ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a number of alternative approaches to understanding agricultural policy reform. It attempts a heuristic approach for integrating insights from several of these models. But the policy making model is only the first step in the process of developing a framework. The chapter discusses the particular problem of multilevel political processes, first in the context of trade negotiations and then with respect to the European Union, which itself illustrates a particular type of two-level game. Policy reform is a complex process involving political and economic forces acting in a specific institutional environment. The analysis of farm policy reform necessarily implies the adoption of a model of the process of decision-making at the national level. The organizational process model fills some of the gaps in rational actor and public choice analysis. The government politics model is often used in the narrow sense of bargaining within the bureaucracy, where the positions of bureaucrats reflect parochial organizational interests.
