Many of the proposals are defeated outright. Those that are not rejected are often made voluntary or watered down so significantly that the resulting policy has little impact on CAP operations. The second potential condition involves what I refer to as “disruptive politics”. Under this condition, reformers are not only concerned with the CAP itself , but must also consider the problems and consequences of the application of the CAP and its policies beyond the agricultural sector. Specifically, when negotiating the CAP in the context of disruptive politics, reforms are shaped by non-agricultural considerations, such as trade negotiations and enlargement. CAP reformers have considerably more success when they are able to expand the proposal’s scope, tying it to these broader issues. The reform success under “disruptive politics” tracks with what Baumgartner and Jones describe as “Schattschneiderian moments”. In Schattschneiderian moments, issues or policy proposals are reframed or repackaged so as to change the scope of conflict. Much like these moments, disruptive politics allows CAP reformers to reframe the policy under discussion by tying agricultural reform to a broader issue or challenge. By managing the scope of conflict and shifting the agenda CAP reformers have a greater chance of successfully pursuing far-reaching agricultural change. While both types of negotiation scenarios may be motivated by a similar set of core common pressures, including the budget, environment, and rural community, at times of disruptive politics,plants pots plastic additional pressures including trade negotiations and enlargement come to bear. These additional pressures bring about a difference in the actors involved. When the CAP is considered in an environment of politics as usual, the actors involved are agricultural stakeholders only.

By contrast, discussions of the CAP at a time of disruptive politics often entail intervention from non-agricultural actors. For example, when trade negotiations are concurrent with CAP reform, member state governments often feel pressure from business leaders who do not want agriculture to jeopardize an important trade deal. At the EU level, other commissioners who may have a stake in negotiation outcomes, such as the commissioners for trade or the environment, may lobby or pressure the agricultural commissioner to reach an agreement in line with their preferences. Although reformers under both politics as usual and disruptive politics push for bold, broad reforms, the ultimate outcomes vary across the two contexts. When negotiations involve politics as usual, reforms are muted. New programs and initiatives are voluntary, often including a lot of member state discretion for if, when, and how to implement them. When EU officials and the member states operate under disruptive politics, including the extension of the CAP to new member states or its application in global trade agreements, the outcome is different. Proposals to make fundamental changes to the operation of the CAP are adopted and reforms are binding, rather than optional. These changes are made in order to ensure that the CAP can survive and continue to meet its operating objectives given the broader issues confronting negotiators, like enlargement and trade negotiations. Of the four CAP reform initiatives since 1992 analyzed in this dissertation, one has involved politics as usual , two have been marked by disruptive politics , and the most recent took place under mixed conditions. The MacSharry and Fischler Reforms occurred in times of disruptive politics, with trade negotiations and enlargement looming large, and resulted in systemic change to the operation of the CAP. Not only were new rules and conditions adopted for determining eligibility for CAP income payments, but the entire system of calculation and delivery of CAP payments was revised.

By contrast, the Agenda 2000 and the 2013 reforms, which occurred under politics as usual conditions , resulted in little meaningful change. New initiatives were optional and non-binding, and no systemic changes occurred to the structure or operation of the CAP. In the case of the CAP for 2020, the only change of note that occurred could be clearly linked to disruptive politics5 , demonstrating the importance of such conditions in facilitating reform. CAP reforms have often defied expectations. The outcome of the Fischler Reforms, for example, was supposed to be a mere “review” of existing policies. While the member states expected little change, the Fischler Reforms resulted in major alterations to the operation of the CAP. Conversely, Agenda 2000 was supposed to bring about a new CAP for the new millennium, but instead yielded no major changes. Ultimately, a pattern can be identified whereby, regardless of member state expectations, major change is possible when negotiations grapple with disruptive politics while only narrow, limited change is possible during politics as usual. Table 1.2 summarizes the key similarities and differences of these two types of CAP negotiations.The third part of my argument concerns the forms that CAP reform takes when it does occur. Many of the ways in which reformers endeavor to change the CAP echo the politics of welfare state retrenchment described by Pierson. Reformers of the social and agricultural welfare state must navigate a host of obstacles, in particular, resistance by the beneficiaries of the policies they seek to retrench. The set of possible reform outcomes is contingent upon navigating the influence of farmers. This dissertation explains CAP reform outcomes by highlighting five different strategies for dealing with farmers that reformers employ. Four of the five strategies are loosely modeled on the strategies used by welfare reformers as described by Pierson , while the other applies Levy’s “vice into virtue” to agricultural policy reform. The first strategy is obfuscation. Using this tactic, reformers attempt to hide or disguise cuts and manipulate information about policy changes. One way technocrats can engage in manipulation is to “lower the salience of consequences”, for example, by freezing a program, such as unemployment benefits, in a growing economy, thus not adjusting for inflation .

The ramifications of non-adjustment build slowly and are unlikely to attract attention. At first glance, it appears as though there is no change, but in the long run, spending is reduced greatly. In the realm of agricultural policy, an example of obfuscation is to freeze the subsidy payment levels and not adjust for inflation. Another example is to increase the complexity of the reform. Simple cuts are easy to detect, but complex rules and standards can make potential losses much harder to detect and trace. The CAP is already among the EU’s most complex policies, offering ample opportunity to veil cuts in obtuse Eurospeak. If the procedures and rules are sufficiently complex, reformers can restrict the population of beneficiaries and/or the total amount of benefits delivered. Obfuscation strategies have the potential for meaningful change because reforms can be imposed without causing immediate pain to the farmers themselves,blackberry pot the member state representatives answerable to the farmers, or the EU policymakers. A second option for reformers is to “divide and conquer” the target population. In the welfare state, cuts can be designed, typically through changes to eligibility rules, so that only some benefit recipients are affected . For example, many pension reforms exempt existing retirees and those nearing retirement from the new, less generous calculation of benefits. Such divide-and-conquer strategies find success because they are able to limit the size of opposition, in this case objection from senior citizens. In the domain of agricultural policy, a divide-and-conquer strategy involves proposing changes that will affect only some farmers, such as big farmers or commodity producers. Policy examples include price cuts for only some crops, or changing eligibility rules of certain types of income-aid payments. This strategy has the potential for meaningful change because either the farmers are no longer united and thus less able to resist change, or the reforms have targeted those sectors that are most amenable to change, while avoiding producers who would resist reform. Certain types of producers are more willing to accept retrenchment or reform than others. In particular, reforms that target large-scale and/or commodity producers tend to be more successful because many of these farmers believe that they can compete internationally without assistance and could take markets from weaker competitors.A third approach for reformers is to enact reform in exchange for “compensation”. Under this strategy, the potential for fierce opposition is quelled by offering a positive gain to victims of cuts . For example, while cutting general pension levels, reformers offer better or more attractive pension plans to women who have taken time off from work to raise children or lower the retirement age for people who have been working since their teens. A compensation strategy is the mostly likely to succeed and provides the most protection to loss-imposing politicians, but is also the most expensive avenue. Under the CAP, this strategy involves advancing policies that buy off or incentivize farmers for adopting certain behaviors, for example offering farmers direct payments in exchange for price cuts and or paying farmers for meeting specific environmental benchmarks. The fourth route is for reformers to engage in what Pierson calls “systemic retrenchment”.

Following this strategy, reformers implement changes that may increase the prospects for future cutbacks or reform. This strategy is indirect, and potential consequences will only be realized in the long term. Examples include institutional reforms that limit the government’s revenue base, strengthen the hand of budget cutters, or undermine the position of pro-welfare state interest groups. Ronald Reagan engaged in systemic retrenchment by introducing tax cuts that significantly weakened the government’s ability to finance social programs . In the realm of the agricultural welfare state, systemic retrenchment takes a slightly different form. Rather than using fiscal tools to strengthen the hand of reformers, systemic retrenchment within the agricultural welfare state plants the seeds of future reform by introducing controversial proposals on an optional basis at first. Once a policy is established, even on an optional basis, reformers have an easier time converting the voluntary provision into a mandatory policy. Typically, they rely on the argument that the member states had already agreed to the idea in principle, so the conversion to a permanent rule is simply a matter of implementing what has been agreed to. Indeed, this exact logic was used in the 2003 Fischler reform to convert an optional set of environmental standards into a compulsory greening program. As in the social welfare state, the inclusion of optional rules in 1999, did not change anything initially, but opened the door to deeper reforms down the line. The fifth strategy entails turning “vice into virtue” by reforming existing policies that are operating unequally and are also a source of “economic inefficiency or substantial public spending” . Reformers can work on correcting these programs rather than taking the much harder road of eliminating the program and attempting to adopt an entirely new program that functions better. In addition, by correcting the program, reformers are often able to extract new revenue streams that can then be redirected and redeployed toward achieving other policy objectives . Elements of “vice into virtue” overlap with Sheingate’s discussion of how CAP reformers take advantage of opportunities to control and manage issue definition. For Sheingate , CAP reform is possible when these changes are tied to broader objectives, like increasing animal welfare standards or promoting good environmental practices. CAP reformers have taken advantage of many opportunities to use the both “vice into virtue” approach and the issue definition strategy, particularly when changing to the system of income assistance for farmers. In some cases, this strategy is employed in order to shift money from one program to another, so that farmers still get paid the same amount, but the money comes from a different program. More often than not, the money is shifted out of a program that has been tagged as operating inefficiently or perpetuating harmful practices and into an existing program that corrects for these problems. For example, income assistance payments were channeled out of a system that paid farmers based on output that encouraged environmentally destructive industrial farming and massive surpluses, and into a new system that paid farmers a flat rate based on holding size. This shift did not reduce CAP spending, but by delinking payments and production, it reduced the incentive to produce no matter the consequences for the environment. All five of these strategies have been deployed by CAP reformers.