Farmers, due to their large share of the population, exercised a decisive influence in pre- and inter-war Europe. The way that farmers aligned often affected the trajectory of economic policy and regime outcomes . Moore contends that the revolutionary potential of the peasantry was the key determinant of interwar regime outcomes. Where the peasants were driven off the land by the commercialization of agriculture, as in Britain, liberal democracy prevailed. By contrast, where peasants remained on the land, they provided a mass foundation for either fascism or communism. Luebbert builds upon the work of Moore , contending that the choice of alliance of the family peasantry determined whether a country’s interwar regime became social democratic or fascist. A peasant-urban worker alliance produced democracy, while an alliance with the urban middle class produced fascism. In the post-war period as agricultural populations plummeted, many saw farmers as doomed to political irrelevance. According to scholars who fall into what might be called the “demography is destiny” school, such as Mendras and Daugbjerg ,gardening pots plastic now that farmers no longer have the numbers to be crucial and/or decisive alliance partners, they have lost political relevance. This political decline is perhaps most clearly illustrated by the rise and fall of agrarian parties.
Agrarian parties once flourished and were attractive partners for other parties seeking to form a coalition. As their core population declined, however, these parties faded into irrelevance or transformed into centrist or environmental parties . For example, Sweden’s once powerful Agrarian Party, founded in 1910, was a key source of support for governments headed by the Social Democratic Party in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s. As Sweden’s rural population shrank, however, the party’s political relevance declined dramatically. In 1958, the Agrarian Party was renamed the Centre Party, and its traditional rural and agricultural interests were replaced by a platform promoting environmental and green interests. Moreover, the Social Democrats found new coalition partners, and the Centre Party was cast into the opposition. In short, farmers used to have political influence because they were a large voting bloc. With their decline in population, however, farmers no longer had the numbers to attract coalition partners. As opportunities for alliances diminished, so too did the farmers’ ability to influence policy outcomes. The demographic perspective would expect CAP support to decline with farmer population. Yet such accounts ignore past examples of small group influence. Gershenkron for example, describes how landed elites in interwar Germany , despite accounting for only a sliver of the population, continued to steer the nation’s agricultural policy for nearly a century. The low price of grain from Eastern Europe and the United States threatened the livelihood the Junkers, who operated large, grain-growing estates. However, the Junkers combined manipulation of the peasants and an alliance with heavy industry to protect agricultural subsidies, preserve an authoritarian social order prior to World War I, and undermine the Weimar Republic in the interwar period .
The case of the Junkers demonstrates that, even when its members represent only a small percentage of the population, a group can be politically influential. While the “demography is destiny” literature correctly identifies population decline as a challenge for farmers and farmer syndicates, it does not fully consider the possibility that farmers, like other small groups in the past, may be able to overcome demographic decline and continue to exert outsized influence. It assumes that farmers and their organizations are static, and cannot evolve in order to maintain their political influence as their numbers wane. Yet CAP spending figures indicate that farmers continue to exercise political influence. Declining numbers may have changed the ways in which farmers exercise power, but they have not eliminated that power.A second set of arguments claims that the rapidly changing global economic climate is overtaking farmers and blunting their ability to shape policy , Daugbjerg , Frieden and Rogowski , Hennis , Keohane and Milner , and Potter and Tilzey. Scholars in this camp contend that in an increasingly globalized world, groups that are globally uncompetitive and oppose liberalization, such as farmers, will become marginalized in policy debates. Lower costs of international transportation, along with global liberalization reforms, has made trade cheaper and more prevalent. The effects of maintaining closed markets in a globalized world grow while sheltering agriculture behind a wall of tariff barriers, income supports, and inflated prices becomes increasingly costly.
Thus, as countries around the world open their markets and lower barriers to trade, those segments of business, industry, and labor that stand to gain from liberalization have increased incentives to mobilize for reform. Under these conditions, the protectionist demands of the much smaller farming population should be overwhelmed by the growing pro-liberalization preferences of consumers, industry, and business. In addition, while the farmer population continues to shrink, the expense placed on consumers and tax payers, like having 40% of the EU budget go to less than 5% of the population, appears increasingly egregious. Globalization arguments would predict a dramatic reduction in CAP budget and a sharp turn away from protectionist policies and towards market-liberal measures. Yet outcomes of major trade negotiations do not fully match this prediction. Although trade liberalization has occurred, CAP spending commitments remain high, and farmers have successfully defended their subsidies. Consider the Uruguay Round of the GATT. The UR, launched in 1986, was supposed to be concluded in 1990, but delays in the agricultural negotiations resulted in no conclusion being reached until 1994, doubling the expected length of the round. What is more, the central goal of the UR was to reduce subsidies to farmers. Yet, due to the efforts of farmers and their representatives, an agreement could only be reached and the round concluded once precisely the sort of payments targeted for elimination were redefined so as to be exempt from GATT/WTO regulations. Despite accounting for only a sliver of both the workforce and GDP, farmers stared down industry and services, delayed GATT negotiations for four years, and ultimately prevented reformers from cutting farmer subsidies. Farmers held the GATT agreement for ransom, ensuring the protection and continuation of their subsidies before allowing a deal to be reached. As the example demonstrates, farmers’ interests are not doomed to being swept aside or overwhelmed by the preferences of consumers, business, and industry. A consistent pattern has emerged whereby trade policy movement in a liberalizing direction has been accompanied by hefty side payments and/or policy concessions to farmers. Farmers have essentially been paid to accept liberalization. Traditionally, CAP programs paid farmers based on how much they produced, offered guaranteed purchase prices, and assured the purchase, storage,plastic pots with drainage holes and dumping of excess product. The programs were all labeled by the GATT/WTO as trade distorting. Instead of simply eliminating these trade distorting programs and forcing European farmers to compete on the open market, CAP programs were reconfigured so that farmer incomes could still be maintained, but in ways that did not violate WTO rules on trade distortion. Specifically, the CAP moved from supporting agricultural prices to subsidizing farmer incomes. The CAP became GATT compatible, but at no loss to farmers.
Ultimately, while scholars in the globalization school expect farmers to be eclipsed in the move toward the market, in reality, contemporary farmers have been able to adapt to this trend, making market liberalizing measures compatible with the preservation of farmer incomes. Farmers are not prisoners of globalization; they are agents who have shaped the character of globalization in ways that protect their interests and pA third set of arguments contends that farmer preferences are at odds with those held by the general public. Scholars including Berry , Inglehart , Kitschelt ; Montpetit , and Yearly describe the rise of a so-called post-materialist culture since the late 1970s. Post-materialism refers to a shift in political values and norms away from traditional political priorities such as economic growth and social order to new concerns, notably environmental protection, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ rights. Green parties have typically taken on the mantle of advancing these goals. Green parties have been successful politically and in many cases have come to replace communist parties as key alliance partners for Social Democrats and Socialists. Such “red-green” alliances have governed a number of European countries, including Germany , France , Finland , and Norway . In addition, Inglehart notes, “in recent decades, social class voting has declined and now shares the stage with newer post-materialist issues that emphasize lifestyle issues and environmental protection.” This change in how voters mobilize and vote should threaten farmer interests, with politicians targeting voters via issue area, like women’s rights and environmental protection, as opposed to making direct appeals to social classes, like farmers. The increased salience of environmental and animal welfare issues is particularly threatening to the CAP. European consumers have become more concerned about the quality of food production, with an increased interest in animal welfare and good environmental practices. Eurobarometer surveys reveal that European consumers want a CAP that produces food that is safe to eat and that is not harmful to the environment. While 90% of respondents in a 2001 Eurobarometer poll expressed a belief that the CAP should “ensure that agricultural products were healthy and safe”, only 36% thought that “food bought could be safely eaten” . As the survey indicates, there is a vast disparity between what the public thinks the CAP should be doing and what it believes the CAP actually does. The traditional CAP is widely regarded as bad for both the environment and animal welfare. By guaranteeing high prices and a market for all output, the CAP incentivized farmers to produce as much food as possible, no matter the cost to the environment. A major side effect of this policy was the heavy use of pesticides and nitrates to maximize yields. A quantity-oriented approach was also at odds with animal-welfare standards. Given that the central elements of the CAP run contrary to increasingly influential post-materialist values, scholars in this school would predict a decline in support for and commitments to the CAP. Arguments in the post-materialist camp predict that policies that promote harmful environmental practices will be gradually eliminated, notwithstanding the opposition of farmer organizations. A further implication of these arguments is that policies will be enacted that protect the environment and/or guarantee the provision of food that is both safe and of a high quality. For these authors, farmers will be forced to go along with a shift from quantity-based production to quality-based production at considerable economic cost.Over the past several rounds of CAP reform, policymakers have striven to “green” European agriculture. New policies that focus on improving environmental practices are not just a threat to farmers, however. Such initiatives have offered opportunities for farmers to obtain more support. In exchange for greater regulation of the way that they farm, farmers have been able to extract subsidies for following “good farming practices,” such as reducing their use of nitrates and pesticides. In other words, farmers have ridden the green wave to more subsidies and income-boosting programs and policies.While many scholars provide compelling accounts of farmer power from the 19th century to the immediate post-war period, explaining contemporary farmer power poses more of a challenge. The reason is that the principal source of influence that the literature identifies for farmers, demographic and economic dominance, no longer exists. My dissertation therefore builds on and updates these arguments in order to provide an understanding of contemporary farmer power. My argument has three parts. The first examines why agricultural policy reform is so difficult. Despite globalization, changing European values, and demographic and economic decline, farmers have remained politically influential. Contemporary farmer power stems from the ability to access politicians on both the left and the right, to manipulate public opinion, to control the policy space, and to leverage the broader importance of food production. Because farmers continue to be powerful actors, technocrats and policymakers must contend with their influence. Another obstacle to agricultural retrenchment is agricultural policy itself. Just as postwar welfare states have been shown by Paul Pierson to have generated their own political support base and locked in certain kinds of social spending, so the CAP has mobilized farmers in defense of agricultural spending.