Venice School of Management - U. Ca' Foscari of Venice, Italy
Examining how businesses and governments currently interact in public policy-making offers significant potential for explaining some unexpected regulatory outcomes in times of sustainability transitions. We explore this matter through an in-depth analysis of the making of the Euro 7 Regulation on pollutant emissions over a five-year period (2019-2024). While current explanations of how interest representation influences government regulation often focus on the characteristics of interest groups, the resources they can trade with policymakers, and the optimal mobilization of these resources within the policy cycle, our longitudinal case study highlights that when government policy-making becomes a complex, multi-level process—where regulatory innovation proliferates, group interest boundaries blur, and the range of interests to be considered fluctuates, such as in a time of sustainable transitions—the success of influence depends on the strategic use of policy-making structures and external contingencies by agents intervening in interest representation. Our model on the role of agency in business-government interactions has important implications for theory and practice.
