The Drivers of Coalition Types in EU Environmental Policy Processes

European Union (EU) environmental legislative processes are structured by varying types of coalitions that structurally differ and try to influence policy outcomes in their favor. Yet, coalitions do not form in a void but are shaped by the institutions, policymaking processes, and characteristics of legislative proposals which they are embedded in, as well as the agency of exceptional policy actors. To explore why different types of coalitions emerge in EU environmental legislative processes, this article asks: What combination of legislative characteristics and the inclusion of exceptional actors drives the presence of different types of coalitions during EU environmental legislative processes within the European Green Deal? Utilizing the Advocacy Coalition Framework and interest group mobilization theory, the article considers five conditions – legislative complexity, scope of regulatory addressees, primary legislative instrument, legislative duration, and the inclusion of exceptional policy actors. The article primarily uses social network analysis and principal component analysis to identify and characterize coalitions in five EU environmental policy processes. Then, crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis is applied to uncover explanations on the presence of varying coalition types. Several explanations are developed to account for the presence of coalition types, particularly highlighting the involvement of exceptional policy actors under growing onerous legislative characteristics.