Policy Design Below the Political Radar: When Policy Bureaucracies Mobilize Expertise to Restrict Business Power

ABSTRACT Powerful business interests threaten to capture policy design. From a quiet politics perspective, businesses are especially influential in policy design under conditions of low political salience. From a bureaucratic politics perspective, bureaucratic power based on specialist expertise is also strongest in low‐salience contexts and enables them to withstand business influence. Under what conditions does bureaucratic power or business power prevail in policy design under low political salience? This article argues that policy bureaucracies can restrict business power by mobilizing expertise for a different policy design than that advocated by business if they have a strong and competing organizational interest in the policy design. This argument is illustrated in a case study on the design of Extended Producer Responsibility for single‐use plastics in Germany as a deviant case of high business influence under quiet politics. This article contributes to understanding business‐bureaucracy interaction outside business home turf and below the political radar. It enhances quiet politics by introducing the role of bureaucratic responsiveness based on organizational interests and expertise.