Dynamiques et influence du lobbying

Chapter 1 - Strategic Complementarity in NGO Advocacy: Theory and Evidence from the European Commission Chapter 1 analyzes the advocacy strategies of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs). I develop a model in which ENGOs can engage in costly advocacy activities to foster pro-environmental policy changes on different dimensions. The model gives insights on their optimal advocacy strategies, and their reaction functions to lobbying from other actors. Combining data on meetings with European Commission members and textual analysis to measure lobbying efforts on different topics, I find support for strategic complementarity of ENGOs efforts. ENGOs also seem to drive the lobbying agenda of the business sector on environmental topics. Chapter 2 - Does Access Mean Success? Connection to Policy-Makers and Lobbying Success of Political Actors Chapter 2 investigates the relationship between access to policy-makers and lobbying success, providing new insights into the policy-making process. I collect unique large-scale textual data to capture the content of lobbying activities and subsequent policy changes. I identify instances of lobbying success with two complementary approaches, plagiarism detection and large language models. By matching this novel data with records of meetings held between policy-makers and interest group representatives, I measure access to policy-makers and find notable disparities: the business sector has greater access compared to civil society organizations. Moreover, I find that access to policy-makers is associated with an increased likelihood of lobbying success, by 5 percentage points. This effect is stronger for entities with higher access, as measured by the number of meetings they have. This relationship is driven by the business sector, composed of companies and business associations, which in addition to having more access to policy-makers, derive greater benefits from these connections. In contrast, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with access to policy-makers do not experience a corresponding increase in lobbying success. Lastly, I exploit the turnover of policymakers between two terms to investigate the channels at play and I find that political connections play a critical role. Chapter 3 - Revolving Doors in the European Union: Quantification and Consequences, with Jeanne Bomare Chapter 3 studies the impact of employee mobility between the European Union (EU) public sector and non-EU organizations on access to EU funding and meetings with the EU executive body, the European Commission. We leverage data from the professional network LinkedIn to measure moves across all EU hierarchy levels, both in the direction of entering or exiting the EU public sector. Using an event-study design, we find that hiring EU employees increases the odds of obtaining EU procurement contracts by 43% in the same year, and to 64% when restricting to relatively long-term EU employees. Access to EU grants appears unaffected by such hires. Additionally, hiring EU employees significantly boosts engagement with the Commission, with effects being particularly pronounced for hires of relatively long-term EU employees. Hiring specifically Commission employees translates into longer-lasting effects, with publicly traded firms experiencing a 29% increase in meetings in the quarter they hire a former relatively long-term Commission employee. Conversely, when employees transition to the EU, organizations experience a one-period 25% rise in meeting odds. These results suggest that the connection effect is short-lived.