Differentiated Europeanization: Large and Small Firms in the EU Policy Process

AbstractThis chapter explores the issue of Europeanization primarily at the horizontal level of European Union (EU) policy formulation and the adaptation and Europeanization of large and small business interests in the new opportunity structures of Brussels. The movement of business and other societal interests towards the European level has long been associated with a neofunctional perspective on European integration and societal change. Business interests have always been associated with the changes in policy and polity described by the term Europeanization, begging the question of how does the study of ‘Europeanization’ add to the understanding of European business lobbying. To answer this, the first section of the chapter, ‘Europeanization and the Application to EU Public Policy’ defines what Europeanization is understand to be, and set outs a number of European policy-making process propositions to be explored empirically in the next section ‘The Europeanization of Business Interests in a Differentiated Policy Process’. This section looks at how institutional and organizational capabilities have affected representative ability over time, how firms of all sizes have developed ‘venue shopping’ strategies in a multilevel governance structure, and, finally (in resource dependency terms), how firm size affects the distinct rules and norms of interest representation with the European Commission.