CAP reforms and multilateral trade negotiations: Another view on discourse efficiency

This article focuses on intellectual capabilities as a means of promoting and influencing policy change through producing more efficient discourses. This approach is applied to the study of political strategies developed by the European Commission in order to promote its reformist views of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Two distinct periods are taken into consideration: the 1992 CAP reform, in relation with the GATT Uruguay Round (1986-94); and the 2003 Mid-Term Review and its links with the WTO Doha round. The paper analyses the learning processes that took place between these two periods in the European Commission. It finds that the Commission's political strategies and discourses have considerably improved thanks to better intellectual resources, economic analysis and forward-looking capabilities. This explains a more active and efficient political entrepreneurship behaviour by this action in the agricultural policy field during the recent period, at both international and European levels.