POLITICAL PRACTICES OF LOBBYING IN EU COUNTRIES: RESEARCH CONCEPT

Abstract

The article proposes a concept for studying political practices of lobbying in the countries of the European Union as a complex multidimensional phenomenon of modern democratic politics, which is formed in conditions of multilevel governance and institutional heterogeneity. Lobbying is considered not only as a tool for promoting group interests, but also as a relatively institutionalized mechanism of political communication, through which positions are coordinated between state institutions, supranational structures of the EU and organized interest groups at the national and supranational levels. The thesis is substantiated that the specificity of political practices of lobbying in the European Union is due to the combination of different models of democratic governance, legal traditions and levels of institutional maturity of the member states, as well as the special role of such institutions as the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. In this context, lobbying is an important element of the process of public policy formation, ensuring the adaptation of national interests to supranational norms, procedures and regulatory practices. Based on the generalization of modern theoretical and methodological approaches to the analysis of lobbying, the feasibility of a comprehensive combination of institutional, comparative and structural-functional approaches is substantiated. Such a methodological combination allows us to consider political practices of lobbying as a dynamic phenomenon that combines formalized mechanisms of interaction with government bodies and stable informal channels of influence, which are especially characteristic of political systems with incomplete institutionalization.