Conflicts over meaning and policy entrepreneurship within the CAP (1986-1992).

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter suggests that the evolution of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the period from 1986 to 1992 may be characterized largely by a continuation of the cognitively and normatively instituted problems by the end of the previous period, and by a specification of the solutions preferred, again by the end of the previous period. This particular period may, however, also be characterized by, initially, conflicts over the degree of priority to be attached to both cognitively and normatively instituted problems and by some ambiguity as to the sources of those otherwise familiar problems, and an eventual mutation of these problems and a specification of their sources. Importantly, it is proposed that intensive agriculture is institutionalized as a source of both cognitively and normatively instituted problems and hence, a mutation of such problems is evident within the CAP by the end of the period. It is also suggested that it is during this period that organic farming became institutionalized within the auspices of the CAP as an agricultural sector for Community regulation and as a solution to certain problems within the CAP. Further, during the investigated period, it is suggested that processes of articulation and institutionalization and, hence, institutional change is given momentum by a series of conflicts over meaning and the exercise of policy entrepreneurship.