The general explanatory approach underpinning this analysis claims that empirical policy patterns in distinct policy areas may be accounted for by examining the goal-oriented, rational-strategic interactions of public and private corporate actors with a stake in that policy area. Actors' interactions are guided by considerations of self-interest in that they attempt to achieve their goals, such as maximising their resources, in a specific context of institutional rules. While systems of rules, as factors, may both restrain and facilitate actors' choices, they do not determine them. There is always space for the individual actor's decision-making, accounted for by specific preferences, belief systems and cultural traditions (Mayntz and Scharpf 1995).

Interaction in a policy field may be understood as a process of bargaining and conflict among ‘consequential’ actors who dispose of diverse, but mutually important, resources – material, legal, informational, expertise and networking-related – which are exchanged and bargained for in a particular institutional context so as to reach a policy decision (Lauman and Knoke 1987). All actors concerned share a primary interest in the policy area, but pursue different specific goals.

If European policy-making is understood as the interaction of public and private corporate actors in an area of common policy interest, then such policy processes cannot be interpreted solely in terms of the national preference-formation and power considerations of member-state governments prior to EU bargaining processes (Moravcsik 1993).