European Union's Common Agricultural Policy Reforms

Marko Lovec is a Research fellow and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He specializes in international political economy and European integration, with European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy being his main topic of research.

• Introduction: change and controversy of the European Union’s Common agricultural policy.- PART I: Theoretical framework.- Chapter 1: Existing approaches towards explaining and understanding CAP reforms.- 1.1  Explaining agricultural policy.- 1.2  Explaining Common agricultural policy.- 1.3  Explaining CAP reforms.- 1.4  Understanding CAP reforms.- Chapter 2: Critical realist approach towards explaining CAP reforms.- 2.1 Theories of science.- 2.2 Critical realist explanation of CAP reforms.- 2.3 Research designon: beyond ‘new wine in old bottles’.

“The stated purpose of this book was to test three alternative approaches to explaining and understanding these reforms. … the book is an interesting read and provides the reader with a useful overview of the development of the CAP. At the same time it is thought provoking because it challenges the reader to consider their own approach to science and their understanding of how knowledge is generated.” (Alan Renwick, EuropeNow, europenowjournal.org, November, 2017)