Student

ABSTRACT European Commission expert groups provide powerful platforms from which interest organisations can steer the EU consultation process and weigh in on policy outcomes. Commission decision-makers and bureaucrats rely heavily on expert groups to provide expert policy advice on highly technical issues in the early stages of the policymaking process. Interest organisations provide this advice in order to have their voices heard at the EU level. But whose interests are being represented in these expert groups? Which types of interest organisations, in other words, get a seat at the table and why? This article, using data on over 800 expert groups and nearly 3,000 interest organisations, argues that expert group membership is largely a function of superior resources, EU-level interests and existing institutionalised ties to decision-makers. Far from simply addressing the Commission’s need for expertise, expert group membership is more a story of capital and capture.

" The US gag rule and the British changes of the rules of reading petitions in parliament in the 1830s belong to the same procedure of institutionalisation of petitioning. Discuss. "

In the Anglo-American World by the 1830's petitioning had developed as a popular means of constitutional agitation. It will be argued that because of the shared political and social history of the United States and Britain that the rules that the introduction of the gag-rule(s) and the changing parliamentary procedure for reading petitions in parliament belong to the same procedure of institutionalisation of petitioning. This will be discussed by examining the tradition of petitioning in both countries and how the practice had undergone rapid change and increased in popularity, and how the legislatures responded to such changes. The measures that were taken, in effect, both an attempt to limit the influence of petitioning as a form of constitution agitation through institutionalising stricter controls on their presentation in the respective legislatures. In both states, the measures were designed to take power and influence away from petitioners and restore the authority of the state to settle controversial issues without outside interference. The primary difference between the cases was the subject of the petitions received in the 1830s and the motivations for the reform of how they were received by the houses.