Similarly, the factors that contribute to the outsized influence of farmer power can help explain why some areas of policy are harder to reform than others. Finally, the story of the decline of farmers speaks to the politics of managing major social transformations and provides lessons for how such a transition can be executed with minimal social upheaval. A first set of implications of my research is relevant for European Union scholars and policymakers. My dissertation identifies conditions that favor EU reform. As discussed in the CAP cases, reforms can be categorized as undertaken at a time of “disruptive politics” or under “politics as usual”. Disruptive politics, like concurrent trade negotiations or looming enlargement, provide policymakers the opening to propose farther reaching and more fundamental reforms to the operation of policies than would be considered under politics as usual.These lessons about exploiting conditions that facilitate reform have implications for the European Union beyond just the CAP. Indeed, they can cast light on reforms in other policy arenas, such as the EU’s other common policies, namely Common Fisheries Policy and Cohesion Policy. The EU adopted a major fisheries reform in 1976. Prior to then, the Common Fisheries Policy had been dealing with several persistent issues, the most fundamental of which was overfishing. There was no clear plan in place to manage fishing stocks, and as the Union continued to expand, more and more pressure was placed on Community waters. Previous efforts to address the overfishing problem had failed, driven in part by reluctance to place constraints on an industry that was already suffering. Left unaddressed,growing tomatoes hydroponically the problems of overfishing compounded over time. Reformers had hoped to design a system that ensured Europe’s fishing stocks for the long term while not making it impossible for fishermen to earn a living.

As was the case with the CAP, reform only occurred once the proposals were linked to disruptive politics. A signal disruptive politics event, looming Iberian accession to the EU, finally opened space for reform of the CFP in the 1980s. As both Spain and Portugal had major fishing industries, the existing member states wanted fishing management policies in place before the accession negotiations had proceeded too far. Indeed, EU officials thought it best for the reforms to be adopted before accession negotiations got into full swing. Reforming the fisheries policies in the middle of Iberian accession negotiations ran the risk of derailing those discussions. If reformers were forced to wait until after accession, member states feared these reforms would never be adopted as Spain and Portugal would make every effort to block them. The pressure of Iberian accession created the disruptive politics necessary to facilitate reform of the CFP. To finally address the systemic problem of overfishing a “total allowed catch” system for the main fish stocks in community waters was adopted. Under this system member states were given a quota, which would ensure stability for the domestic fishing industry while also protecting Community waters from overfishing . In short, like with the CAP, once a disruptive politics opening occurred, CFP reform was possible. When no such disruptive event occurred, as was the case in past efforts to reform the CFP, major reform did not happen. A second set of implications of my research speaks to scholars of the welfare state, suggesting why some areas of social policy are much harder to retrench than others. Within the domain of welfare state policy, scholars of retrenchment may want to give added attention to the role played by expert knowledge and control over policy implementation. The context of agricultural policy reform is influenced in significant ways by the fact that farmers and the vast range of institutions that support them have a monopoly of expert knowledge. Farmers’ monopoly of knowledge means the government is often forced to rely on the very group whose program it seeks to cut for both expert advice and implementation.

Many policy domains of the social welfare state, especially medical and health policy, entail a similar dependence. The beneficiaries of the policies and their representative organizations typically have a knowledge advantage that allows them to shape the course of negotiations and even the implementation of the policy. Control of implementation is often delegated to the targeted group for highly technical policy reforms in order to make use of its expertise. For example, it is typically left to medical professionals and health care providers to roll out and implement systems that govern patient care and treatment options. These systems are technical, depend on the expert opinion of highly-trained actors, and involve confidential information. For all these reasons, healthcare professionals can challenge policy maker’s positions and resist government efforts. There are at least three potential strategies retrenchment-minded reformers can use to manage the challenges posed by social groups that possess a monopoly on expert knowledge. The first and most direct strategy is to break that monopoly of expertise by utilizing their own experts. One way to begin to achieve this goal would be to stop relying on the social group itself to provide information and analysis. For example, in debates over how to revise environmental standards or adjust crop prices, policymakers rely on agricultural experts. More often than not, those experts are employed by farmer organizations, rendering their advice and opinion biased. To counter this problem, governments can employ in-house experts to close the information gap. Alternatively, governments can, and indeed already do in some domains, employ business consulting companies. A second strategy for countering the expertise imbalance is to reduce the target group’s control over implementation of policies. While leaving the task of implementation to another actor reduces government costs, both economic and manpower, it also increases the risk that the policy will not be implemented or enforced as intended. It affords the targeted group another opportunity to circumvent the intentions of reformers.

Groups can report that required changes are impossible to make, exaggerate detrimental consequences, or even directly ignore policy reforms, especially if such changes would not be easily visible to an outside observer. Doctors, for example, have obligations to both their patient and to health insurance providers and hold information advantages in both relationships. Doctors can use this advantage in multiple ways. They can over-prescribe medications, or order unnecessary and expensive tests for their patients. They can also focus on more profitable medical procedures even when cheaper procedures would suffice. A possible response is to impose a system that includes independent review of medical bills to check for fraudulent or inappropriate charges. If a group’s monopoly on expertise cannot be overcome, then blocking that group from implementing, or at least rigorously monitoring the implementation of reforms, can strengthen the hand of reformers. A third strategy for combating a monopoly of expertise is to reframe the policy or issue under discussion by broadening it and/or raising the stakes. An added advantage of this strategy is that it often results in a more diverse group of participants, including policymakers from other government ministries and groups representing other interests. When the stakes are raised and the set of participants is widened, the expertise of any one group is less consequential. Health care policy provides a hard test for my argument because policy change is unusual, and significant reform is rare . Physicians in many countries,hydroponic growing supplies including Germany, have historically been successful at exerting a significant amount of influence over health policy thanks to their unified organization, capacity for mobilization, and plethora of resources . Despite these obstacles, Germany achieved a major reform of its health policy in the early 1990s. The costs of German reunification had been underestimated and a major looming financial burden was the integration of the East German socialized system into the West German employer-based system. Moreover, a global recession combined with Germany’s generous social benefits was driving major flagship employers, including BMW and Mercedes, offshore. Despite aggressive lobbying from the medical community, new reforms including lowering prescription drug prices, imposing new systems for monitoring physicians’ treatment and prescribing practices, and implementing a major reform of the hospital financing system were adopted . These reforms were ones that the medical community had successfully prevented in the past.

The outcome was different in this case because reformers were able to reframe the debate. Instead of yet another attempt at reforming the health care system, these reforms were framed as facilitating the project of German reunification, helping German industry combat global recession, and keeping flagship German companies in Germany. The participants in policy making also changed; they now included representatives from the finance and economics ministries, industry officials, and officials tasked with managing the reunification project. These representatives were able to emphasize the need for oversight and financial discipline in health care policy and refused to sign without it. This health care overhaul succeeded because policymakers were able to tie the reform to disruptive politics, in this case, German reunification and crises in the manufacturing industry, thus raising the stakes and broadening the set of actors involved. A final set of implications of my research builds on the foundations of Gerschenkron , Moore , and Polanyi , and speaks to scholars of social class decline and policymakers seeking to successfully manage that decline. Both Polanyi and Gerschenkron provide cautionary tales of the mismanagement of class decline, demonstrating that the consequences are not merely social unrest, unemployment, or increased social expenditures, but potentially the collapse of democratic regimes and the rise of authoritarian alternatives. For both Gerschenkron and Polanyi, poor management of a declining class results in democratic collapse and fascism. The routes to fascism, however, are different. In Gerschenkron’s account, democracy is destroyed when declining classes capture the state and use it to preserve their status. For Polanyi, democracy is destroyed when the state moves too quickly, crushing traditional classes under the wave of rapid modernization without offering some form of compensation or protection. My dissertation points to an alternative trajectory, one that does not entail the collapse of democracy. It provides an example of effective, though expensive, management of a declining class. Compensation for farmers has been exceptionally costly. However, democracy has endured and social suffering and disruption have been minimal. While the farming sector has shrunk dramatically, the rural exodus was managed. Cities were not overwhelmed by flocks of farmers looking to start new lives, and countries were not overturned by the political and social unrest that might accompany the simultaneous abandonment of rural communities and exodus to the city. The tale of post-war European farmers suggests, then, that one way for the state to successfully manage the decline of a major and once powerful social class is to soften the blow with the extension of subsidies and financial compensation. Such a program is likely to be very costly, but also offers more certainty that decline of this class will be minimally disruptive- both politically and socially. Essentially, the state can pay a price to avoid a seismic disruption of the existing social order. An important caveat to be considered, especially by policymakers, is that once extended, this compensation may prove difficult, if not impossible to wind down. As my cases have demonstrated, despite repeated efforts to cut the CAP, policymakers have been unable to slash farmer support. Therefore, if policymakers choose to extend financial support to declining classes, they need to be careful about the early choices they make concerning how much support will be offered and how it will be structured. Based on my research into the CAP, there are three crucial decisions to make if the goal is to manage class decline while minimizing costs. The first critical juncture is the decision between supporting production and supporting incomes. Supporting production keeps people in the labor force but requires difficult to estimate spending commitments and risks crisis, while supporting incomes keeps costs more predictable and requires less risk in exchange for deactivating a potentially large sub-set of the population. For those governments wishing to minimize costs, the most effective strategy will be to structure the program to privilege income support over production as early as possible.