Since its reform in 1998, the national association of French employers and industry, MEDEF, appears to be an example of strong interest organisation. Unlike trade unions, the peak business organisation has been stable and unified, especially in terms of membership density. Through a study of the...

Depuis sa réforme en 1998, le Mouvement des entreprises de France (Medef) apparaît comme une association puissante et unifiée. En étudiant l’action collective patronale en France, cet article met en doute cette impression. Contrairement aux apparences, l’organisation centrale du patronat...

This chapter examines the coalition patterns of developing countries under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) system and within the WTO to understand how emerging economies have succeeded to incorporate their demands into the trade agenda.

Trade policy is a classic field for the study of private influence on policy-making. Firms and industries can gain clear advantages by protecting their markets from foreign competition or by gaining access to other countries. A large portion of the literature on international political economy...

What role do firms play in the making of EU trade policy? This article surveys the policy domain and lays out the instruments firms can employ to influence decisions on trade. It underlines that European trade policy is characterized by a high degree of institutional complexity, which firms have...

Business-government relations on trade issues are generally characterized as protectionist lobbying or – less often – lobbying for the liberalization of markets. However, with the evolution of the trading system, negotiations today concern not just market opening, but also the regulatory...

The highly politicized debate about the recent Alternative Investment Fund Manager (AIFM) Directive of the European Union led many observers to suspect an ideological battle between countries seeking to impose transnational regulation on financial service industries such as hedge funds and...

This article examines the importance of action-theoretical considerations in European studies. By outlining the notion of “usage” of the European Union, we argue for a more systematically sociological consideration of strategic action in the study of European transformations. The recent...

Pour analyser le rôle joué par la Commission dans les politiques étrangères européennes, nous montrons comment la Commission peut élargir ses compétences en utilisant ses droits en tant que gardienne des traités. L’étude de cas de la politique européenne en matière d’aviation...