David and Goliath: Privacy Lobbying in the European Union

Abstract

The paper examines a question of how much more resources do organized business interests have when compared to resources of civil society groups in the context of privacy lobbying in the European Union (EU). To answer to the question, the paper draws from classical literature on power resources and pluralism. The empirical material comes from a lobbying register maintained by the EU. According to the results, (a) there is only a small difference in terms of the average financial and human resources, but a vast difference when absolute amounts are used. Furthermore, (b) organized business interests are better affiliated with each other and other organizations. Finally, (c) many organized business interests maintain their offices in the United States, whereas the non-governmental organizations observed are mostly European. With these results and the accompanying discussion, the paper contributes to the underresearched but inflammatory topic of privacy politics.