Through an ethnographic investigation behind closed doors in the European district of Brussels, Sylvain Laurens studies the relationships between business circles and European institutions and shows that their proximity is less due to ideological collusion than to a shared history.
The dive into the European district of Brussels that Sylvain Laurens’ latest work offers us sheds light on the daily work of representatives of employers, officials of the European Commission and other experts, seen as so many brokers of capitalism. The ethnography conducted over several years at the heart of European bureaucracy and business circles undeniably opens new avenues for understanding “the role of bureaucracy in the analysis of relations of domination” (p. 406).
In a work published a few years previously, the author already proposed entering the working world of state elites and underlined the extent to which senior officials had fully participated in the construction of a “problem” of immigration and policies. in this matter. We also come across many bureaucrats in his latest research, but S. Laurens focuses more on the reappropriation of bureaucratic know-how by employer representatives. The reader thus enters what some have called “the field of Eurocracy” through the multiplicity of points of view offered both by the variety of materials used – archives, interviews and observations – and by the structuring of the book.
The examination of the genesis of the European administration, the morphology of the political representation of firms in Brussels, the monitoring of the work of lobbyists, like the case study which closes the manuscript, invite us to move away from the paradigm of influence in the analysis of lobbying (1), to account for the emergence of a small community at the crossroads of “public” and “private” (2) by providing original answers to the question of maintaining the interests of large firms, through the prism of the work of employer representatives (3).
Beyond influence
The book implicitly discusses a set of commonplaces on lobbying practices. The figure of the person who, in confidence, meets, influences, even manipulates and corrupts the highest-ranking decision-makers in the European Parliament, is replaced by the halo of ordinary practices of business representatives and bureaucrats in the European district of Brussels. Maintaining in the introduction that lobbying “is not reduced to the purchase of amendments” (p. 17), the author calls into question a set of assumptions around “influence”. This presupposes the existence of antagonistic worlds: the “private” and the “public” would oppose each other both through their interests and through very distinct work practices. In a context where large transnational firms manage almost by magic to impose their point of view on the administrative agents of the European institutions, lobbyists ultimately appear as simple order runners who, by being the mirror of the interests of the firms, would be content to ensure framing work with European officials. The departure from this media representation of lobbying centered on influence leads the author to make a shift in focus. It is not the European deputies and the big bosses who are at the center, but rather the administrative camera with little exposure in which lobbyists and officials of the European Commission operate jointly.
The brokers of capitalism at the crossroads of “public” and “private”
If lobbying cannot be reduced to the influence of one sphere over another, it is because business representatives and bureaucrats form a “micro-community” (p. 218) marked by mutual knowledge. Often denounced, the proximity between business circles and European institutions has less to do with ideological collusion than it is anchored in a shared history.
On the one hand, by resuming a classification by branches (p. 51), by putting in place certain instruments such as the CAP (p. 60) or simply by restricting the number of seats during consultations (p. 57), the administrative agents who invested the young European institutions at the dawn of the 1960s participated in the emergence of the landscape of European employer representation and shape it. The federations are thus invited to adopt plurinational methods of representation and to produce coalitions of interests upstream. On the other hand, support from the business community was decisive for this nascent administration, initially endowed with few resources, to gain legitimacy, particularly vis-à-vis national administrations. The micro-community which takes root in the European district is also characterized by frequent movement from one space to another. Employer representatives have been interns at the European Parliament and may consider moving to the Commission; conversely, parliamentary assistants have often previously worked for interest groups.
More fundamentally, the author shows that employees of business associations have learned to manipulate and promote bureaucratic capital, which makes this type of reconversion possible, but also constitutes a resource for gaining legitimacy vis-à-vis the firms that they they represent. Learning a common language, knowledge of desk officer and possible conflicts between the different general directorates of the Commission make it possible to obtain early the draft of a future text and to impose its views within the federations, by highlighting the knowledge of the workings of the bureaucratic work of the Commission. Thus, lobbyists, thanks to bureaucratic capital and “social capital linked to immersion in the neighborhood” “bring to life the interest of members in financing a federation” (p. 220) and make themselves essential. The overlap between business circles and administrative agents finds an extension in the frequentation of common spaces for discussions, writing and negotiations, in particular through the development of research platforms jointly financed by the Commission and by the private sector.
It is ultimately a nebula of actors at the crossroads of the worlds of business and administration that the reader encounters during the book. The development of this group tends to erase the boundary between the public and private spheres and allows us to question what such configurations of actors can produce.
Power through its margins
By studying the work of lobbyists, the work offers several avenues for understanding how these professionals, who do not occupy the highest hierarchical positions and do not unilaterally suffer the “influence” of big bosses, still maintain ultimately their interests. The employer representatives managed, first of all, to make themselves useful to the administration. THE desk officersin particular, regularly rely on the work of lobbyists to compensate for the lack of data and the absence of European indicators in the 1960s or to quickly obtain scientific summaries on the new European standards today. The delegation of part of the Commission’s work to employer representatives is precisely made possible by the “internalization at the very heart of the employer representation work of the expectations of the bureaucratic space that we seek to court” (p. 125 ). The federations can therefore present themselves as regulators and initiate new standards proposed to the Commission which, in return, will have to go through them to produce texts. Secondly, the work within these spaces bringing together lobbyists, scientists and administrative agents takes place out of sight, before and after the passage to Parliament and through technical discussions where political and competitive issues are hidden.
The division of labor and the investment of employer representatives around scientific questions relating to European norms and standards favor ultimately maintaining the interests of the largest firms. First of all, they are the ones who have most integrated scientific research activities into their competitive strategies and who, in return, are often the most subsidized by the Commission, particularly around internal technological development programs. The particular resource that bureaucratic capital constitutes also produces censorship effects, in particular for the smallest firms which invest little in their representation or for those furthest from Brussels, unfamiliar with the workings of European institutions. The multiplication of discussions which precede and follow the vote on a text and the delegation of the work of formatting and producing standards to the federations also weaken any citizen opposition – in particular that carried by non-governmental organizations (NGO).
Lobbying is thus discreet, but this is less the result of interpersonal relationships of confidence between business circles and senior officials, than of the low visibility and accessibility of technical discussions taking place in an administrative closed session where lobbyists and employees work jointly. of the Commission. These spaces are similar to “black holes of power”. Thanks to their normative autonomy, employer representatives have the power to control the implementation of policies and the coalition of interests within the federations, for the benefit of the firms that spend the most on their representation. The demonstration produced by S. Laurens, far from the usual clichés, therefore restores all its depth to the European scene and offers insight into these administrative, business and scientific agents, often left in the shadows and who, on a daily basis, create European policies. .