Stakeholder consultations and the legitimacy of regulatory decision-making: A survey experiment in Belgium.

Agencies consult extensively with stakeholders such as industry associations, nongovernmental organizations, and trade unions. One rationale for consultations is that these improve procedural legitimacy and lead to greater acceptance of regulatory outcomes by citizens and the regulated industry. While this presumption of a positive relation between stakeholder consultations and the legitimacy of agencies is widespread, research analyzing this relationship remains scarce.

High Definition transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (HD-tDCS) for chronic tinnitus: Outcomes from a prospective longitudinal large cohort study.

Background: Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) aims to induce cortical plasticity by modulating the activity of brain structures. The broad stimulation pattern, which is one of the main limitations of tDCS, can be overcome with the recently developed technique called High-Definition tDCS (HD-tDCS).

Objective: Investigation of the effect of HD-tDCS on tinnitus in a large patient cohort.

Do Professionals Take Over? Professionalisation and Membership Influence in Civil Society Organisations.

While many scholars have postulated the decline of membership influence as an important consequence of the professionalisation of civil society organisations (CSOs), other analysts have argued that traditional membership-driven CSOs are resilient and that hiring professionals does not necessarily diminish membership influence. This study sheds light on this issue by analysing membership influence in a representative sample of approximately 2000 CSOs from  five European countries and the European level. As members generally have a strong influence on CSOs' policy positions, our analysis demonstrates that the pessimistic tone in much contemporary scholarly work is largely unwarranted.

Access to European Union Agencies: Usual Suspects or Balanced Interest Representation in Open and Closed Consultations?

To facilitate stakeholder representation, European Union (EU) agencies use a range of procedures, including closed consultation or advisory committees and open or public consultations. For analysing what kind of stakeholders gain access to advisory committees, we compare these two particular procedures. Two theoretical perspectives guide this analysis.

Should I stay or should I go? Explaining variation in nonstate actor advocacy over time in global governance.

The past decades have been characterized by a growing number of nonstate actors (NSAs) involved in global governance. However, despite this growth, only a small number of NSAs have been able to maintain a prolonged global presence over a substantial period of time. To explain why some NSAs are more active, we rely on resource dependence theory.