Contemporary governance is increasingly characterized by the consultation of different types of stakeholders, such as interest groups representing economic and citizen interests, as well as public and private institutions, such as public authorities and firms. Previous research has demonstrated that public officials use a variety of tools to involve these actors in policymaking. Yet, we have limited knowledge on how particular consultation approaches relate to stakeholder participation. To what extent do open, closed and hybrid consultation approaches, with the first two, respectively, referring to the use of public and targeted tools, and the third one implying a combination of both of them, relate to the policy engagement of a different set of stakeholders? In this paper, we identify the different tools used by the European Commission to engage stakeholders in policymaking and assess how variation in consultation approaches relates to stakeholder participation via a descriptive and multivariate analysis. We rely on two datasets: a regulatory database that contains detailed information on 41 EU regulations and a stakeholder database that comprises 2617 stakeholders that were involved in these regulations through different consultation tools. Our main finding is that implementing different consultation approaches affects stakeholder diversity. Specifically, closed consultation approaches lead to a lower level of business dominance than hybrid approaches that combine open and targeted consultation tools.

中文翻译：

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概念化咨询方法：确定咨询工具的组合并分析它们对利益相关者多样性的影响

当代治理越来越多地以不同类型利益相关者的协商为特征，例如代表经济和公民利益的利益集团，以及公共机构和企业等公共和私人机构。先前的研究表明，公职人员使用各种工具让这些行为者参与决策。然而，我们对特定协商方法如何与利益相关者参与相关联的了解有限。开放式、封闭式和混合式咨询方法在多大程度上与不同的政策参与有关，前两种分别指的是公共和有针对性的工具的使用，而第三种则意味着两者的结合利益相关者？在本文中，我们确定了欧盟委员会用于让利益相关者参与决策的不同工具，并通过描述性和多变量分析评估咨询方法的变化与利益相关者参与的关系。我们依赖两个数据集：一个包含有关 41 项欧盟法规的详细信息的监管数据库和一个利益相关者数据库，其中包含通过不同咨询工具参与这些法规的 2617 名利益相关者。我们的主要发现是实施不同的咨询方法会影响利益相关者的多样性。具体而言，与结合开放式和有针对性的咨询工具的混合方法相比，封闭式咨询方法导致的业务主导地位较低。