CHARACTERIZING AGRICULTURAL POLICY‐MAKING
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1994.tb00806.x |
| Published date | 01 December 1994 |
| Date | 01 December 1994 |
CHARACTERIZING AGRICULTURAL
POLICY-MAKING
GRANT
JORDAN, WILLIAM
A.
MALONEY
AND
ANDREW
M.
McLAUGHLIN
This
article examines the contemporary agricultural policy-making environment in Brit-
ain and suggests that the growing complexity
of
interest articulation and policy making
has eroded
NFU
dominance as a peak association. We would suggest that it is this
clientelistic attitude to agriculture rather than a specific relationship with one interest
group (however influential) that shapes the agricultural agenda.
This
article rejects a
version
of
events which
sees
policy
outputs
as being the result
of
exclusive
MAFF/NFU
interactions as exaggerating policy-making closure, and the exclusion of environmental
and other externality interests. It portrays the policy sector as fragmented and competitive,
with a wide cast list
of
pressure participants all vying for policy infli*ence.
It
identifiesflexible
policy communities operating at the sub-sectoral level, and within such arrangements the
NFU
often has
to
defer
to
the specialist
or
niche expertise
of
single commodity groups
or
agricultural processing companies.
INTRODUCTION: THE BACKGROUND TO CONTEMPORARY
AGRICULTURAL
POLICY
MAKING
For many years the agricultural sector has been seen as the best example of a
closed
quasi-corporatist
arrangement in British policy-making. The relationship
between the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
(h4AFF)
and the Na-
tional Farmers' Union
(NFU)
has often been regarded as symbiotic and the
ministry disparagingly presented as the 'Whitehall branch of the
NFU'
or
as the
"F
View'. As early as
1962
Self and Storing (p.
37)
argued that the
NFU's
leaders
were widely seen as speaking for agriculture and that internally the
organiza-
tion managed to 'maintain a remarkably successful cohesion among the varied
interests of Britain's farming community.
However, the
1980s
witnessed fundamental changes within the sector which
had implications for both the content of agricultural policies and existing policy
William A. Maloney
is
a Lecturer
in
the Department of Government at the University of Strathclyde,
Grant Jordan is Professor
in
the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of
Aberdeen. Andrew
M.
McLaughlin is a Research Fellow in European Integration at Clasgow Caledo-
nian University. This research was funded by the ESRC, award
no.
ROOO
23
3025.
The authors would
like to thank Wyn Grant and
two
anonymous referees for their comments.
Public Administration
Vol.
72 Winter 1994 (505526)
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Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994,
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506
JORDAN, MALONEY AND McLAUGHLIN
making arrangements. Any consensus that existed on agricultural policy has
been steadily eroded.
A
letter received from
MAFF
in
1992
suggested the policy-
making ‘universe’ had become much more complicated:
Not only are there more bodies wishing
to
be consulted, but there is much greater
awareness of the interaction of policy changes
in
the various sectors.
To
give an
obvious example, changes
in
agricultural policy are no longer of interest simply
to the
NFU;
conservation and countryside organizations are very aware of the
implications of such changes for the countryside and the environment, consumer
bodies of the implications for consumers, charities of the possible implications
for developing countries, etc..
By
the late
1980s
the
NFU
leadership was complaining that,
’This
is a Govem-
ment which
does
not listen very much’ (Sir Simon Gourlay quoted in
The
Times,
5
December
1989),
and
in
1987,
the
NFU
passed a vote of no confidence
in
the
Agriculture Minister, Michael Jopling
(The
Economist,
14
March
1987).
The (then)
Minister for the Countryside, Environment and Planning at the Department of
the Environment, William Waldegrave, argued that the ’farming first’ presump-
tion in countryside planning had been abandoned, and that ’We have taken a
step away from the idea that the countryside is just a factory for
food
produc-
tion, and the world will never be quite the same again‘
(The Independent,
18
February
1987).
In
1993
a senior civil servant confirmed
this
view
informing
us
that ’quality of
food
and quality of the environment were more important than
quantity for ministers’. He said
this
was shown by the fact that the Agriculture
Act
1986,
introduced Environmentally Sensitive Areas
(ESAs)
and stated that
policy should take account of the interests of the countryside as well as produc-
tion. Such developments have led Cox
et.
al(1986,
p.
192)
to speak of a ’belea-
guered agricultural policy community’ and argue that the pressures for change
are combining with a ‘number of factors
...
to transform
the
agenda of policy-
making in agricultural and conservation politics’.
Wathem and Baldock
(1987,
p.
17)
also suggest that the
1980s
may have
witnessed a watershed in agricultural policy, as there were changes in milk
quotas and grant aid that farmers openly resented. Within
MAFF
there was a
recognition of new priorities about the environment and
food
costs. Wathem
and Baldock
(1987,
p.
137)
note how the agricultural supply industry, the
food
processing and supermarket industry also have an important stake in agricul-
tural policy: ’In recent years the large supermarket chains, such as Sainsbury’s
and
Tesco’s,
have acquired great power within the industry and increasingly
have been able to force
both
manufacturers and farmers to respond to their
requirements’ (p.
138).
Our work confirms these recent changes, and while there is still an expecta-
tion that the ministry will ’fight the agricultural comer’, civil servants are now
much more cautious in going in a producer-lead direction. Interviewees in
MAFF
suggested that the department
has
lost any stomach it ever had to defend
agriculture
in
an
unreserved manner. These broad pressures lead us to query
B
Basil
Blackwell
Ltd.
1994
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