ABSTRACT
The meso-level model points out that coalition building between farmers and state (or European Community) agricultural authorities is an important variable affecting the outcome of policy. To understand policy choices in the European Community's 1992 agricultural policy reform and in Sweden 1990 policy reform, one need to examine the content of the policy changes and to reveal the pattern of coalition building in the two cases. This chapter looks at the agricultural policy networks in order to establish whether differences in the policy positions of the state agricultural authorities can be explained by differences in network structures. By the mid-1980s, overproduction in the cereals sector had also become a major problem of the Common Agricultural Policy. In the mid-1980s, the costs of agricultural policy began to mobilise actors outside the agricultural policy network. These were especially concerned with the economic welfare losses caused by the high price policy.
