ABSTRACT
This study takes as its starting point the claim that the access of stakeholder organisations to policymaking in an age of evidence-based policymaking and the advent of a knowledge society is increasingly dependent on the ability to muster scientific and professional expertise. The study explores responses to these expertisation pressures by tracking possible changes of the overall pattern of actors involved in EU policymaking and of the strategies applied by stakeholders. The main questions are: are traditional stakeholders being replaced by academic actors within EU governance? Do stakeholders build increasingly on information as a resource and argumentative tool for direct influence on policies? The study shows that stakeholders do not seem to have been crowded out by independent experts on the EU level in numerical terms, while there is tentative evidence of a general expertisation of stakeholders’ behaviour and internal organisation in terms of their resources, access goods and communication strategies, their self-projection and appearance.
