The Council of Europe: Interest Groups and Ideological Missions? SILKE M. TROMMER and RAJ S. CHARI The traditional literature on interest group behaviour presumes that private interests develop lobbying strategies based on the principle of effective allocation of resources. However, nearly 400 private interest groups actively lobby the Council of Europe, a classical intergovernmental organisation with weak decision-making powers, where no significant policy pay-off is expected to occur. This analysis aims to explain the seeming puzzle of private interest groups seeking to influence an institution which is generally perceived as having no strong decision-making powers in European political space. It does so by exploring three explanations from the existing literature, namely ‘policy overlap’, ‘venue shopping’ and ‘epistemic community’, and considers another explanation not hitherto fully developed, suggesting that the ‘ideological motivation’ of interest groups helps to explain their behaviour. Taking the ideological motivation of interest groups into account when analysing lobbying strategies can in fact shed light on certain lobbying preferences that would otherwise appear to defy the logic of interest representation. This paper therefore suggests that an ‘ideological motivation’ explanation potentially plays a crucial role in the analysis of the behaviour of any interest group. Introduction: Setting up the Problem Little academic attention has been paid by scholars of European politics to the Council of Europe (CoE): it was established in 1949 in order to promote European cultural exchange and social integration. By 1959 it had established the European Court of Human Rights as the judicial body holding exclusive competence to interpret the European Convention on Human Rights and to impose its legally binding decisions in the CoE member states. Since the 1950s, the CoE has provided a forum for discussion to its 46 European member states and its statutory aim is to achieve greater European unity through agreements and debates promoting pluralistic democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights. The CoE has three main institutional organs. The first is the Committee of Correspondence Address: trommers@yahoo.de West European Politics, Vol. 29, No. 4, 665 – 686, September 2006 ISSN 0140-2382 Print/1743-9655 Online ª 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/01402380600842163