Abstract
The European Parliament’s committee hearings serve a hybrid purpose. By giving access to participants they allow committee members to address their information demands. Simultaneously as a formal procedure, hearings provide a stage that allows members to signal constituents their relevance. I argue that the Europeanization and politicization of economic and financial governance is likely to have increased the number of events while shifting the balance of participants away from actors with political/ representative capacity (parliaments, associations, civil society) and closer to organizations with relevant and technical expertise (banks, think tanks, agencies). Moreover, it is likely to have changed the nature of the events making them more public. I map the entire population of actors invited to ECON’s hearings during the 6th and 7th legislatures (2004-2014), providing a unique detailed image of hearing’s participants across time. The results provide an alternative story of access to the informal preferences identified in the literature.
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