a discourse approach - CiteSeerX

Environment and Planning A 1997, volume 29, pages 1869-1885

Conceptualising the evolution of the European Union's agri-environment policy: a discourse approach J R A Clark, A Jones Department of Geography, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H OAP, England; e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] C A Potter, M Lobley Environment Section, Wye College, Ashford, Kent TN25 5AH, Englande-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Received 1 May 1996; in revised form 5 December 1996

Abstract. Recent studies of the 'greening' process in contemporary agricultural policy have been focused chiefly on its outcomes, rather than on an assessment of the public policy significance of the underlying process. We address this question by conceptualising how greening has been mediated by agricultural policy precepts of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU). We examine how farmers' responsibilities pertaining to environmental protection and nature conservation were formalised by policy elites at the supranational level to be supportive of the core principles of the CAP. We suggest that this formalisation, culminating in 1992 with the EU's agrienvironment Regulation, has enabled farming interests to use their new environmental management brief as a key element in the industry's struggle to legitimise its historic policy entitlements in the postproduction area. The theoretical basis of this paper draws upon Majone's discourse model of policy change, founded on political science and social learning literatures. We use the explanatory concepts of this model to clarify the evolution of the agri-environment initiative through textual analysis of published and confidential EU agriculture documents from the period 1973-91. Documentary evidence is corroborated by responses from semistructured interviews with senior European Commission officials in the agriculture Directorate, Directorate-General VI, involved in the policy's initiation. The core principles of the CAP emerge as crucial in shaping evolution of the EU agrienvironment policy. We define the most important of these principles as occupancy of agricultural land with the aim of ensuring rural stability; and the perceived centrality of the small-scale and family farmer to the (re)structuring of rural space. The 'greening' of agricultural policy In recent years the 'greening' of public policies in postindustrial countries has become a widespread and well-documented phenomenon (for example, Bregha et al, 1990; Jamison et al, 1990). Precise details of the underlying causal processes vary, and often are regionally or locally specific (Glaeser, 1989). However, there is general agreement among researchers that greening has arisen in response to factors in the global political economy, some contingent and others planned, which have precipitated institutional and organisational change at a variety of levels, resulting in environmental considerations being addressed more directly in sectoral policymaking processes (Buttel, 1992). Two corollaries follow from this observation. First, how fully have these environmental considerations been assimilated into the heart of public policies, particularly those of long standing? Second, in each case how have existing policy structures and precepts mediated the greening process? Focusing on the European Union's (EU) ( 1 ) C o m m o n Agricultural Policy (CAP), we consider these questions through an analysis of the evolution of the E U agrienvironment initiative, one element in the labyrinthine structure of the CAP. In so doing, our aim is to assess whether this new initiative represents a significant (1)

For simplicity, we use this term throughout the paper rather than 'European Economic Community', 'European Community', etc.

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J R A Clark, A Jones, C A Potter, M Lobley

development in public policy terms for EU agriculture. Despite the relatively modest financial resources assigned to it, the E U agri-environment initiative received considerable publicity after ratification of the so-called 'agri-environment' regulation, E U 2078/92 (CEC, 1992), in May 1992 as part of the MacSharry reforms to the CAP, widely hailed as the most far reaching in the 30-year history of the agricultural policy. Under this regulation, member states are obliged to introduce incentive schemes to encourage production by farmers of 'environmental goods', such as the maintenance of traditional pastoral landscapes. Bringing environmental concerns in this way to the centre stage of agricultural policy is already a well-established procedure, for example in North American (Beus and Dunlap, 1990; Reichelderfer, 1992) and Scandinavian (Vail et al, 1994) countries. The relative importance of this new initiative has already been the subject of some speculation. On the one hand, agricultural interests have tended to promote it as a radical departure, ending the postwar production-oriented ethos of E U agricultural policy by bringing the "environment to the centre of the C A P " (MAFF, 1992, page 1). So the introduction of its flagship measure, the agri-environment regulation, was greeted by U K Agriculture Minister John G u m m e r in July 1992 as "a major step forward ... in the integration of environmental protection requirements into the C o m m o n Agricultural Policy ..." ( M A F F , 1992, page 1). But most commentators have drawn attention to its inherently accommodationist qualities (for example, Whitby and Lowe, 1994), seemingly an inevitable result of member states and the Commission's D G V I ( 3 ) seeking to satisfy their established policy constituencies— national agriculture ministries and farm-lobby interests—as well as the aspirations of environmental groups, In answering these questions, researchers need to be sensitive to the multifaceted nature of the greening process. Grounded in global political-economic change, greening has been conceptualised as a response within relevant organisations to the impact of environmental discourses, resulting in changed administrative procedures (Van Tattenhowe and Liefferink, 1992) and altered 'belief systems' among key decisionmakers (Weale, 1993). Although there is a strong tradition of political-economy explanations in agricultural-policy analysis [for example, as the cause of broad-brush farm-sector adjustment (Petit, 1985) and in accounting for the preeminence of agribusinesses rather than farm interests in determining policy (Whatmore, 1994)], few farm-policy studies have given consideration to this interaction between novel ideas and established interests, or to the use of ideas in reinforcing established power positions, even though this interaction is widely recognised as a key element in agricultural-policy development (for example, see Vail et al, 1994; Winters, 1987). Hence, in order to understand the greening process, a methodology is needed which specifies the interplay between the ideologies underlying the deeply entrenched agricultural interests characteristic of E U member states, and emergent environmental discourses, while at the same time being fully conversant with the political-economy epistemology. This approach concurs with Hall's assertion (1993, page 278) that a key component of policymaking is "the deliberate attempt to adjust the goals or techniques of policy in response to past experience and new information". Hall states that this 'social learning' approach is particularly important in public policy sectors where considerable autonomy is given to elites over the direction of policies, often as a result of their specialised or highly technical nature, or where administrators are relatively insulated from pluralist pressures. (2) (3)

Named after the then Commissioner for Agriculture, Ray MacSharry. Directorate-General VI is the agriculture directorate of the European Commission.

The evolution of the European Union's agri-environment policy

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In the context of the E U CAP, these conditions are echoed in the joint administration of policy by D G V I and national agriculture ministries. For this reason in this paper we draw on a model which explicates one aspect of social learning, Majone's discourse explanation of policy change (1989; 1991; 1992). Our justification for the use of this model reflects our view that agricultural policy researchers have been overly preoccupied with theorising the role of interests, at the expense of ideas, in their analyses of national and supranational policy development. In this respect, agricultural policy studies lag behind recent work in other fields of academic enquiry, for example environmental policy (Weale, 1993) and land-use planning (for example, Healey and Shaw, 1995; Whatmore and Boucher, 1993). Majone's policy-discourse approach

Majone (1989; 1991; 1992) argues that policymakers are continually provided with ideas that could become new policy initiatives. These are put forward by a community of policy actors who are motivated by different and sometimes conflicting opinions, but who share an active interest in a common policy area (for example, sectoral governmental and nongovernmental organisations). Particular ideas are chosen by policymakers to provide solutions to issues they perceive as problems, with issues arising from flux in the political-economic forces impinging on the 'policy space' (Majone, 1992). In this context the existing pool of ideas plays an important role in offering potential solutions to these problems, as it is "the result of ... intellectual efforts and practical experiences [of policy actors] over preceding years" (1991, page 2). In their transformation into new policy initiatives, these ideas are tailored to suit the political environment in which they operate, while also altering subtly the conceptual basis of existing policy. Thus "policy development is always accompanied by a parallel process of conceptual development" (1992, page 14). Over time, past policy decisions become codified and enshrined as the core principles of policies. These principles provide the perceptual frame of reference for policymakers and the underlying logic for the future development of a policy. Naturally, if effective solutions to policy problems are to be found, the policy community needs to be "open and competitive" (Majone, 1989, page 163) to allow innovative ideas to emerge. Without genuinely innovative ideas to sustain it, a policy will become moribund. Where new ideas are not forthcoming because of policy community 'closure', change in community values will be stifled and core principles will come to dominate policy development. In this situation, policies become immune to fundamental reform, with policymakers seeking solutions to problems on the basis of doctrines which may have contributed to the perceived difficulties. New policy initiatives and the arguments favouring their adoption are seldom inducted into this policy core. Instead, they form a protective belt surrounding the basic assumptions of the policy. Chiefly this periphery provides the mechanisms "that are intended to give effect to the core principles" (Majone, 1989, page 151), but they also deflect criticism away from the core, reducing the need for time-consuming and often costly reappraisal of its basic goals. For this reason, peripheral mechanisms can be amended or dropped completely without affecting the integrity of core principles, thereby providing a policy with the flexibility to respond to political-economic change. By contrast, the policy core "changes more gradually and continuously" (Majone, 1989, page 150) through interaction with novel ideas. Where policy communities are closed, the core provides the criteria for accepting or rejecting ideas, so ensuring consistency in selection, and guarantees continuity of policy objectives which are especially important in upholding the interests of influential policy cartels. These two functions legitimise new initiatives to the policy community, by ensuring that ideas are

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reinterpreted to be compatible with core principles. Because of their reliance on public monies, all public policies also need to be legitimised to society at large. A s the periphery more accurately reflects recent political-economic developments, this 'external' legitimation is often conferred by the peripheral mechanisms rather than the core. If one applies Majone's policy-discourse approach to the CAP, then it becomes apparent that the designation by E U agricultural policy elites of an agri-environment initiative was made in the certain knowledge that the agri-environment 'problem' could be reinterpreted in such a way as to support the core doctrines of the CAP. At the same time the new initiative would provide legitimacy for the C A P which during the mid1980s was in acute crisis; helping to rationalise its existing policy entitlements in the face of growing environmental critiques (for example, for the United Kingdom see Cox et al, 1985). In order to assess how agri-environment relations were mediated by the basic goals of the policy, we need first to identify the core principles of the CAP. Operationalising the policy-discourse approach: the core and periphery of the CAP

Elucidating core doctrines is not easy. Difficulty often arises because these doctrines represent the accretion of countless earlier policy decisions and precedents, preventing their precise specification. However, sometimes their importance in underpinning current policy alignments makes their disclosure a politically sensitive issue. For these and other reasons even professional administrators may have difficulty in articulating them (Majone, 1989, page 150). But Majone notes that "The inability or reluctance [of policymakers] to spell out basic norms and commitments is no proof that their policies lack a more or less well defined core" (1989, page 157). Core principles can instead be inferred by scrutinising long-term patterns of decisions taken by policymakers, which Majone (1989) divides into positive and negative decision strategies. Positive decision strategies refer to affirmative choices made in specifying the operating procedures of a policy. Some policy instruments will emerge as 'preferred', as the underlying principles provide criteria ensuring continuity in decisions taken by policymakers. Majone lists two negative decision strategies. First, there are rejected alternatives, instances where significant new decision paths have been presented to policy elites but turned down because they conflict with the policy core; and second there are nondecisions, affecting more routine administrative choices, where a consistent trend emerges in excluding certain policy options from consideration. Applying these categories to the CAP enables inferences to be drawn regarding its core principles, and by default allows identification of the peripheral mechanisms of the policy. This approach yields some surprising results. For example, the five objectives of the CAP (4) instituted under Article 39 of the Treaty of Rome (1957) are peripheral to the core. Even though they furnish the CAP with its enabling instruments, including the price and market policies which determine its daily functioning, these objectives do not guide the strategic development of the policy, a quality characterising core principles. Similarly, the policy core is often conflated with an ethos glossed as 'agricultural productivism' (Clunies-Ross and Cox, 1994). In fact, productivism is another peripheral mechanism fulfilling the basic goals of the CAP, exemplified by Whitby and Lowe's definition of the productivist era as "dominated by a concern [among policymakers] to increase productivity as a step towards farmer prosperity" (1994, page 1, emphasis added). (4)

These objectives are: increasing agricultural productivity; ensuring a fair standard of living for the agricultural community; stabilising agricultural markets; assuring availability of food supplies; and ensuring these supplies reach consumers at reasonable prices.


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However, the rationales of Article 39 and the productivist approach are very closely interrelated. Both aim to raise farmer incomes by provision of financial incentives, guaranteed markets, and price support. Productivism also exhorts individual farmers to optimise production practices, so as to exact the highest crop yields from agricultural land. Furthermore, it connotes a wider communal responsibility on the part of the farmer to provide food and generate raw materials for rural economies. The cumulative aim of these peripheral mechanisms is therefore not just to maintain farm incomes generally, but to stabilise the incomes of individual farmers within specific regions on the grounds of the benefits which farming activity provides. By inference, one of the core principles of the C A P is to guarantee occupancy of agricultural land with the aim of ensuring rural stability. As the preferred instruments of the policy, productivism and the objectives laid down in Article 39 are quintessential to fulfilling this doctrine. This core principle recurs either directly or in a more oblique form in much EU agricultural documentation. Perhaps its most clear-cut expression is found in the 1991 report "The development and future of the C A P " (CEC, 1991), in which the Commission outlined to member states its proposals for the envisaged reform of the CAP. In drafting this reform package, D G V I took care to stress that: "Sufficient numbers of farmers must be kept on the land. There is no other way to preserve the natural environment, traditional landscapes and a model of agriculture ... favoured by society generally" (pages 9-10). Examination of negative decision strategies of EU agricultural policymakers shows that there is at least one other core principle flanking this doctrine. A clear example of a rejected alternative was the serious reverse suffered by D G V I in its presentation to member states of the Mansholt Memorandum (CEC, 1968). The memorandum advocated amalgamation of existing 'inefficient' holdings to create units dubbed 'modern farms' (Louwes, 1985), the cornerstone of an ambitious proposal for reform of agricultural structures across the Union. This undertaking presupposed agriculture ministries in member states would help alter national conceptions of the farm by encouraging domestic policy constituencies to aspire to this new 'ideal type' of holding. However, the new notion directly challenged another bedrock principle of agriculture ministries in member states, based on the centrality of small-scale farming (chiefly in southern member states) and family farming (predominantly in northern member states) to the (restructuring of rural space; a conceptual opposition that resulted in the rejection of the memorandum. These two core principles also find their expression through nondecisions, chiefly reluctance on the part of the EU Agriculture Council and D G V I to introduce regulatory, as opposed to incentive-driven, policy instruments into the CAP. For example, one argument in the protective belt of the CAP arising from the small-scale and familyfarm principle is that a general derogation is warranted for these farms from antipollution legislation imposed on other industries, because the impact of such regulation would be disproportionately negative on small-farm incomes (Baldock, 1992). This rationale seems to have contributed to the long-standing presumption that, where legislation is applied in agricultural policy, it should be voluntary for farmers. As Majone's discourse approach suggests, cultural traditions in member states and their existing experience of domestic agricultural policies were responsible for the emergence of the core principles of the CAP. These were first aired at the E U level during the conference of Stresa in 1958; Tracy (1994) identifies two notions which were advanced by participating member states as a basis for the development of E U agriculture. The first notion was that the CAP should encourage the creation of larger, more efficient, holdings as a route to higher farm incomes. Invoking economies of

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scale in this way implied that agriculture was an economic sector to be treated like any other. But at the same time delegates stressed the importance of small-scale and family farms to European rural life, and the occupancy of agricultural land as a means of ensuring rural stability; core principles which already underpinned farm policies of the EU of six member states. These doctrines enabled policy elites to view agriculture as in some way atypical, implicitly overturning the first notion. Across the intervening years the principles flagged at Stresa stand out. In effect, the policy core of the C A P was codified in 1958 at Stresa and has remained unchanged ever since, providing a tramline for policy development and ensuring its evolution as a mechanism for 'farm survival' (Potter, 1990). This process has been hastened by the accession of southern member states with large agricultural workforces, leading to the impression that the C A P is "ideally designed to conserve an impoverished peasantry in southern Europe" (Allington and O'Shaughnessy, 1987, page 1). Although the core emerged from the cultural rootstock of domestic 'agrarian ideologies' (Baldock and Lowe, 1996), it has been underwritten by national self-interest and a seeming reluctance on the part of the European Commission to challenge these beliefs. As the trade journal Agra Europe scathingly observed of the piecemeal reforms of the late 1970s and early 1980s: "Because of the unwillingness of the Council to agree relevant solutions to the CAP's problems and ... the unwillingness of the Commission to make the correct policy proposals, the [Union's] problems in the agricultural sphere have become more intense. The reason for this is quite clear: member states will go on providing money to maintain the C A P in its present form ... since maintenance of the status quo maximises their advantage ..." (Agra Europe 1985, pages 1, 15). Not surprisingly, there are also benefits for the Commission from perpetuation of the core doctrines of the CAP. For DGVI, the principles provide a template on which to fashion policy proposals which are highly likely to achieve consensus among national delegations in Council, thus raising the Directorate's reputation as a decisionmaker among other Union institutions. Nonetheless, a more important explanation of their longevity is to be found in the cumulative decisions taken on these core criteria in member states over the last thirty years; such decisions represent a tremendous amount of sunken capital in terms of property, machinery, and land investment. So the perpetuation of core principles does not arise simply from the work of policy elites in supranational and national decisionmaking fora; their persistence can be attributed largely to trenchant defence by powerful interest coalitions in virtually all EU states (Keeler, 1996). Hall (1993), in describing a social learning approach complementary to Majone's, clarifies the determinacy of the policy core on the evolution of the C A P during the 1970s and 1980s. He characterises the gravity of policy change in terms of three levels, or 'orders'. Minor political-economic fluctuation has required no more than tinkering with existing policy 'settings', which in the case of the CAP means altering levels of price support—a ritual undertaken annually by farm ministers during the agricultural price review. This represents first-order policy change. More challenging problems have required second-order change, that is the introduction of new policy instruments or mechanisms which, however, do not "radically alter ... the hierarchy of goals behind policy" (Hall, 1993, page 282). Hence, as overproduction provoked near bankruptcy of the C A P during the early 1980s, to use Majone's terminology, a troop of new peripheral mechanisms were recruited into the protective belt around the policy core, including milk quotas, coresponsibility levies, budgetary stabilisers, extensification, and set-aside policies. Third-order change takes place when a fundamental reappraisal of the principles which guide policy and define its instruments is needed to address irreconcilable difficulties.


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The C A P story of the 1980s-1990s was of member states and D G V I striving to keep policy change within the first two orders. In fact, since its inception reforms of the C A P have always been of this first-order and second-order nature. These reforms have been prompted by political-economic upheaval affecting the Union's agricultural policy, such as the budgetary crisis of 1984, and the first substantial discussions on agricultural trade during the Uruguay round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). These upheavals have provided 'policy windows' for incremental reforms of the policy, with their substance dependent on the current preoccupations of national administrations and the Commission. In this context, it can be argued that the introduction of the E U agri-environment initiative constitutes a second-order change in response to new institutional and public mandates to intervene on environmental grounds in agricultural policy. This introduction has allowed significant alteration in the legitimising arguments used by agricultural interests to justify their traditional policy entitlements. It is against this backdrop of the continuing need for bestowing political legitimacy on the C A P that emergence of E U agri-environmentalism must be seen. The germ of the idea for this initiative can be traced back to the decisions taken at Stresa. Implicitly, agreement was reached at this conference on a rationale for intervention in the new E U agricultural policy, based on the production of 'public goods' by farming, which policy elites believed could not be secured through other gainful activities (Hagedorn, 1985). These public goods included raw materials and foodstuffs produced in guaranteed quantities, and more intangible cultural artifacts which are powerfully represented by the core principles, such as maintenance of the "social tissue" (CEC, 1985b, page 12) of rural areas and protection of the environment. As food surpluses escalated, so the requirement for a cultural justification for the privileged status of agriculture grew. By the late 1980s the legitimacy conferred by the production of foodstuffs had worn thin, as a polemical piece from the United Kingdom's Adam Smith Institute makes plain ( 5 ) : "... C A P supporters claim that food prices have risen less than the rate of inflation— an extraordinary defence, given the high growth of production. They assert that if we bought food on world markets 'this would reduce supply and raise prices'. Why? ... The economic case for liberal trade is impregnable: the strongest arguments against it are all really political" (Allington and O'Shaughnessy, 1987, pages 1 - 3). With concern for the 'environment', overwhelmingly cultural in its interpretation, already embedded in the policy core of the CAP, it became relatively easy for legitimising arguments to be adjusted in the 1980s and 1990s to suit the increasing 'political salience' (Mazey and Richardson, 1993) of environmental discourses. At the same time this notion of 'environment' played an important part in legitimising the new initiative to policy constituencies in member states. Arguably the emergence of agri-environmentalism in the C A P owed as much to the incremental elaboration of this innate concept as to growing public interest in ecological issues, especially given the hermeticism of the EU agricultural policy community. As we shall see, it is this concept of 'environment', emanating from the policy core, that configured the E U agri-environment initiative.

(5)

This reflected the emergence of a new neoliberal discourse in postindustrial countries, pushing for policy efficiency rather than satisfying the objectives of particular clienteles as the overall goal of policymaking.

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Redefining agriculture - environment relations: the emergence of the EU agri-environment policy

The aspect of social learning elaborated finds strong echoes in the interpretation and treatment of agri-environmental relations by policy elites at supranational and national levels. For example, asked to reflect on the evolution of the EU agri-environment initiative, specifically on the difficulties of incorporating environmental objectives within the CAP, a senior Commission official replied: "The first big problem was the learning process, not only across the professional agricultural world but also in large parts of the agricultural administration. At the very beginning many people simply didn't believe that agriculture had environmental side-effects. And so there had really to be a change in mentalities and a learning process had to be introduced" (authors' interview with DGVI source, December 1995). The focus of this learning process was the conception of environment held by policy elites and embodied in the core principles of the CAP. As we have seen, these principles arose from the agrarian traditions of the EU of six member states. The core of the CAP provided policymakers with an heuristic construct of humanenvironment relations, which we term here 'Green Europe'. This construct has been amended and supplemented by later accessions to the EU, each state refashioning the notion with its own culturally specific environmental norms. This situation has obliged DGVI to cleave to the model closely in order to create an EU agri-environment policy. In effect, the Directorate-General has had to operate within a circumscribed 'decision corridor', providing the medium through which the new initiative has been configured. Broadly Green Europe portrays the agriculture-environment relationship in a culturally hegemonic way. European agricultural landscapes are depicted as palimpsests of centuries of sedentary farming activity, with each locality having its own unique examples representing the hard-won communal efforts of earlier generations. This condition of agricultural landscapes as irreplaceable cultural assets endorses the imperative of the model for continued occupancy of farm land at all costs. The veneration of agriculture's civilising influence by Green Europe owes much to the heavily populated and urbanised character of northern Europe, from whence the construct emerged, creating an image of considerable symbolic power among policy elites in these states especially. But, crucially, Mediterranean agricultural policies also exhibit features compatible with the core principles underlying Green Europe, such as prevention of land abandonment, encouragement of family farms, and an accent placed on the territorial independence of the farmer—preoccupations enshrined for example in the agrarian reforms in Greece (Louloudis et al, 1989) and southern Italy (Gay and Wagret, 1986). Hence southern accessions to the EU in the early to mid 1980s brought amendment and elaboration of Green Europe, but did not require fundamental reformulation of its existing principles; southern and northern conceptions of rurality were essentially more compatible than conflictual. Any perceptible need on the part of administrators in Greece, Spain, and Portugal to recast the principles underpinning the model was probably dampened also by the essentially redistributive nature of the agri-environment initiative, which contributed to lessening the inherent 'northern' bias of the CAP. Green Europe has found concrete expression by shaping debate within the EU agricultural policy community which, as Majone notes, is the forum in which new ideas emerge and existing policy precedents are reinterpreted. In the case of the EU agri-environment policy, this was manifested in the increasing specification of the latent environmental responsibility of the EU farmer to be consistent with the two core principles—a continuous process which has given substance to the initiative.


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This specification process has gradually changed perception of the natural environment in EU agricultural policy circles, from being viewed as a constraint on farming activities, to recognising its compatibility with existing agricultural preoccupations, and latterly to perceiving agri-environment relations as a key element in the struggle of the industry to legitimise its historic policy entitlements. The Less Favoured Areas (LFA) Directive, E U Directive 75/268 (CEC, 1975a), played a vital part in this formalisation. E U 75/268 was introduced to compensate farmers working in areas deemed to be disadvantaged on the basis of certain criteria, compared with the Union average. In the original proposal for the directive, drafted in 1973, farmers' environmental duties in these areas were largely determined by the Green Europe conception: "... small areas affected by special handicaps in which farming must be continued in order to protect the countryside and to preserve the tourist potential of the area ... The total extent of such areas may not in any member state exceed 2.5% of the area of the state concerned" (CEC, 1973, page 10). In this form obligations on the farmer were minimal, reinforcing a widespread perception among policymakers in the 1970s and early 1980s that agricultural instruments targeted at the environment were "marginal measures for marginal areas" (author's interview with D G V I source, December 1995). However, shortly after approval of the Directive, and as part of the agriculture Directorate's response to the Community's Second Environmental Action Plan (CEC, 1975b, page 27), a statement from D G V I proposed the LFA measure be used to embrace environmental management in farming: "... where the countryside needs to be maintained from an ecological point of view.... This aim can be achieved .... by means of direct subsidies to encourage farmers to farm in a given area .... Under [this] heading comes the Directive on hill farming and farming in certain other less favoured areas .... At the same time, agriculture can also have certain unfavourable effects on the natural environment. In particular efforts should be made to mitigate the dangerous consequences of certain modern production techniques, for example cultivation methods which impoverish the soil..." (CEC, 1975b, page 27). This statement would not have been out of place in the agri-environment policy debates of the mid 1980s. But in its portrayal of some environmental problems arising from intensive agricultural practice, D G V I offered a more politically challenging formulation of the agriculture - environment interaction than hitherto, proving too controversial for agriculture ministries in member states—traditional bastions of Green Europe. Among these institutions and their domestic policy constituencies, the statement reinforced the perception that environmental concerns in agriculture were constraints on farming practice, perhaps explaining the elapse of a decade before the introduction of the Union's first bona fide agri-environment measure, Article 19 of EU Regulation 797/85 (CEC, 1985a). For this reason, although DGVI's proposal was advanced only tentatively, it might easily have become, in the language of policy discourse, another 'rejected alternative'. However, during the mid-1970s environmental problems arising from intensive agricultural practice were becoming more common, especially in northern member states (Conrad, 1991). This prompted change in domestic political environments, which Majone notes alters the policy-selection criteria used by administrative elites. This was the case first in the Netherlands where, in response to widespread agricultural 'improvements', provincial administrations chose to interpret the LFA 'specific handicaps' category to include areas of farmed seminatural habitat.

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By the mid-1980s pressure was also building on the United Kingdom's Ministry of Agriculture to incorporate environmental considerations more fully into agricultural policy, provoking wider discussion within the E U policy community and leading to refinement of the precedent set by the Dutch. This resulted in the introduction of a voluntary mechanism, Article 19 of EU Regulation 797/85, whereby states could implement "special national schemes in environmentally sensitive areas" (CEC, 1985a, page 10). Farmers' environmental responsibilities under the article were set out only in general terms. But an annex to the regulation recast the LEA precedent cited above to read: "... small areas affected by specific handicaps and in which farming must be continued, / / necessary subject to certain conditions, in order to ensure the conservation of the environment, to maintain the countryside and to preserve the tourist potential of the area ... The total extent of such areas may not in any member state exceed 4% of the area of the state concerned" (CEC, 1985a, page 14, emphasis added). This marked the beginning of a process whereby farmers were transformed from the passive environmental guardians of the Green Europe model to active environmental stewards, following management guidelines over much larger swathes of the European agricultural landscape than formerly (eligible area of land in member states rising from 2.5% to 4% of the utilised agricultural area of member states). In effect, agri-environment relations were now being presented by D G V I as largely supportive of the core principles of the CAP, rather than infringing them, as implied in the latter part of the Directorate's response to the Second Environmental Action Plan. The change in approach was an acknowledgement that, in order to develop a Unionwide initiative, the Commission had to work within the 'decision corridor' defined by the traditional expectations of agricultural constituencies in member states. Henceforth the notion of the environment espoused by D G V I was resolutely that of Green Europe. The progressive specification of the E U agri-environment policy received greater impetus with ratification of the Single European Act (1987), which required the Commission to take environmental considerations into account in all new policy measures. D G V I examined the policy options which could realistically be employed at the supranational level in the document "Environment and the C A P " (CEC, 1987a). A n important conclusion was that the E U Agriculture Council's powers under the Treaty of Rome could be employed to remunerate farmers for the production of 'environmental goods'. This permitted cofinancing by the E U of Article 19, that is the use of E U monies alongside national expenditures, which was launched in the same year. But the Council agreed that these funds could only be used for what were described as common measures, "the main purpose of which, has a direct link with improvement of [agricultural] structures, the rationalisation of farming practices or the ensuring of a fair standard of living for the agricultural population" (CEC, 1987a, page 6). Environmental objectives were not mentioned as a policy goal, being bracketed together with other socioeconomic and sociostructural problems prompting "rationalisation". As the description implies, these new common measures were to have multiple rather than singular objectives, a formulation which we contend represents a serious flaw in the policy-design sense. Without it, EU cofinancing of this policy would not have been possible; yet by approving this formulation the environmental basis of the policy was diluted, as single policy instruments with multiple objectives are inefficient mechanisms for achieving specific policy goals (Tinbergen, 1966).


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In Majone's conception, the introduction of common measures represents a new peripheral mechanism within the protective belt of the CAP, deployed crucially to reinterpret agriculture - environment problems so as to reinforce rather than to undermine the policy core. We would argue that the common-measure designation has acted as a rudder, controlling the speed and direction of the nascent agri-environment policy, codifying existing policy incrementalism while ensuring the new initiative is tied firmly to the policy norms of the CAP. Certainly some common measures were promoted as having environmental benefits on quite dubious scientific grounds. For example, in Environment and Agriculture (1988) DGVI discussed the recently introduced 'extensification' initiative and its function within the CAP. (6) This term described a suite of measures whose aim was to curb excessive use of inputs, such as fertilisers and pesticides, in order to reduce agricultural overproduction. But DGVI also asserted that "extensification schemes offer great possibilities for the protection of agricultural ecosystems" (CEC, 1988, page 11), an altogether more complex managerial task quite beyond the capabilities of schemes encouraging a simple reduction in inputs, and a statement which could not sustain close scientific scrutiny. One reason for this designation of agri-environment instruments as common measures was to facilitate legitimation of the new initiative to sceptical national delegations. Not only did this bring environmental concerns closer to the main preoccupations of agriculture ministries—preeminent among them overproduction—it also untapped EU cbfinancing, thereby raising the profile of the initiative among member states and enabling DGVI to claim: "The schemes [introduced under EU Regulation 797/85] were designed to help solve the income difficulties certain farmers might face and at the same time avoid the production of surpluses. This was the thinking behind action to ... encourage development of 'extensive' agriculture ... and to ... induce farmers to give greater attention to environmental problems" (CEC, 1987c, page 25). Common-measure status also allowed the initiative to be adapted to suit the agrarian ideologies of different member states. For example, a press release describing Article 19 to a French audience states that Article 19 "is necessary to bring about extensification of production" (CEC, 1986), omitting its environmental function altogether, chiefly because of its unpalatability to agricultural unions. These evolutionary controls—the Green Europe template, the political mores and cultural traditions crowding out ecological and scientific considerations, and the classification of agri-environment as a common measure—enabled the 'environmental problem' to be recast in a form supportive of established farm interests. Perhaps most importantly they guaranteed an incentive-led, rather than a regulatory, approach to the new policy initiative. This was confirmed in an interview with a high-ranking official in DGVI: "I think [a regulatory approach] was far away from what was considered in the mid1980s. Certainly there was no discussion about having a regulatory approach on something like Article 19. From the very beginning, the idea was to give incentives for environmentally friendly behaviour and production techniques. Personally I would have doubted if member states would have been prepared to accept it on a regulatory basis from the Commission. To do it through incentives was the only way to get this type of measure acceptable" (authors' interview with DGVI source, December 1995). (6)

The EU's first extensification programme was introduced a year earlier, under EC Regulation 1760/87 (CEC, 1987b).

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As Maj one's classifications of nondecisions and rejected alternatives imply, the lack of any significant regulatory element in the canon of agri-environment policy is mute testimony to the power of the policy core. Commission documentation is peppered with phrases pushing a voluntaristic line, for example urging member states "to do their best to ensure that the [environmental] objectives can be reached through the active and voluntary participation of farmers" (CEC, 1988, page 14). A significant example of a 'rejected (regulatory) alternative' was a Dutch proposal made in October 1991 to the EU Council's Agricultural Structures Group which, if accepted, would have radically altered the configuration of the agri-environment regulation. The Dutch argued for environmental objectives to be clearly specified in the main corpus of the CAP and urged that an EU code of good agricultural practice be adopted across European farmland, with punitive levies on farmers failing to observe its requirements (Council of the European Communities, 1991). But the discourse approach shows that novel ideas are never enlisted into the core of policies, especially, as in this case, where they infringe core principles. One profound consequence of shelving the regulatory approach was a reduction in the range of policy instruments sensitive to the gamut of agri-environment issues in member states. This problem partly explains conflation of the twin aims of encouraging the production of environmental goods and the control of negative externalities: both are now treated through incentive payments under EU 2078/92. But Majone's discourse approach seeks a deeper explanation rooted in terms of the changing nature of debate within the EU's agricultural policy community. In this context, one feature which emerged from implementation of the voluntary Article 19 measure was its concentration in northern, rather than southern, member states. In making this an EU-wide initiative, the problem that faced the DGVI is captured by Majone: "members of the coalition built around the [policy] core may not be seriously concerned with particular peripheral programmes" (1989, page 153). As we have seen, this is overcome by legitimising new initiatives to policy communities, first through asserting the continuity of their objectives with the principles underpinning existing policy; and second by ensuring that the stated objectives are consistently applied. So a paramount aim was to ensure all member states' agri-environmental interests were adequately represented in the EU initiative, and that the level of environmental responsibility imposed on farmers across the Union was broadly similar. This process of consolidating and refining the environmental responsibilities of the EU farmer characterised EU policy debate of the early 1990s and was made explicit in policy terms with the broadening of the remit of Article 19 in July 1990 to include "maintenance of traditional agricultural features and practices beneficial to the environment", an alteration reflecting predominately southern preoccupations (CEC, 1990). In contrast the interests of northern states, particularly France and the Netherlands, seem to have been better represented in the elaboration of the rationale for farmer compensation given in "The development and future of the CAP": "A system of aids will be provided to encourage farmers to use production methods with low risks of pollution and damage to the environment... participating farmers would undertake to respect constraints on their farming methods and would be paid compensation in return for associated losses" (CEC, 1991, page 33). The consolidation of farmers' environmental responsibilities across the Union established the conceptual groundwork for a more elaborate policy approach, encompassing all member states.


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EU Regulation 2078/92

This endogenous process of refining agri-environmental responsibilities was not sufficient in itself to transform the agri-environment initiative into the Union-wide policy represented by EU 2078/92. But the status of the initiative as a common measure ensured that it became embroiled in the larger plans for far-reaching reform of the CAP taking shape in the late 1980s, an inevitable consequence of the inclusion of agriculture as a single agenda item in the GATT. It was through this global institution that the EU's major trading partners, notably the USA, began to impose steadily mounting pressure on the EU for reform of the agriculture policy, demanding substantial effective reduction in price support for the first time in the history of the CAP (Swinbank, 1993). DGVI recognised that 'deep' reform of the sort required would not be agreed by member states without recourse to ameliorative common measures, the aim of which would be to incorporate both the reform objectives and to address the inevitable grievances of domestic producer groups. This was the role foreseen for an expanded agri-environment initiative. As a senior source in the Directorate commented: "Regulation 2078 was created to flank reform of the CAP—it emerged from a clear need to implement and at the same time facilitate the reform. This was negotiated at the same time as the GATT agreement, and our first idea was, well, we had to conceive some aids to accommodate the reform which were acceptable under the GATT framework, and at that moment the need for these agri-environment measures became quite clear" (authors' interview with DGVI source, November 1995). What the regulation represents is the culmination of the progressive refinement of agriculture-environment relations by EU policy elites, to become fully compatible with the core principles of the CAP. The position of the initiative as an established part of the architecture of the CAP is corroborated by its direct linkage to the financial heart of the policy, the Guarantee section of the agricultural budget. However, whereas the regulation's deviation from policy norms was only slight, the reciprocal concessions made by environmental interests in bringing about an EU agri-environmental initiative were substantial. For instance, during its evolution an informal agreement between farming and conservation interests had been reached which placed monetary values on the production by farmers of environmental goods. But according to van der Weijden (Club de Bruxelles, 1995, page 82), EU 2078/92 represents the codification of this belief as a "stewardship principle", a concept now so generalised as to be "a fifth principle to be added to the other four principles of EU environmental policy". This development has had a number of consequences for agriculture. For example, it appears to endorse the continued exemption of the sector from the EU polluter-pays principle which is applied to other industries. It also represents a major step in justifying agriculture's claim as the preeminent land use for securing environmental protection benefits across Europe's postproduction landscapes, hence providing farming interests with a viable platform for legitimising continuation of their policy privileges. Maj one's discourse approach provides useful insights into the evolution of this new initiative. In particular, common-measure status has enabled the agri-environmental policy to be cast quite legitimately as an aid for economically disadvantaged producers, the small-scale and family farmers championed by the policy core, and as a complement to production control. And by its induction into the periphery of the CAP, Regulation 2078/92 has partly diffused environmental critiques of the negative impacts of agricultural practice in the wider countryside by playing most effectively on the belief that, given limited financial resources, targeting of marginal farmed land of high biodiversity provides society with the greatest environmental dividend.

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But the theoretical approach deployed here, based upon the centrality of core principles to policy formulation, demonstrates that for greening arguments to be accepted at all they had to be articulated in farming's own argot. Furthermore, ratification of the agri-environment Regulation has secured the environment an important toehold within the CAR Majone suggests that, just as peripheral mechanisms can be discarded, their inclusion in the protective belt of a policy can also be a precursor to future elaboration—a process inevitably bringing these initiatives closer to the policy core. Conclusions Four main conclusions concerning the evolution of the EU agri-environment policy can be drawn from this discourse analysis. First, at a sectoral level, we identify that greening of the CAP is occurring in an incremental fashion. At varying times member states and DGVI have both taken the initiative in developing this new policy area, mobilising interest coalitions around agri-environmental issues within the EU Agriculture Council by building upon shared agrarian precepts and utilising relevant policy precedents. Second, and also at the sectoral level, the agri-environment initiative emerges as indissolubly linked to the central tenets of the CAP, which in turn have been shaped by the diverse cultural concepts of rurality inherent in northern and southern member states. We suggest that certain of these cultural mores in member states are transnational, and on this basis identify a 'perceptual filter' among EU policy elites, relating to agriculture and the role of farmers within the landscape. We term this policy construct Green Europe. Derived from the core principles of the CAP, Green Europe has shaped development of the EU agri-environment initiative, determining those issues perceived as critical by policy elites in member states, favouring certain mechanisms for implementation of this policy over others, and ensuring the preeminence of cultural values over more objective scientific criteria as the modus operandi of policy in the longer term. The ubiquity of Green Europe across the EU partly explains why the solutions to the agri-environmental problems in different countries are broadly similar. Third, we specify how these underlying cultural beliefs have impacted upon the initiative. In 1985, instead of the EU Agriculture Council designating a new suite of policy instruments targeted at specific sectoral problems (including the management of agriculture - environment interactions), a single common measure was instituted to address three disparate cultural objectives: the sociostructural, socioeconomic, and (indirectly) environmental problems confronting northern and southern member states. We contend that this common-measure mechanism is fundamental to understanding how the EU agri-environmental policy has developed since the mid-1980s. For example, it established a policy precedent for the multiple objectives of EU Regulation 2078/92, which in turn may have a significant influence on the successful outcome of programmes implemented in all member states under the regulation; Tinbergen (1966) intimates that single policy instruments with multiple objectives are prone to inefficiency and reduced effectiveness. Fourth, we would suggest that the Green Europe notion provides a basis for projections concerning the future development of this initiative. Although cultural attitudes to the environment across Europe are tremendously varied, as we have seen in agriculture there exists among member states a very strong communality of interests, founded on the maintenance of rural stability and the farmer's role as a key actor in the (re)structuring of rural space. Given the prevalence of these doctrines among national policy elites and producer groups, and their importance in implementing and monitoring these policy programmes in future, it seems likely that cultural rather


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than ecological goals will continue to be promoted as the foundation of a 'successful' EU agri-environment policy. And, according to Barnes (1996), the recent accession of the Nordic states is not likely to undermine these dominant cultural conceptions towards agri-environmental policies, even in the medium term. We also demonstrate that one of the main routes by which the cultural imperative of Green Europe finds expression is through the interaction of national and supranational institutions, in particular through debate within and between national and state ministries and the European Commission. Hence, in analysing the impact of cultural contexts on national agri-environment programmes, the crucial research focus should be on how environmental discourses have been mediated by policy and state institutions responsible for domestic agricultural and environmental policies. Further research is required in this area, ideally carried out in countries representative of the diverse cultural and administrative traditions of the EU. Complementing this work, our study has also confirmed the need for more detailed analysis at the supranational level. For example, how have national agri-environment goals been translated onto the E U decisionmaking agenda? And how have agrarian precepts shaped Commission decisionmaking? Work at this level should attempt to characterise more exactly the creative tensions in policy formulation between member states and D G V I . One of our reasons in seeking to identify issues for further research in this emergent policy area is our desire to provide a thorough examination of the national and supranational institutions, organisational decisions, and administrative experiences which have determined the configuration of the EU's agri-environment policy. But our prime motivation is our belief that only by examining these conceptual and bureaucratic structures can an assessment be made of the political sustainability of this initiative and hence of its likely impact on EU agricultural landscapes. References Agra Europe 1985, "A new perspective for the CAP? The Commission's policy options", Agra Briefing 8, Agra Europe, 25 Frant Road, Tunbridge Wells TN2 5JS Allington N, O'Shaughnessy N, 1987, "Growing insanity: the effects of the Common Agricultural Policy" Enlightenment PPM, Adam Smith Institute (Research) Ltd, 23 Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3BL Baldock D M, 1992, "The polluter pays principle and its relevance to the European Community's Common Agricultural Policy" Sociologia Ruralis 32(1) 49-65 Baldock D M, Lowe P D, 1996, "The development of European agri-environmental policy", in The European Experience of Policies for the Agricultural Environment Ed. M Whitby (CAB International, Wallingford, Oxon) pp 8-25 Barnes P M, 1996, "The Nordic Countries and European Union environmental policy", in The European Union and the Nordic Countries Ed. L Miles (Routledge, London) pp 203-221 Beus C, Dunlap R, 1990, "Conventional versus alternative agriculture: the paradigmatic roots of the debate" Rural Sociology 55 590-616 Bregha F, Benidickson J, Gamble D, Shillington T, Weick E, 1990 The Integration of Environmental Considerations into Government Policy Canadian Environmental Assessment Research Council, 200 Kent Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 1HS Buttel F, 1992, "Environmentalization and greening: origins, processes and implications", in The Greening of Rural Policy: International Perspectives Ed. S Harper (Belhaven Press, London) pp 12 - 26 CEC, 1968 Memorandum on the Reform of Agriculture in the European Economic Community COM (68) 1000 (Commission of the European Communities, Brussels) CEC, 1973 Proposalfor a Directive on Agriculture in Mountain Areas and in Certain Other Poorer Farming Areas COM(73) 202 final (Commission of the European Communities, Brussels) CEC, 1975a, "Directive number 75/268/EEC of 28 April 1975 on mountain and hill farming and farming in certain less favoured areas" Official JournalL1281-20 (Commission of the European Communities, Brussels)

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