Ideas, interests or institutions? The drivers of recent reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)

This contribution analyses recent CAP reform, the so-called Health Check, and evaluates the explanatory power of the theories usually applied to CAP change or the lack thereof. The paper starts out by giving a brief account over the founding ideas and instruments of CAP before it addresses recent reforms, the Fischler reform of 2003 and the so-called Health Check of 2008, in detail. Doing so, it is shown that member states resistance against a stronger marketisation of CAP persists while the discoursive trend towards rural development is not financially supported by member states. Three sets of theories commonly used in political science CAP analysis †ideas, interests and institutions †are identified and explored with regard to their explanatory power for the latest reform. The contribution concludes by arguing that there is no single factor driving CAP reform but that a triangle of international trade negotiations, national and sectoral preferences as well as dominating paradigms in public (and elite) discourses must be taken into consideration when seeking to explain the direction and the occurrence of CAP change.