
Level for each side involved
Level for each side involved
Measures for each side involved
Closeness score of the final
legislative act
Child health protection: safety
of toys (Directive
2009/48/EC)
Level for each side involved
Level for each side involved
Measures for each side involved
Closeness score of the final
legislative act
“Case 2”
(USA)
“Configurations” (Regulatory Decisions)
Explanatory variable I (Frame
communality)
Explanatory variable II
(Side heterogeneity)
Control variables
(Resources, Issue
characteristics, institutions)
Dependent variable
(Lobbying Success)
FDA Food Safety Modernization
Act (2011)
Level for each side involved
Level for each side involved
Measures for each side involved
Closeness score of the final
legislative act
Consumer Product Safety Act (2008)
Level for each side involved
Level for each side involved
Measures for each side involved
Closeness score of the final
legislative act
Source: Own table based on (Gerring 2007: 23).
6 According to the website of the „Forum of Federations“, a “Global Network on Federalism and Developed Governance”, there are currently 24 (out of 193) federal political systems worldwide (http://www.forumfed.org/en/federalism/by_country/index.php). 7 This is a very preliminary version of the comparative case study design which I will eventually use in my dissertation. It is the result from a first online investigation of the online legislative datasets of the EU and US official institutions. In the final design I aim at doing research on 3-4 policies for each political system paying closer attention to the case selection criteria introduced here.
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Right now I plan to carefully study 6 to 8 policies and all the sides and their strategies
involved in them respectively. For every “configuration” the dependent variable (lobbying
success), the two main explanatory variables (frame communality and side heterogeneity for
every side), and the control variables (interest group resources, issue characteristics, and
institutions) introduced and operationalized in earlier sections will be identified and
measured.
For this paper I selected one of the EU “configurations” that I will eventually study:
Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, an EU regulation titled “Food information to consumers” that
was adopted in the fall of 2011 while the Commission proposal had already been released in
January 2008. Here the main conflict was about establishing an EU-wide food labeling
system. This highly salient EU case involved high levels of activity of many different interest
groups from both industry and consumer organizations, and received high rates of media
coverage as well.
To be considered for the analysis, the EU’s policy-making process has to be fully completed.
Thus, a policy has to be adopted by the official publication of the final legislative act that
makes an EU directive or regulation binding. Only by reducing the analysis to a finalized
decision I can study lobbying success accurately and in sync with the analytical framework
developed here. The regulation to be studied in this paper is also selected based on its level of
salience. The more interest organizations released positions on a particular issue and the more
press releases in EU wide press products dealt with an issue, the higher the level of saliency
of an issue. After consulting organizations’ websites and media products, and coding the
consumer related issues with regard to their saliency level, I made sure to pick a high-saliency
issue, as a “hard case” so to speak.
For qualitative researchers who mainly want to explain particular important outcomes it
makes a lot of sense to stick to a small number of well-known N and only to increase the
number of causal-process observations within a case that is being studied. This is the case
because of problems related to unit or case homogeneity problems, problems of measurement
validity when moving to new contexts (i.e. cases), and because of the general value that
already acquired case-specific in-depth knowledge of the researcher has (Collier et al. 2004:
262–263; also see George/Bennett 2005; Mahoney 2007c: 130–131). To collect as many
observations as possible I will rely on written online documents. I will turn to these data
sources now.
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4.3 Data sources
I will conduct detailed in-depth document analyses of primary and secondary sources
published online by the media, interest groups, and official EU institutions. For the saliency
test of my case mentioned in the former chapter I will rely on archived stories published in
Agence Europe since it offers the only pan-European press product that frequently covers
almost everything that is going on in the EU.
In the EU interest groups, such as (peak) consumer or producer organizations active at the
various governance levels, public policy groups (NGOs), and individual companies frequently
release position papers on current issues and send out press releases which are publicly
available. For comparability reasons I will limit advocacy group publications to these two
types of releases (Mahoney/Baumgartner 2010: 9). To find the right interest groups and their
documents for the analysis, the “EU Transparency Register” serves as a starting point to
identify the relevant non-state actors. Furthermore, the website of the “Directorate General
Health and Consumers” (DG SANCO) also offers detailed information about consumer
organizations both at the national (all 27 member states plus Norway and Iceland) and at the
supranational level. The European Commission, the European Parliament committees, and (to
a somewhat lesser extent) the Council of Ministers make almost all of their policy-relevant
documents open to the public. In general, in the the EU the “Legislative Observatory”
database of the European Parliament and the Council’s “Public Register” (CONSILIUM) help
to track down EU decision-making processes by offering various documents online. These are
open to the public and thus also for scientific purposes. All Commission proposals for
directives or regulations and consultation submissions received from advocacy groups before
the first release of the proposal, the opinions released by the Council and the EP committees,
and the text of the legislation that is finally adopted can be downloaded free of charge from
these institution’s websites with the “Legislative Observatory” being the main source that
collects all the official documents of the whole policy-making process. I will consult these
websites to collect all the publicly available documents published with regard to the issue
studied. Here, the final goal is to compile a larger dataset that offers archived information
about the positions taken by interest groups on a particular issue, the policy images they try to
establish, and the decisions taken by decision-makers at the various policy-making stages.
4.4 Methods: Process tracing and within-case analysis
For the single case study I basically rely on within-case analysis that allows for the
identification of conjunctural causal paths (Aus 2009) and provides the researcher with high
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levels of conceptual validity and in-depth case knowledge which can be an major asset when
trying to avoid omitted variable bias and related prevalent problems in case study research
(George/Bennett 2005). This is crucial when trying to track the causal mechanisms at work in
my case (George/Bennett 2005: 19). The decision-making process will be studied with the
method of process tracing (Collier 2011; George/Bennett 2005: Chap. 10; also see Checkel
2008; Hall 2003: 391–395). Based on and guided by my analytical framework, process tracing
helps to test the theoretical propositions formulated earlier by identifying the particular causal
mechanisms that link the explanatory variables across time and which eventually lead to the
particular outcomes to be explained.
Thus, I will cover the whole decision-making process from the point in time where the policy
was introduced for the first time via a Commission proposal until its final passage (the final
EU act passed). I will handcode and analyze all the documents released by the formal
institutions and the non-state actors involved to trace whether the types of frames promoted
by a side can sway the policy debates at the various stages of policy-making. Hence, I
compare the statements made by advocacy alliances with the contents of the official EU
institutions’ documents to find out whether lobbying success varies with the level of
communality of a side’s frame and a side’s composition while controlling for other interest
group characteristics proposed in the literature. A main empirical focus will be on the
activities of the European Parliament (EP) committees and their members (especially the
rapporteurs assigned to an issue), and on the positions taken and released by them. Thus I will
assess which lobbying side uses which types of frames and whether they can move policy
debates and the related outcomes closer to their ideal positions by this collective and selective
process of argumentation and of manipulating policy images adopted by decision-makers.
5. Conclusions
So far political scientists who deal with the question of interest group lobbying success in
multi-level systems of governance have basically focused their analyses on input factors such
as individual interest group characteristics or structural attributes of interest intermediation
systems. Among other things they have theorized about different resource endowments of
groups, groups’ access goods which they can trade for access to decision makers, or the
embeddedness of non-state actors in their domestic environment. What is still missing,
though, is a sound comparative middle range theory that helps to explain outputs and, thus,
why decision-makers actually pay attention to some group preferences, especially to those
preferences voiced by public interest groups, rather than others, and, thus, why they follow
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particular “images” regarding an issue at hand rather than a different one advocated by
competing groups. When taking a closer look at regulatory politics which constitute a main
part of policy types dealt with in the EU’s multi-level decision-making and which attract high
levels of interest group activity (Greenwood 2011: 21; Kelemen 2004; Kohler-
Koch/Rittberger 2006: 35–36), we find vast differences when it comes to successful lobbying
strategies within this system. Hence, anew raising the question of the fate of diffuse interests
in multi-level systems of governance and studying it empirically based on sound theorizing
represents a major task for scholars who aim at tackling the puzzle of interest group influence
and lobbying success more generally.
My own research will contribute to an ongoing research program on interest group politics led
by researchers from the US and Europe (The Lobby Project, INTEREURO) that aims at
answering the general questions of when frames actually do successfully change policy in the
EU and the US, and whether certain types of frames that are promoted by advocacy groups
and their alliances are more successful than others (Baumgartner et al. 2009; Lowery 2009;
Mahoney/Baumgartner 2010).
In the final version of this paper the case of EU nutrition labeling (2008-2011) will be studied
empirically. Here two lobbying coalitions were pitted against each other regarding the issue
whether a so-called “traffic light label”-system (or TL-system) should become mandatory for
foodstuffs sold in the European market, a solution highly favored by consumer organizations
(for instance the German NGO Foodwatch and BEUC (The European Consumers’
Organisation)), or whether to introduce the so called GDAs (Guideline Daily Amounts). The
latter option, favored by most parts of the European food industry, only contains nutrient-
based information for the consumer without providing evaluations of healthiness at the
nutrient level on the package (TL-system). The final act which was signed and published in
October and November 2011 did not include the TL-system and the GDA solution became the
main “ingredient” of the regulation. Thus, according to my coding scheme this EU regulation
would be coded as representing a lobbying success of the industry side, leaving the consumer
side unsuccessful. Hence document analysis helps to, first, identify the main conflict line
around which the two sides form (type of labeling), second, locate the sides of the policy
debate (supporters of the TL-system and advocates of the GDA approach), and, third,
compare these with the final output of the decision-making process.
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