Policy-Learning and Environmental Policy Integration in the Common Agricultural Policy, 1973-2003

This article uses the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1999; Weible and Sabatier 2007) and a refined version of the social learning approach of Peter Hall (1993) to assess and explain policy change in the Common (Agricultural) Policy (CAP) with a special view on Environmental Policy Integration (EPI). Three stages of EPI are discerned that move from central to vertical and later horizontal EPI, complementing an impact model of agriculture and the environment with a public goods model. Reform debates appear as prolonged and iterative battles over the institutionalization of new ideas which are finally incorporated into the existing policy framework. The policy network increasingly reflects cross-policy interdependencies and includes superior authorities, rendering the notion of a policy subsystem problematic. Contrary to the social learning model, the major (although not the most radical) change proponent dominates the policy community while superior authorities tend to intervene on behalf of the status quo. The argument is developed on the base of interviews with policy-makers in Brussels.