| This is a study of the European Union's 2003 Common Agricultural Policy reform. The reform included policy instruments that increased a farmer's access to market dynamics, which was heavily contested by many farm unions. The study analyzes the decision-making pathways concerning the Commission, the Council of Agriculture Ministers, European Parliament and civil society, from the reform's genesis in summer 2002 to its conclusion in summer 2003. Deliberative democracy is applied as a guiding principle to measure the extent to which farmers as primary stakeholders were effectively involved. Drawing on extensive semi-structured elite interviews conducted in Brussels between 2006 and 2007, and extensive documentation review, the research yields the following main conclusions: First, farmers were shut out of the genesis of the reform proposals, conceived secretly in the office of the farm commissioner. Second, though most farm ministers were against the main reform instrument---"decoupling" farmer aid from production and re-coupling it to land holdings---the Commission offered compromises enough until Council passed the reform. And third, robust deliberation occurred within the formal institutions, primarily in the Council and in the European Parliament, though the latter's opinion was non-binding. The larger measure of active deliberation between the Commission's decision-makers and farmers was defined primarily by proprietary consultation meetings convened by the Commission. The Commission exploited its advantage over farm unions in the gathering and ownership of information. When the reform intentions were announced, many farmer unions were caught off guard, leaving them largely reactive rather than proactive agents. |
