University / Organisation : Université Paris Dauphine-PSL

Paper or project ? paper

Title : Hear me out : Lobbying Frames and Policy Outcomes in the European Union

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Abstract : This study examines how lobbying frame choices influence the European Commission's policy proposals during the European Public Consultation process. Using sentence embeddings and a supervised machine learning text classifier trained on speeches from the European Parliament, we measure text similarity between stakeholders' position papers and the European Commission law proposal. We then estimate a reduced-form model to assess the impact of specific frames on the alignment to the policy outcome. Our findings indicate that frames supporting supply, technology and infrastructure are associated with a closer alignment to the final law proposal. Conversely, frames advocating for supporting demand, and an increase of government and administrative efficiency tend to decrease the alignment to the final proposal. We also find that on average, stakeholders' position papers alignment to the law proposal is higher than to the issue roadmap. Finally, we find no systematic evidence that lobbying entities individual characteristics have an impact on the alignment to the European Commission law proposal.