GUNS, FUNDS, AND LOBBYISTS Corporate Inside Tactics and Non-Legislative Lobbying of the European Commission

Abstract

This thesis attempts to provide insight into a neglected subdomain of interest representation: the strategies and effects of political lobbying by defence industry firms in the European Union (EU). In doing so, it aims to identify the lobbying tactics of the opaque defence industry, and to investigate whether such lobbying efforts are associated with tangible economic benefits provided by EU institutions. Building on theories of inside lobbying strategies and management theories of social capital, this study highlights meetings between firms and decisionmakers, discerning lobbying tactics of meeting many actors, breadth, from tactics of recurring single-point contact, depth. In both cases, the study expected positive relationships between inside lobbying and funding allocation. To test these hypotheses, this study creates a novel dataset combining firm-level data on funding allocations in the European Defence Fund (EDF) with data on meetings between high-level European Commission officials and firm representatives. Based on this unique dataset, a series of descriptive analyses and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions were conducted. The results demonstrate how inside lobbying in this form in the EU is limited to certain large defence corporations, confirming their dominant role in the European defence industry. Nevertheless, the regressions provide only weak support for the positive relationship between inside lobbying in general and funding allocation. More specific regressions on depth and breadth found no statistically significant support for a relationship. However, the study and the dataset provide ample basis for future, more comprehensive analyses of defence industry lobbying in the EU.