Ideas, Institutions, and Trade

Carsten Daugbjerg is Professor of Trade and Food Policy in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, where he has been since 1998. His research has focussed on agricultural policy (in particular reform of the Common Agricultural Policy: CAP), environmental policy, agricultural trade negotiations in the WTO, government-interest group relations and to a lesser extent EU food safety policy. He has had three books published and has published articles in international journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, Governance, Journal of Public Policy, Environmental Politics, Australian Journal of Political Science and Scandinavian Political Studies.Alan Swinbank recently retired as Professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of Reading, UK, where he had been since 1977. In the mid-1970s he spent four years as a junior administrator in the Directorate-General for Agriculture in the Commission of the European Communities. His research and teaching focussed on the food and farm policies of the EU, and on the WTO (World Trade Organization) process of agri-food trade liberalization. He has lectured and written extensively on these topics. In recent years he has published in the European Review of Agricultural Economics, the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, Food Policy, the Journal of Common Market Studies, the Journal of World Trade, The World Economy, and others.

• 1. An Introduction to Agricultural Exceptionalism in EU Farm Policy and the GATT ; 2. Ideas, Institutions and Policy: a Theoretical Framework ; 3. WTO Rules for Agricultural Trade: GATT 1947 and the URAA ; 4. Explaining the erosion of agricultural exceptionalism in the Uruguay Round ; 5. Dispute Settlement and its Implication for Agricultural Exceptionalism ; 6. EU Agricultural Institutions and the CAP: Coping with GATT/WTO ; 7. Setting the Limits: CAP Reform and WTO Farm Trade Rules ; 8. Beyond Doha: Conclusions and Prospects

With the fate of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) round still unclear and the EU probably heading, once more, towards a reform of its policies for agriculture and rural development, the book by Daugdjerg and Swinbank provides timely and valuable food for thought.