An Empirical Analysis of the Legitimacy of European Interest Groups: Perspectives from National Organisations

The aim of this article is to identify how national interest groups legitimize European interest groups representing them at the EU level. European interest groups are understood as umbrella associations gathering together national organizations and representing them at the EU level. The article proposes to unpack the concept of organizational legitimacy by analyzing how national interest groups perceive their European associations. The analysis of the structural arrangement between national and European groups is crucial to acquire a more comprehensive picture of the role and the input of these national political actors in the representation system of the EU. The theoretical proposal of the article is to open a path towards an innovative approach of interest groups legitimacy. This approach is based on a positive analysis of organizational legitimacy, as opposed the normative approach usually mobilized by literature on European organizations. Following this positive approach, the article addresses the issue of interest groups legitimacy by analyzing the appropriation of certain standards by their member organizations. The aim is thus not to analyze if an interest group either ‘is’ or ‘is not’ legitimate regarding certain predefined standards, as would do normative analysis. The perception of European interest groups’ legitimacy by national organizations is considered as anchored in their environment and influenced by their organizational features. The output of this positive analysis is the identification of different legitimation discourses mobilized by national organizations. The results are based on a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with representatives from 79 national organizations