Choosing Lobbying Sides: The General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union

Ece Özlem Arikan; Adam William Chalmers

doi:10.1017/S0143814X18000223

Choosing Lobbying Sides: The General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union

Ece Özlem Arikan, Adam William Chalmers

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

14 Citations (Scopus)

244 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Despite the impressive amount of empirical research on lobbying, a fundamental question remains overlooked. How do interest groups choose to lobby different sides of an issue? We argue that how groups choose sides is a function of firm-level economic activity. By studying a highly salient regulatory issue, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, and using a novel dataset of lobbying, we reveal that a group’s main economic sector matters most. Firms operating in finance and retail face unique costs and are incentivized to lobby against the GDPR. However, these groups are outgunned by a large, heterogeneous group of firms with superior
lobbying firepower on the other side of the issue.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	543-564
Journal	Journal Of Public Policy
Volume	39
Issue number	4
Early online date	26 Sept 2018
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0143814X18000223
Publication status	Published - Dec 2019

Keywords

European Union
data protection
financial industry groups
interest groups
lobbying

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10.1017/S0143814X18000223

Choosing Lobbying Sides The_ATTIKCAN_Accepted10June2018Epub26Sep2018_GREEN AAMAccepted author manuscript, 612 KB

Cite this

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title = "Choosing Lobbying Sides: The General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union",

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AB - Despite the impressive amount of empirical research on lobbying, a fundamental question remains overlooked. How do interest groups choose to lobby different sides of an issue? We argue that how groups choose sides is a function of firm-level economic activity. By studying a highly salient regulatory issue, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, and using a novel dataset of lobbying, we reveal that a group’s main economic sector matters most. Firms operating in finance and retail face unique costs and are incentivized to lobby against the GDPR. However, these groups are outgunned by a large, heterogeneous group of firms with superiorlobbying firepower on the other side of the issue.

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Choosing Lobbying Sides: The General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union

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Keywords

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