The Nature and Context of Public Interest Coalitions in the European Union

Interest groups choose whichever strategy of influence they consider the most likely to succeed when pursuing EU public policy issues. Sometimes they select collaborative strategies and create or participate in coalitions with their contemporaries. The article examines the characteristics of public interest group coalitions and the environment in which they emerge. It investigates what role public policy issues, opposition interest groups and the EU institutions play in the decision to collaborate by presenting a preliminary hypothesis drawn from the literature on American and European interest representation, collective action and new institutionalism and using a case study to test it. The empirical findings confirm the importance of the context in which interest group coalitions develop and suggest the need for further research.