How Professional Groups Defend Their Interests through Incentives to Parliamentary Members? the Cases of France and Germany

How do professional groups such as managers, artisans, employees or even unemployed people get in contact with parliamentary representatives and how do they succeed (or fail) to convince MP’s to stand for their own interests? It appears that one of the reasons why professional groups succeed in having their interests defended lies on the nature of the incentives that these groups can propose. These incentives can take various forms: financial, symbolical, social or political. Thereby, we would focus on the sociological and political dimensions of the notion of “incentive” and “interest”. As a result, multiple questions arise. How do these groups introduce their interests to MP’s? What type of arguments do they use? Where do MP’s and professional groups meet? How do professional groups suggest their incentives to MP’s? Is it necessary to propose powerful incentives to have their interests represented?

Through these questions we would like to propose an analysis of the processes during which professional groups develop the incentives and the interests introduced later to MP’s. Also, we would like to propose a detailed answer of the question: Why do MP’s agree to defend the interests of specifics professionals groups against incentives? To do so, we would propose a comparative analysis between France and Germany based on 70 face-to-face interviews with institutional representatives of professional groups and MP’s as well as observations led during meetings between these actors and archives (around 900 documents). By focusing on the financial committees in the Bundestag and the Assemblée Nationale, we would propose an analysis of the interactions between professional groups (through their spokespeople) and MP’s on different issues related to taxes. More generally, the comparison would allow us to draw some national trends to understand how professional groups succeed in being politically represented.