Integration von Umweltbelangen in die europäische Agrarpolitik. Institutioneller Wandel und Politik Lernen im Mehrebenensystem (Environmental integration in the Common Agricultural Policy, institutional frameworks and policy-learning in a multi-level system)

The term environmental integration signifies the move from additive and external environmental regulation to integrative consideration of environmental concerns in areas of causation and sectoral policies. Two strategic approaches can be discerned: central/vertical and decentral/horizontal integration. Taking the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Community (EC) as an example, this paper argues that a necessary condition of decentral environmental integration is that the logic of action in a policy field provides sufficient motivations to the relevant actors to think about integrating environmental concerns in the first place. Firstly the paper argues that the dual character of environmental problems in the agricultural sector constitutes a policy specific precondition that gives rise to two competing models of agro-environmental policies: the conflict model and the public good model. It then discerns three phases of environmental integration in the CAP since the mid 1970s that proceed from the conflict to the public good model and from central/vertical to decentral/horizontal environmental integration. Moves from one phase to the next can be explained by changes in the institutional framework. Of special importance are the normative establishment of environmental integration in the European treaties after 1987, the start of agriculture negotiations in the GATT talks in 1986, and the WTO agreement on agriculture in 1994. The final part of the paper argues that environmental integration constitutes a case of policy-learning. This is discussed with reference to Peter Hall's concept of policy paradigms and Paul Sabatier's advocacy coalition framework. Agricultural exceptionalism coins the ideational foundations of environmental integration in the sector which becomes part of a 'cumulative paradigm shift' (Coleman/Skogstad/Atkinson) of the whole CAP. Environmental integration as policy-learning takes place as a reaction to external critique of the anomalies of the CAP and as a debate between competing advocacy coalitions in the agricultural policy field