Farmers on Welfare

In 2007 the farm subsidies of the European Union's common agricultural policy took over 40 percent of the entire EU budget. How did a sector of diminishing social and economic importance manage to maintain such political prominence? The conventional answer focuses on the negotiations among the member states of the European Community from 1958 onward. That story holds that the political priority given to the CAP, as well as its long-term stability, resides in a basic devil's bargain between French agriculture and German industry.

In Farmers on Welfare, a landmark new account of the making of the single largest European policy ever, Ann-Christina L. Knudsen suggests that this accepted narrative is rather too neat. In particular, she argues, it neglects how a broad agreement was made in the 1960s that related to national welfare state policies aiming to improve incomes for farmers. Drawing on extensive archival research from a variety of political actors across the Community, she illustrates how and why this supranational farm regime was created in the 1960s, and also provides us with a detailed narrative history of how national and European administrations gradually learned about this kind of cooperation. By tracing how the farm welfare objective was gradually implemented in other common policies, Knudsen offers an alternative account of European integration history.

ISBN	0801447275	Pages	360
ISBN13	9780801447273 (What's this?)	Volumes	1
Publisher	Cornell University Press	Weight (grammes)	680
Imprint	Cornell University Press	Published in	Ithaca
Format	Hardback	Height (mm)	235
Publication date	05 Feb 2009	Width (mm)	155
Library of Congress	2008043681	Spine width (mm)	33
DEWEY	338.184	Academic level	General
DEWEY edition	DC22

Introduction	Time, welfarism, and European integration	1
1	The agricultural welfare state	23
2	The Europeanization of agricultural politics	57
3	Outlining the options for the CAP, January 1958 to June 1960	122
4	Decisions and indecisions for the CAP, June 1960 to January 1962	170
5	The politics of the common price level, January 1962 to December 1964	207
6	European farmers on welfare	266
Conclusion	The CAP and Europe's history	304
	A note on methodology	319
	Works cited	321
	Index	339

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The Making of Europe's Common Agricultural Policy

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