This book is a systematic and comprehensive effort at investigating and integrating the state of the art in European interest group research. Combining the analysis of interest group politics in the EU with the comparative study of interest organizations, the book seeks to identify the areas about which there is consolidated knowledge, that are marked by controversies, in which considerable uncertainty exists, that have been omitted from research programs and that ought to be part of future studies. Thereby, it provides a general reflection on how the study of interest group politics can be improved by linking it to the comparative study of governance.
This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.
Jan Beyers is Professor of Political Science at the University of Antwerp, Belgium.
Rainer Eising is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Ruhr-University Bochum.
William A. Maloney is Professor of Politics at the University of Newcastle, UK.