INTEREST REPRESENTATION &
LOBBYING
How can we open up policymaking beyond the usual suspects, and unlock the democratic potential of lobbying?
Those questions drive my work as Associate Professor at the Institute of Public Administration in the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs at Leiden University, and as a research fellow at KU Leuven. Across my research, teaching and public engagement, I bridge science and practice, creating spaces where researchers, professionals and students learn from and challenge each other. That perspective is shaped by a background spanning Political Science, Public Administration and Global Management, academic experience at the Australian National University and the University of Antwerp, and early-career experience in the European Parliament.
If lobbying is to strengthen democracy, policymaking needs to become more inclusive, and organized interests need to better fulfil their democratic potential. My research examines both sides of this equation, the government-side and the interest group-side. First, I study how politicians and civil servants can look beyond the usual suspects and design stakeholder consultations that are genuinely inclusive and fair. Second, I examine how organized interests — from NGOs and business associations to citizen groups, firms and think tanks— organize representation and build influence: how they involve their members or internal stakeholders, set priorities and build relationships with policymakers.
Creating meaningful connections between science and practice is at the heart of what I do. I co-founded the Civic Democracy Lab, where we combine research-led education, collaborative projects with practitioners and contributions to public debate. Since 2019, I also co-organize The Night of the Lobbyist, an annual meeting place in The Hague where researchers, practitioners, policymakers, journalists and students connect through open dialogue, creative reflection and surprising formats that explore and rethink the relationship between lobbying and democracy. I also provide executive education and deliver keynotes, masterclasses and interactive workshops for public, private and civil-society organizations in Belgium and the Netherlands. Together, these initiatives make the exchange between science and practice genuinely two-way: research insights directly inform practice, while new questions and professional experiences feed back into research and teaching.
I value open and ambitious collaboration, critical yet constructive dialogue, and teaching that challenges people to rethink their assumptions and practices. I am always keen to connect with students, researchers, professionals and journalists who share my interest in better understanding and meaningfully improving how lobbying and stakeholder engagement contribute to democratic policymaking.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Here you find a selection of recent scientific publications and blog posts. You can find a complete overview of my academic work here.
A MATTER OF INFORMATION, DISCUSSION AND CONSEQUENCES? EXPLORING THE ACCOUNTABILITY PRACTICES OF INTEREST GROUPS IN THE EU
Co-authored with Adria Albareda (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Caelesta Braun (Leiden University) and William Maloney (Newcastle University)
Interest groups are perceived as vehicles that can enhance the legitimacy of public institutions at the national and supranational level. However, the potential of these organizations to enhance democratic representation is often questioned and has rarely been systematically analysed. In this article, we examine the under-researched area of interest group accountability, a key component for groups to realize their democratic potential. To do this, we take an organization-centric and top-down perspective and develop a tailored analytical framework including three key dimensions—information, discussion and consequences. Drawing on data from a large-scale survey of interest groups active at the EU level, we find considerable variation in the extent to which groups demonstrate practices related to these three accountability dimensions. Furthermore, while receiving funding from EU institutions does not have any significant effect on interest group accountability, we find that organizations representing businesses interests more frequently develop accountability practices related to the dimensions of discussion and consequences, whereas citizen groups are more focused on the information dimension. Read more.
CONCEPTUALIZING CONSULTATION APPROACHES: IDENTIFYING COMBINATIONS OF CONSULTATION TOOLS AND ANALYZING THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR STAKEHOLDER DIVERSITY
Co-authored with Adria Albareda (Leiden University) and Caelesta Braun (Leiden University)
Contemporary governance is increasingly characterized by the consultation of different types of stakeholders, such as interest groups representing economic and citizen interests, as well as public and private institutions, such as public authorities and firms. Previous research has demonstrated that public officials use a variety of tools to involve these actors in policymaking. Yet, we have limited knowledge on how particular consultation approaches relate to stakeholder participation. To what extent do open, closed and hybrid consultation approaches, with the first two, respectively, referring to the use of public and targeted tools, and the third one implying a combination of both of them, relate to the policy engagement of a different set of stakeholders? In this paper, we identify the different tools used by the European Commission to engage stakeholders in policymaking and assess how variation in consultation approaches relates to stakeholder participation via a descriptive and multivariate analysis. We rely on two datasets: a regulatory database that contains detailed information on 41 EU regulations and a stakeholder database that comprises 2617 stakeholders that were involved in these regulations through different consultation tools. Our main finding is that implementing different consultation approaches affects stakeholder diversity. Specifically, closed consultation approaches lead to a lower level of business dominance than hybrid approaches that combine open and targeted consultation tools. Read more
HOW DO INTEREST GROUPS LEGITIMATE THEIR POLICY ADVOCACY IN TIMES OF DIGITAL DISRUPTION?
Co-authored with Darren Halpin (Australian National University)
The ongoing embrace of interest groups as agents capable of addressing democratic deficits in governing institutions is in large part because they are assumed to contribute democratic legitimacy to policy processes. Nonetheless, they face the challenge of legitimating their policy advocacy in democratic terms, clarifying what makes them legitimate partners in governance. In this article we suggest that digital innovations have disrupted the established mechanisms of legitimation. While the impact of this disruption is most easily demonstrated in the rise of a small number of ‘digital natives’, we argue that the most substantive impact has been on more conventional groups, which typically follow legitimation logics of either representation or solidarity. While several legacy groups are experimenting with new legitimation approaches, the opportunities provided by technology seem to offer more organizational benefits to groups employing the logic of solidarity, and appear less compatible with the more traditional logic of representation. Read more.
THINK TANKS AND STRATEGIC POLICY-MAKING
Co-authored with Darren Halpin (Australian National University)
Think tanks have proliferated in most Western democracies over the past three decades and are often considered to be increasingly important actors in public policy. Still, their precise contribution to public policy remains contested. This paper takes the existing literature in a new direction by focusing on the capacity of think tanks to contribute to strategic policy-making and assessing their particular role within policy advisory systems. We propose that strategic policy-making capacity requires three critical features: high levels of research capacity, substantial organizational autonomy and a long-term policy horizon. Subsequently, we assess the potential of think tanks to play this particular role in policy-making, using empirical evidence from structured interviews with a set of prominent Australian think tanks. Read more.
This article won the Harold D. Lasswell Prize, which is awarded annually by the international journal Policy Sciences to a publication that makes an important contribution to the theory and practice of policy sciences.
