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‘Try to see it my way!’ Frame congruence between lobbyists and European Commission officials

ABSTRACT We study how frame congruence – the degree to which key policy-makers’ frames correspond to the frames of lobbyists – is distributed between different types of interest groups. We argue that two contextual factors are particularly important for whether the frames of business interests dominate those of civil society interests in the minds of European Commission officials. First, the broader the scope of the conflict, i.e., the more affected interests active in the process, the more difficult it will be to promote narrow self-regarding frames, a fact that benefits civil society interests. Second, as business dominates the media coverage of European Union legislative proposals, the more publicity the proposals receive the higher the frame congruence of business lobbyists and Commission officials. Our empirical analysis is based on 144 face-to-face interviews with Commission officials and lobbyists in relation to 55 legislative proposals that were put forward by the Commission during 2008–10.