Ideational Change in the WTO and its Impacts on EU Agricultural Policy Institutions and the CAP

Abstract

This paper argues that the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) introduced the market liberal paradigm as the ideational underpinning of the new farm trade regime. Though the immediate consequences in terms of limitations on agricultural support and protection were very modest, the Agreement did impact on the way in which domestic farm policy evolves. It forced EU agricultural policy makers to consider the agricultural negotiations when reforming the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The new paradigm in global farm trade resulted in a process of institutional layering in which concerns raised in the World Trade Organization (WTO) were gradually incorporated in EU agricultural institutions. This has resulted in gradual reform of the CAP in which policy instruments have been changed in order to make the CAP more WTO compatible. The underlying paradigm, the state-assisted paradigm, has been sustained though it has been rephrased by introducing the concept of multifunctionality.

Governance Capabilities for Dealing Wisely With Wicked Problems

“…Hence, the way the EU produced food was criticized for being economically and socially unsustainable. Until then, the distortion of international markets due to the EU common market scheme was observed but not signaled as a serious concern by many of the member states (Daugbjerg & Swinbank, 2009). This changed when, as a result of the collapse of the talks on agriculture, the entire Uruguay Round came to a halt in December 1990, and the Commission feared repercussions for other policy domains.…”

Reflecting the Global? The Common Agricultural Policy and Its Perception in Public Media Discourse

“…These international institutional entrepreneurs are of considerable relevance when it comes to shaping problem perceptions and setting the policy agenda. Besides the endogenous problems of overproduction and excessive, wasteful spending, the exogenous, international influence is widely regarded as a crucial factor in the move of the CAP towards more market orientation and trade liberalization (Coleman, Grant, and Josling 2004;Daugbjerg and Swinbank 2010;Garzon 2007;Moyer and Josling 2002). Of paramount importance in this regard has been the abandonment of the notion of agricultural exceptionalism and the rising prominence of a market-liberal agricultural policy approach within the OECD and in GATT talks since the mid-1980s (ibid.).…”

“…In fact, agricultural policy can be seen as a particularly instructive example of the top-down diffusion of global policy models. At the same time, the literature suggests that this global input is not simply adopted, but dealt with in selective and specific ways (Daugbjerg and Swinbank 2010).…”

The Determinants of CAP Reform: Learning from the European Financial Crisis and CAP 2013

“…There is no general consensus however on which are the internal factors or as to which is the most important among them in terms of impact on the CAP reviews. Even Commission officials and government representatives involved in the discussions have different positions on the issue (Daugbjerg and Swinbank, 2009;Cunha and Swinbank, 2009). To take the words of Kay (2003: 408): 'There is no well-developed, high content theory in the current literature on the development of the CAP.'…”

“…Some consider that the ideational structure evolution has been the result of changes internal to the EU (Burrell, 2009), others that they can be attributed to ideational change in the WTO (Daugbjerg and Swinbank, 2009). In any case, researchers recognise that the constructivist determinant is not a trigger for reform but a constraint on the direction of the reform.…”