ABSTRACT
Framing can play an important role in public policy. Interest groups use political rhetoric to shape a legislative debate in their favour. They strategically highlight some aspects of a proposal while neglecting others in order to direct collective attention to their preferred policy option. Despite the important role of framing for public policies, we have remarkably little knowledge about interest group framing. In this contribution, we have attempted to overcome this shortcoming of the literature by shedding light on the determinants of frame choice during the policy formulation stage when the European Commission drafts its policy proposals. Based on a novel dataset on framing strategies of more than 3,000 interest
groups in 44 EU policy debates, we have shown that frame choice systematically varies across interest group type and institutional venues. Cause groups are significantly more likely to use public frames highlighting the impact of a proposal for the environment, human rights and consumer protection than sectional groups and firms. By contrast, sectional groups are considerably more likely to employ economic frames than cause groups when trying to influence the European Commission, while there is no significant difference between the use of economic frames between cause groups and firms. Hence, membership organizations are typically constrained by the policy interests of theirmembers, but these constrains are stronger for cause groups than for sectional groups. Firms, however, are not dependent on members and their resources and can therefore more flexibly choose their framing strategy. Rather than only selling their point from an economic standpoint, they can also justify their positions using another thematic frame.With regard to the logic of influence, the evidence is mixed.While interest groups choose a public framemuchmore often if DG Environment, DG Justice, DG Environment or DG Development are in charge of preparing the draft, we could not find any systematic relationship between DG type and economic frames. Future research should therefore shed further light on how institutional characteristics interact with framing strategies.
