ONGOING RESEARCH PROJECTS
LOBBYING IN FINNISH MUNICIPAL POLITICS (2023-2027)
The Kone Foundation research project LoSKa (2023-2027) will look into political influencing and lobbying in Finnish municipalities.
The project is discussed here and here (both in Finnish).
COMPLETED RESEARCH PROJECTS
BUREAUCRATIC REVOLVING DOOR (2021-2025)
The research project “Expertise In and Out of Government: The Bureaucratic Revolving Door and Its Regulation in EU Member States” (REVOLVE) examined the revolving door phenomenon and ways to regulate it in select Member States: Finland, France and Slovenia as well as at the EU level. The project was funded by the Research Council of Finland.
The project is discussed here in Finnish and here in English (the latter together with Lola Avril).
For project publications, see:
Avril, L. and Korkea-aho, E. (2026). The Art of Not Lobbying: Consultancy, Boundary Work, and the Limits of European Commission Post-Mandate Regulation. Gouvernement et action publique (accepted/in press).
Korkea-aho, E. and Rosic Fégus, V. (2026). Human Rights for the Privileged? Rethinking the Right to Work in Revolving Door Cases. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (accepted/in press).
Avril, L. and Korkea-aho, E. (2025). Administration As Usual? Revolving Doors and the Quiet Regulation of Political Ethics. 32(10) Journal of European Public Policy (open access).
Korkea-aho, E. (2024). When the Doors of EU Administration Revolve: The European Ombudsman’s Legacy and Future Action. In D. Curtin, T. Ehnert, A. Morandini, and S. Tas (eds.). The European Ombudsman Investigated: From Old Battles to New Challenges. Hart Publishing, 73-94 (open access).
Avril, L., Korkea-aho, E., and Rosic Fégus, V. (2023). REVOLVE: Studying Revolving Doors and Their Regulation in the EU and Its Member States / Le projet REVOLVE : étudier les « portes tournantes » et leur régulation dans l’Union européenne et ses États membres. Politique européenne 4 (N° 78), 134-145.
THE LOBBYIST (2016-2021)
In my Academy of Finland Research Fellow project (2016–2021), I focused on the intersections between democracy, constitutionalism and lobbying, and in particular how lobbying regulations articulate and define a lobbyist. The findings are published as three research articles:
“Legal Lobbying: The Evolving (But Hidden) Role of Lawyers and Law Firms in the EU Public Affairs Market”, German Law Journal (2021)
“Are Lawyer Lobbyists Answerable to ‘a Higher Authority’? Bar Association Rules as Lobbying Regulation in the EU and the US“, Interest Groups & Advocacy (2022)
“A right to lobby? Comparing constitutional discourses in the EU and the US”, Columbia Journal of European Law (Winter 2021-2022),
as well as in a book chapter:
“Rock ’n’ Roll Stars or Guitar Technicians? Legal Advisors in NGO Political Advocacy Work” (CUP, 2022).
THIRD COUNTRY LOBBYING (2013-2016)
The first Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher project (2013–2016) looked at how non-EU countries seek to influence the EU when it regulates the law and policy of chemicals.
The key findings of the project can be found in a research article “‘Mr. Smith Goes to Brussels’: Third Country Lobbying and the Making of EU Law and Policy“, published in 2016 in the Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies.
In addition to my academic work on the regulation of lobbying I have served in various expert positions relating to lobbying and its regulation.
I was lead investigator in a project on lobbying regulation funded by the Finnish Prime Minister’s Office. The report, published in 2018, examined the lobbying registers of the EU, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Austria, and the US from three different – and yet interrelated – perspectives: 1) how they comply with international recommendations, 2) the role of public authorities, and 3) their advantages and disadvantages. The report, co-authored with Paul Tiensuu and available in Finnish, can be accessed here.
Between 2020-2021 I was an expert member in the Ministry of Justice’ s working group that prepared the Finnish Transparency Register Law. Since June 2023, I have served as Deputy Chair of the Advisory Board for the Finnish Transparency Register.
EU GOVERNANCE AND SOFT LAW
My doctoral thesis dealt with how the role of courts has been transformed by new governance instruments. The thesis was then reworked into a monograph entitled Adjudicating New Governance: Deliberative democracy in the European Union, published by Routledge in 2015. I also published a series of articles (European Law Journal, European Law Review, and Transnational Environmental Law) discussing the promises and pitfalls of so-called framework legislation, in particular framework directives in the EU.
My more recent soft law research has focused on EU soft law at the national level. I led the EU Commission funded Jean Monnet European Network on Soft Law Research (SoLaR, 2016–2019). This three-year project, involving contributions from more than 30 researchers from seven EU Member States, looked at the reception and impact of EU soft law in the Member States. A collection, co-edited together with Mariolina Eliantonio and Oana Stefan and entitled EU Soft Law in the Member States: Theoretical Findings and Empirical Evidence, was published by Hart Publishing in 2021.
Together with Mariolina Eliantonio and Steven Vaughan, I co-edited a Special Issue entitled “Is Soft Law Pandemic Proof?” focusing on how Member States use soft law to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The issue was published in the European Journal of Risk Regulation in 2021. My article, co-authored together with Martin Scheinin, analyses how soft law regulation was used in Finland during the first wave of the pandemic.
Together with Mariolina Eliantonio and Ulrika Mörth, I have co-edited Research Handbook on Soft Law (Edward Elgar, 2023).