Interest groups and EU policy-making: Organisational logic and venue shopping

Our central thesis is that once the EU began to develop into a significant venue or arena for public policy-making in Europe, a certain trajectory of institutionalised interaction between the EU and interest groups was likely. We base this prediction on three theoretical assumptions:

• First, bureaucracies have a tendency to construct stable and manageable relationships with interest groups in each policy domain as a means of securing some kind of ‘negotiated order’ or stable environment.