MERC Presents: Ahmet Arabaci

 Farm Lobbies and the Government: A Comparative Assessment of the EU and the US This talk offers a comparative approach to government-interest group relations in different polities. The farm lobby groups have been taken as the unit of analysis both in the European Union (EU) and the United States (US). The talk will shed light on the meanings of the actual government-interest group relationships based on existing literature. First, theoretical tools and the pieces of literature on government and interest group relations will be outlined. The old and new conceptual and theoretical approaches will be reviewed briefly. Second, recent historical developments in the EU and the US will be explained in terms of the development (reforms) of agricultural policies, respectively. The roles of the government-interest group relations will be put special emphasis on in shaping (reforming) the farm policies in both of the polities. The aim of this section is to explain which of the theoretical and conceptual tools best describe their relations in both of the political units. The following questions will be asked: Have there been corporatist relations in US farm policy-making? Or, why has the EU’s agricultural policy-making been dominantly characterized as corporatist, while the case was different in the US? Third, the factors that changed the existing patterns of interest intermediation will be investigated. To that end, forces of globalization, the effects of international trade agreements and, the changes of the constellations in policy networks will be given special emphasis. Pizza lunch will be served.