Abstract
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Community (EC) has been criticized for causing a misallocation of resources, inequitable income transfers, and enormous budgetary costs. The purpose of this paper is to examine the political economy of agriculture and agricultural policy in the EC. The results of the analysis indicate that conflicts between national political objectives and broader, community-wide concerns are important factors in the performance of EC agriculture. The pressures for reform of the CAP will lead to modification of the system, but changes in EC agricultural policy are likely to be moderate because of the inherent inertia of the policy-making process. As a result, the agricultural system in the EC will probably continue to evolve in an atmosphere of crisis with most reforms directed at symptoms rather than fundamental problems.
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E. Wesley F. Peterson is assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M University. He received a B.A. in anthropology from the University of California (Berkeley) in 1967, a masters in public affairs from Princeton University in 1973 and a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Michigan State University in 1981. He worked in West Africa for five years and taught agricultural economics in France before moving to Texas in 1983.
Clare B. Lyons teaches economics and management at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor and is working on a Ph.D. in agricultural economics at Texas A&M University. She received a B.A. in economics and political science from Fordham University in 1976 and a masters in business administration from Boston University in 1979.
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Wesley, E., Peterson, F. & Lyons, C.B. The perpetual agricultural policy crisis in the European community. Agric Hum Values 6, 11–21 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02219417
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02219417