Agriculture

The Common agricultural policy has long been based on a normative consensus called “agricultural exceptionalism”: agriculture has been considered as a social and economic activity that should not be treated like any other policy sector. However, agricultural exceptionalism has been put under during the last three decades. The emergence of neoliberalism and new trans-sectoral issues, such as consumers’or environmental protection, have overwhelmed the idea that agriculture should be given a special treatment by public actors. This article aims to enlighten a largely debated question: has a new policy paradigm been built over these new issues? Or have they been resisted by actors and institutions that try to preserve, with fluctuating success, the exceptionalist ideational framework? By using data about the legislative process, we conclude in favor of the second hypothesis. We thus show how the european agricultural policy can be qualified as “post-exceptionnalist”.