Coen, DJ;
Katsaitis, A;
(2019)
Between cheap talk and epistocracy: The logic of interest group access in the European Parliament's committee hearings.
Public Administration
, 97
(4)
pp. 754-769.
10.1111/padm.12406.
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Abstract
Improving policy deliberation is a central objective for the European Union's institutions. Focusing on the European Parliament's committee hearings as an understudied area of European governance, we aim to understand their role, and their capacity to improve its procedural legitimacy. Building on theoretical work on interest group access and deliberation we argue that hearings can serve three purposes: (i) coordinative; (ii) epistemic; (iii) enhancing public participation. We construct a set of measures and assess an entire population of participants in hearings (2009–14), concentrating on three committees. Our analyses show that hearings serve a hybrid purpose between coordinative and epistemic. At the top end, we observe a core group of gatekeepers representing the dominant constituencies. Simultaneously, research organizations are granted unique access as experts that de‐politicize debates. Theoretically, we contribute to discussions on interest group access while providing an innovative set of tools for its measurement, and the first dataset of its kind.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Between cheap talk and epistocracy: The logic of interest group access in the European Parliament's committee hearings |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1111/padm.12406 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12406 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | European Parliament, Committee Hearings, Deliberative Democracy, Interest Groups, Procedural Legitimacy |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10047683 |
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