Neo‐liberalism, policy networks, and policy change: Agricultural policy reform in Australia and Canada

Abstract

Abstract Developments favouring the liberalisation and globalisation of economic exchange and increasingly rigid constraints on domestic fiscal policy have provided support for neo‐ liberal policy ideas. Neolibcralism challenges the logic of embedded liberalism that underscored trade multilateralism in the post‐second world war period, and the exclusion of sectors like agriculture from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Focusing on agricultural policy, the article examines the pace and extent to which neo‐liberal ideas have been able to gain hold and displace non‐liberal domestic policies in Australia and Canada. The article shows that neo‐liberal ideas have been more easily translated into domestic policy change in Australia than in Canada. A significant part of the explanation for this cross‐national difference is found in the differing domestic political‐institutional arrangements, including federalism, bureaucratic arrangements, the presence or absence of a neo‐liberal epistemic community, and trie structure of interest intermediation systems. These factors, in turn, have their impact on policy change through their effects on the structures of agricultural policy networks and policy communities. Notes Research for this article was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The authors would like to thank Ann Capling, Richard Higgott, John Williams, and the three anonymous readers for the AusJPS for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The Australian research was greatly facilitated by the support of the Federalism Research Centre at the Australian National University, and by the opportunity to present early analyses of the Australian case study at seminars in the political science departments of the universities of Western Australia, Sydney and Melbourne.