Europeanised or European?: Representation by Civil Society Organisations in EU Policy Making [Paperback]

This book looks at how agricultural, environmental and anti-poverty organisations engage with EU affairs; the ways they conceive of interest representation and the strategies they choose to represent their constituencies across the regional.This book looks at how agricultural, environmental and anti-poverty organisations engage with EU affairs; the ways they conceive of interest representation and the strategies they choose to represent their constituencies across the regional, national and European levels of governance; and how being engaged with the EU affects them. Taking a subjective approach in which the perceptions of civil society actors are centre-stage, it breaks new ground in covering the different levels of governance and combining representation theory with EU studies. Kr?ger finds that these groups for the most part are quite Europeanised, and as such can work against the institutional deficit of the EU. However, they do not defend a European interest, as opposed to regional, national or sectoral interests, are therefore not European and can do little against the social deficit of the EU. This is particularly true for the redistributive policy fields of agricultural and social policy, where actors often mention the lowest common denominator policies of the EU and, as a result, often engage in bilateral interest representation strategies.ContentsAcknowledgements viiList of Abbreviations viiiIntroduction 1Chapter One  The Contribution of CSOs to LegitimateRepresentation in the EU 7Chapter Two  Research Design 37Chapter Three  Representation by Agricultural CSOs 59Chapter Four  Representation by Environmental CSOs 89Chapter Five  Representation by Anti-Poverty CSOs 129Chapter Six  What we can learn about Representation by CSOs inEU Policy Making 175Appendix 195References 209Index 225Sandra Kr?ger is a senior lecturer in the politics department at the University of Exeter. Before joining Exeter, she was a lecturer at Bremen University, a Marie CurlÓ$