Unpacking post-exceptionalist agricultural policy: Common Agricultural Policy implementation and value chain governance in Germany
Agricultural policy in OECD countries has changed considerably since the mid-1980s. Long treated as an exceptional economic sector in need of extensive state support to ensure food security, agricultural policy now also aims to address more cross-cutting issues, including consumer protection, animal welfare and environmental sustainability. Novel objectives and policy instruments, a more open institutional framework and increasingly complex actor constellations have accompanied this shift. At the same time, agricultural policy has predominantly remained producer-oriented, perpetuating the exceptionalist core of farm income support. The term post-exceptionalism aims to capture the tensions arising from the juxtaposition of old and new ideas, institutions, actors, and objectives and policy instruments in agricultural policy. This dissertation aims to provide a better understanding of the tensions inherent in post-exceptionalist arrangements in agricultural policy, with the implementation of the European Union’s (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and governance activities in agri-food value chains in Germany as an example. Combining different approaches of public policy and governance analysis, the thesis examines how the tensions play out in (i) the design of instrument calibrations in the CAP policy mix (2014-2022), (ii) discourse coalitions and frames among national stakeholders in the run-up to the CAP post-2022, (iii) the relationship between the state and farmers underlying direct payment implementation for the CAP 2023-2027, (iv) and coordination activities in the governance of sustainability-based agri-food value chains in Germany. The results of this dissertation show that the very details of CAP implementation and governance activities in value chains are decisive for the (non)alignment of old and new elements of agricultural policy. Thus, they constitute not a mere technical, administrative or entrepreneurial but rather a political activity.