2013 Summer School on Interest Group Politics:
INTEREST GROUPS AND AGENDA SETTING
IN MULTILEVEL SYSTEMS OF GOVERNANCE

July 3-10, 2013

The 4th ECPR Summer School on Interest Group politics has focused on interest groups and agenda setting in multilevel governance systems. The course has provided students with a firm knowledge about how major changes on the patterns of governance at the global, European, national and sub-national level have transformed mobilization and framing strategies of interest organizations across time, across policy subsystems, policy venues, and countries.

   

Students had the opportunity to discuss with leading internationally renowned scholars about how interest groups strategies have been altered in terms of accessibility in this new political context, and whether the consolidation of a multilevel polity has transformed the distribution of power between interest organizations. One of the sessions was focused exclusively on the importance of the mass-media as an scenario for political mobilization. This summer course has also provided students of analytical tools for the analysis of framing and mobilization strategies. We have organized different methodological sessions to deal with these questions, focusing especially on survey research.

   

Finally, in this summer course we have offered students solid support in furthering their research projects. Students have been in contact with leading scholars in the field that not only offer high-quality lectures, but also provide specific advice about individual projects of students during intensive paper presentations and discussion sessions, which followed the same format than academic conferences. In this edition, Jan Ullrich received the best paper award for the paper “Frame resonance and Lobbying Success in EU Consumer Protection Policy”.