Phillips, Peter Whitman Bell
(1990)
The making of the European Community's wheat policy 1973-88: An international political economy analysis.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
This thesis examines the political and economic changes in the domestic and international organization and operation of the European Community Common Agricultural Policy for wheat during 1973-88. Its purpose is to demonstrate the opportunities and constraints in the agricultural talks in the Uruguay Round of the GATT begun in 1986. An international political economy approach is adopted to bring into prominence the key security, production, finance, and technology power structures and to demonstrate how these transformed the interlocking and overlapping set of bargains that determined policy. The thesis shows that throughout the 1970s the EC wheat price policy concentrated on supporting farm incomes, and this neither required nor permitted an external policy beyond measures to dispose of surpluses. In the 1980s, however, prices were increasingly directed by market conditions. This reorientation was caused by shifts in the structures surrounding the wheat system. These weakened the pan-European farm lobby, and a patchwork of new agreements evolved between policy makers, commodity groups, and non-farm lobbies to support an active rather than defensive export policy. Consequently, the EC set specific commercial goals for the Uruguay Round of the GATT which makes it a formidable and active participant in the negotiations. In contrast, during the Tokyo Round in the 1970s the Community had adopted a strongly defensive and obstructionist posture to protect its domestic system. Examination of the agricultural trade negotiations between 1984 and 1988 confirms that the other participants have not recognized these transformations. The thesis concludes that the Uruguay Round could fail, and the GATT could be seriously impaired, unless negotiators acknowledge the transformed bases of the new EC wheat po1icy.
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