Integration by Globalisation: the European Interest Representation of the Consumer Electronics Industry

In recent years the interest organisation of the European consumer electronics industry has experienced a dramatic centralisation and concentration. The overall consequence of this development is an integrative tendency encompassing up to now fragmented sub-sectors. These findings are in sharp contrast with the widespread assumption of an ever growing fragmentation of the associational landscape in Europe. We argue, that these arguments have one important shortcoming in common: the concentration on the impact of organisational or properties on the way interests are organised and the strategies used by them. In contrast, we assume that the case of the consumer electronics industry can best be understood as an example of a development where the organisation of interests follows a primarily market-oriented logic. Rather than initiating or causing the change in the structure of interest organisation, institutions shape the process of transformation. Hence, we observed a restructuring driven by the logic of globalised markets which occurs within a given institutional context.