CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Priks, Ardi |
|---|---|
| Title | Beyond The Rent-seeking: The Political Economy of the European Agricultural Policy (Non)Reform in the Twenty-First Century |
| Summary | This dissertation analyses why the European Union’s agricultural policy has not been radically reformed. Based on the works of leading agricultural economists, radical reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) can be considered to have taken place when the direct payments have been phased out, the budget of these payments has been freed up to pursue other priorities, and the rural development pillar has been thoroughly reformed to reflect the public-money-for-public-goods principle. According to this benchmark, none of the past reforms of the CAP have brought about radical change. Both the literature and the interviews conducted show that the most obvious current beneficiaries of the policy—f armers—l ack the political power, at least at the EU-level, to prevent reforms that they do not like from taking place. This means the traditional rent-seeking explanation is insufficient. The absence of a radical reform, therefore, poses an empirical puzzle: the EU and the Member States’ leaders could gain from using the resources to address new priorities or by using the funds to cater to other constituencies. This dissertation proposes a two-fold answer. Firstly, agricultural bureaucrats of the Member States believe that agriculture is a sector unlike any other economic sector and, as such, warrants special support. Driven by these agricultural exceptionalist views, national agricultural bureaucrats use venues like the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) and the Agricultural Council to form transnational inter-bureau coalitions that put pressure on the Commission not to propose anything they do not like or—if this does not succeed—they obstruct or attenuate the proposals in these venues. Agricultural bureaucracies benefit from the fact that agriculture is the only policy area that by-passes the Committee of Permanent Representatives. Secondly, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) negotiations suffer from intergovernmental bargaining failure. Leaders of the Member States are focused on the “juste retour”, the net budgetary position of their Member State towards the EU’s budget. Due to unanimity voting in the European Council, any head of government can block the adoption of an MFF that results in significant deterioration of his or her “juste retour”. The absence of an MFF agreement means that the previous budget is rolled over. The Commission cannot propose an MFF that compensates all losers with a lump sum nor with spending in other policy areas (it is not possible to come up with a distribution key that follows the public-money-for-public-goods principle and, at the same time, does not change any Member State’s “juste retour”). “Transaction costs,” therefore, prevent Pareto-improving MFFs from being negotiated. Methodologicall y, process tracing is used to confirm the validity of the theoretical propositions in three CAP reforms and MFF negotiations that have taken place in the 21st century, in the implementation of the European Green Deal and in the EU sustainable finance taxonomy deliberations. Seventy semi-structured elite interviews with the Member States and the EU officials are used to study the views of the policy-makers. Input from a minority of interviewees who are not agricultural exceptionalists informs the theory part. |
| Supervisor | Csaba, László |
| Department | Political Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/priks_ardi.pdf |
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