Witam wszystkich!
Na szczescie nie chodzi jeszcze o "ten" prawdziwy wstep do "tej" prawdziwej pracy magisterskiej, a tylko o cwiczenie, ktore profesor nam zadal tydzien przed egzaminami! Niestety, cwiczenie bedzie ocenione... :( Dlatego tez bardzo prosze Was o pomoc w sprawdzeniu mojego jezyka angielskiego... A juz z metodologia jakos sobie poradze. :)
IINTRODUCTION
The lobbyism efficiently enlivens the ongoing debate on the democratic deficit and the democratic legitimacy of the European Union institutions. This subject has been investigated from various perspectives: studies in single policy fields have been carried out by Bouwen, Maloney, Geddes; large studies of interest action in the EU have been carried out by Coen, Kohler-Koch, Eising and Beyers. Coen and Bouwen have also questioned the methods of the lobbies to access the EU policy process. Recently, Henry Hauser has justly noted that the institutional changes brought by the treaty of Lisbon would certainly be a stimulus for the European interest groups.
Instead of this multiplicity of approaches there are only few studies concerning the new member state’s role in the European lobbyism. What is more, they usually focus on the theory lacking an empirical basis. This situation certainly results from the largely emphasized fact that the new member states lack experience, financial resources and positive national opinion; thus they fail to be influential. As a result, their role is neglected by researchers who intend to evaluate lobbies’ impact on the European institutions.
Although these suppositions do find their confirmation in the unsatisfying outcomes of the CEECs’ lobbyism, they do not justify researchers’ reluctance to carry out studies on this topic. Taking in consideration some researchers’ claims that the lobbies are a source of the democratic legitimacy for the European institutions, the negligence of the new member states’ problems in this arena, without a solid empirical analysis of their causes, means also to accept the weak ground of the European institutions’ legitimacy. Taking the Polish lobbies present in Brussels as a study case, my research aims at filling this gap providing new data about the business-oriented lobbies. Although some empirical researches have been done, they are primarily based on personal lobbyists’ impressions on Brussels institutional order or on formal structure of these lobbies (individual/collective) and their formal relation with other organisations (for example: number of memberships in international associations). A new empirical research is needed to understand their engagement in the policy-making process and their real impact – nowadays, for example, a large number of companies resort to ad hoc coalitions. As a consequence, the analysis of the formal memberships of lobbies is not enough. The studies on the policy-making process can also rectify some of the suppositions that the lack of experience of the CEECs lobbies is the only origin of their difficulties. In this research I aim to prove that European Union’s institutional structure is also a cause of their difficulties. What is more, they also result from the West-orientated business policy of the geographically West-orientated European institutions.
I will primarily use the process-tracing method. Interviewing the Polish lobbyists, the European functionaries in front of whom they have to defend their interests and other lobbies with whom they have to cooperate, will help me to assess the Polish lobbyists’ understanding of the policy making process, their actual knowledge on the European lobbyism and their motivations. Certainly, this method will also make apparent other problems in case if they exist (for example: communication difficulties). However, this method has its disadvantages. In particular, the results will be probably biased with the interviewees’ personal opinions on the subject and will not necessarily reflect the predominant tendency of the majority of the lobbyists. What is more, we should not forget that the human memory has its defaults. That is why I decided to follow Dür’s recommendation and to support the policy-tracing method with some surveys which will provide me with larger and more precise data. Although this method also represents some disadvantages – self-estimations can be biased both towards an exaggeration or an underestimation – employing both methods can significantly reduce their shortcomings.
Some limits of this study must be highlighted in order to avoid inappropriate generalizations. As I have mentioned, the literature concerning CEEC’s lobbying in the European Union should be enriched and my study answers to this need. But, although Poland certainly has a lot of common characteristics with the other CEECs (for example: it is a post-Communist state), and, indeed, its representative groups encounter similar problems, it cannot be considered as a representative model for all these countries. Analyzing Polish lobbies I do not mean to analyze those of other CEECs. Consequently, I encourage other researchers to extend the studies in this domain to other states. Finally, I constrained my research to the lobbies present in Brussels while there are some Euro-oriented interest groups in the national institutions. Because their action is detached from the institutional realities of Brussels, they will not be taken in consideration in my study which focuses on the European policy-making process.