An Inquiry into Lowi's Policy Typology: The Conservation Coalition and the 1985 and 1990 Farm Bills

In this paper the politics surrounding the adoption and implementation of the conservation titles of the 1985 and 1990 farm bills is investigated. Attention focuses on the Conservation Coalition, where agricultural and environmental interests converged to hammer out the compromises that would solidify the crucial support the Coalition as a whole could offer to a farm bill. The intent is to explore the degree to which Lowi's typology is useful to the analysis of complex relations between political arenas and to suggest avenues for extension of Lowi's typology to such situations. Two conclusions emerge. First, distributive and regulatory political forms, as described by Lowi in his fourfold typology, were much in evidence. Lowi's scheme has considerable ability to link policy proposals, political styles, and political outcomes, and hence to clarify political patterns and conflicts. But, second, an application of the typology to complex political processes requires that the power relations that underlie the typology be made explicit. The typology relies for its predictability on a routinized exercise of power not in evidence in this or many other cases. Explicit attention to power helps to resolve the ambiguities of application that critics have noted and clarifies a dynamic and complex struggle which weaves together the expression of Lowi's policy types.