Book Review

Book Author Title Reviewer

W. Moyer and T. JoslingAgricultural Policy Reform: Politics and Process in theEU and in the US in the 1990s

Alan Matthews

Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 57, No. 1, 2006, 145–148

� Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Steet, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

MOYER, W. and JOSLING, T. (2002). Agricultural Policy Reform: Politics andProcess in the EU and US in the 1990s. Ashgate: Aldershot, UK, 288 pages. ISBN:0 7546 3050 1, £57.50.

This is an ambitious book. Its objective is to provide a comprehensive overview ofthe entire agricultural reform process in the US, EU and the GATT/WTO duringthe 1990s. Less elegantly, its purpose is to explain how rational national actor,public choice, organisational process, and government politics models, applied tomulti-level and linked bargaining games, influenced by economic trends, politicaldevelopments and political and economic shocks, explain the pace and content ofagricultural policy reform up to the present (p. 28).The book is written jointly by a political scientist, Moyer, and an economist,

Josling. It is a sequel to an earlier book the two authors published in 1990 entitledAgricultural Policy Reform: Politics and Process in the EC and USA (Moyer andJosling, 1990). That book examined the steps towards US and EC agricultural pol-icy reform in the 1980s using a conceptual framework which drew on a variety ofmodels of decision-making. As the authors admit, they had to stretch the definitionof reform in the earlier book to include the 1984 and 1988 changes to the CAP. Butthe 1990s was undoubtedly a period of genuine change in agricultural policy in boththe EU and the US so, in principle, this second volume should make for a meatierread.The comparative perspective helps to frame a number of intriguing questions.

Why did deeper reform start earlier in the US than in the EU? Are reform effortsin the two areas converging? What were the links between international negotiationsand domestic policy reform? Were there connections between reform in the US andthe EU and that in other OECD countries?The core of the book sets out to answer these questions through a detailed descrip-

tion of the key agricultural policy events on both sides of the Atlantic through the1990s. Successive chapters deal with the failure of the first stage of the UruguayRound negotiations in the period 1986–1990; the 1990 US Farm Bill; the 1992 Mac-Sharry reform of the CAP; the negotiations leading to the successful conclusion of theUruguay Round in 1994; the 1996 FAIR Act in the US; the Agenda 2000 reform ofthe CAP and, finally, the opening positions in 2000 of the next round of agriculturaltrade negotiations. Each chapter consists of a narrative outlining the sequence ofevents, followed by an attempt to identify the key forces at work using the insightsfrom various models of decision-making, which are outlined in chapter 2.The central thesis of the book is that it takes a crisis to produce significant

change in agricultural policy. Because agricultural policy is deeply entrenched andreflects considerable inbuilt inertia, it takes a major jolt to bring about more thanincremental change (p. 238). However, once farm interests recognise that changeis inevitable, the authors argue that they have been able to shape the reformsto minimise the harm done to the farm community due to their expertise andpositioning in the policy process.They believe that perceived budget pressures have been the catalyst for reform in

every instance of significant policy change. This is an easy argument to make in the1980s, when out-of-control farm spending in the EU prefigured the 1984 and 1988budget stabiliser reforms, and the need to contain farm spending was also a factordriving the changes introduced in the 1985 and 1990 US Farm Bills. The roleplayed by budget pressures is less obvious in both the 1992 MacSharry reform in

146 Book Review

� Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006

the EU and the 1996 Farm Bill in the US, as both reforms ended up costing morethan the existing policy. The authors argue that, in both cases, the original propos-als would have kept budget expenditure within manageable bounds, but that costsescalated because of the need to make side payments in order to build a winningcoalition in each case.Two other factors which have helped to propel reform in both areas, apart from

escalating budget costs, are the need to take more account of the internationalimpacts of domestic policies and changing policy paradigms. The slow progress ofthe Uruguay Round negotiations and the failure to conclude the Round at Heyselin December 1990 testify to the fact that international constraints on domestic poli-cies were slow to emerge. The authors argue that the Reagan administration andthe European Commission sought to control surpluses and expenditures throughthe Uruguay Round, and hence achieve goals that they could not secure throughdomestic policy processes. Their objective was to use the international negotiationsto transform domestic decision-making processes, assuming that international tradenegotiators committed to trade liberalisation would be better able to withstand thefarm lobbies than either the EU Agricultural Council or the US congressional agri-cultural committees (p. 74). Given that DGVI and the USDA actually led the agri-cultural trade negotiations, this was unlikely to work as a strategy, at least untilthese groups had undertaken sufficient domestic policy reform so as to be com-patible with the ultimate agreement which emerged. From this perspective, ‘TheURAA was possible because it provided a useful counterpart to the paradigm chan-ges that were taking place in domestic policy. It encouraged such changes andlocked them in.’ (p. 142).Chapter 3 of the book makes a useful contribution in delineating and describing

the nature of the paradigm shifts taking place in both US and EU agricultural pol-icy. The Dependent Agriculture paradigm was the initial underpinning of agricul-tural policy in both areas. This held that agriculture could not compete internallyfor resources with other sectors or externally with other countries and thus govern-ment intervention was needed to manage supply, provide border protection, buysurpluses and assist with exports if commercial sales were not possible on worldmarkets. In the US, this has been replaced by the Competitive Agriculture para-digm, whose main feature is the view that the sector can stand on its own two feet.Government policy is confined to ensuring a level playing field for the sector andproviding a safety net under those who cannot play on that field. In the EU, on theother hand, the Multifunctional Agriculture paradigm has gained ground in variousguises such as the European Farming Model. Here, the emphasis is on agricultureas a provider of public goods in addition to its role as a provider of raw materialsfor the food industry. The question the authors raise is whether these differentviews are nuances of an essentially similar agricultural model or whether they implyincompatible views of the international trade system?There are many who will argue that multifunctional agriculture in Europe is

handicapped by small-sized units and the demands and regulations of a crowdedcontinent, and thus needs protection from lower-cost suppliers in other countries.On the other hand, the authors point out that if multifunctionality means payingfarmers directly for the amenity value of their farming, then it is not so inconsistentwith the competitive paradigm, and anyway there are many European farmers whosee themselves as part of the competitive core. They also hint that increased expen-diture in the US on environmental payments suggests that the US may embrace

147Book Review

� Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006

incrementally parts of the Multifunctional Agriculture paradigm, although they donot go as far as to suggest that a convergence of paradigms is as yet imminent.These generalisations, however, no matter how useful or insightful, are not the

main contribution of the book. What distinguishes this book from others whichcover the same ground, as its title suggests, is its concern with process and politics.The narrative sections of each chapter provide an excellent summary of the tortuoustwists and negotiations which ultimately led to reforms in both the US and the EUin the 1990s. Less successful, in my view, are the assessments in each chapter whichtry to ‘explain’ the outcome through the lens of different decision-making models.The application of this framework seemed self-conscious and awkward and con-tained a heavy dose of ex post rationalisation.The weakness of the framework is shown by its lack of any predictive power.

Indeed, in places the authors seem to lean towards a ‘great men’ theory of policychange. Referring to both the 1992 MacSharry reform in the EU and the 1996FAIR Act in the US, they note ‘There is the probability of different policy out-comes had different farm leaders been in place’ (p. 231). Indeed, thinking ahead tothe CAP Luxembourg Agreement of 2003 (which falls outside the period coveredby this book) and which introduced the decoupling of direct payments in the EU,would this have been possible or even proposed without the vision and stature ofCommissioner Fischler, no matter how consistent it proves to be with the Multi-functional Agriculture paradigm and with the disciplines introduced by the UruguayRound Agreement on Agriculture?But even reading the book simply as a history of the important agricultural pol-

icy changes in the US and the EU in the 1990s, this is a work of considerable schol-arship and erudition. It will prompt many memories for those who lived throughthe events which are analysed here, as well as act as a reminder that glacial progressin agricultural policy reform is simply par for the course.

Alan MatthewsJean Monnet Professor of European Agricultural Policy

Trinity College Dublin

Reference

Moyer, W. and Josling, T. Agricultural Policy Reform: Politics and Process in the EC and USA (NewYork and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hemstead, 1990).

148 Book Review

� Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006