Sliding doors in Brussels: A career path analysis of EU affairs managers

Abstract

This article investigates the revolving doors phenomenon in the European Union (EU). It proposes a management approach that treats this phenomenon as a form of corporate political activity through which companies try to gain access to decision makers. By using sequence analysis to examine the career paths of almost 300 EU affairs managers based in public and private companies across 26 countries, three different ideal‐typical managers are identified: those EU affairs managers coming from EU institutions and public affairs; those who make a career through the private sector; and those who establish themselves in national political institutions. This identification confirms that EU institutions need different types of information and companies need EU affairs managers with different professional backgrounds able to provide it. Rather than observing a revolving door of EU officials into EU government affairs, what the authors term ‘sliding doors’ – namely the separation of careers, especially between the public and private sectors – is discerned.

The Strategic Management of Government Affairs in Brussels

“…As such, little personnel exchange between the public and the private sector is present. This is in line with recent work which suggests that Brussels is characterized by a system closer in spirit to sliding doors than revolving doors, where there is a neat separation between private and public careers (Coen & Vannoni, 2016).…”

Where Are the Revolving Doors in Brussels? Sector Switching and Career Progression in EU Business–Government Affairs

“…In this article, we find that there are organizational and individual incentives in government affairs in Brussels which prevent managers from switching sectors. This in turn suggests that we should see less revolving doors in the EU, in line with recent research in the field (Coen & Vannoni, 2016). Future research should further develop this comparative research agenda and test the revolving doors argument in other contexts and especially in international organizations, such as the international financial institutions.…”

“…In this paper, we find that there are organizational and individual incentives in government affairs in Brussels which prevent managers from switching sectors. This in turn suggest that we should see less revolving doors in the EU, in line with recent research in the field (Coen and Vannoni 2016).…”

“…Business and government relations in the EU are rather different and lead to different individual and organizational incentives with respect to sector switching. As for the organizational incentives, in the EU companies provide the public authority with technical expertise, in exchange of access to policy making (Bouwen, 2002, 2004; Coen, 2007; Coen & Vannoni, 2016, 2018). Moreover, the political environment is less polarized and competitive than the American one (LaPira & Thomas, 2017; Mahoney, 2008).…”

The Executive Revolving Door: New Dataset on the Career Moves of Former Danish Ministers and Permanent Secretaries☆

“…It is therefore no surprise that we have seen an expansion in the academic research on the topic. While scholars still focus on the US system (e.g., Blanes i Vidal et al 2012;Bertrand et al 2014;LaPira & Thomas 2017;McCrain 2018;Shepherd & You 2020), research has gradually been expanded to a number of other political systems, for example, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the European Union (e.g., Selling 2015;Coen & Vannoni 2016;2020a;2020b;Baturo & Arlow 2018;Selling & Svallfors 2019;Egerod et al 2020;Luechinger & Moser 2020;Claessen et al 2021). These studies demonstrate that, even if the frequency of career moves between the political and private sector varies between political systems, the revolving door is a phenomenon across advanced democracies.…”