Policy Networks, Non-state Actors and Internationalized Policy-making: a Case Study of Agricultural Trade

Abstract

The concept of a policy network was developed initially in comparative politics and comparative public policy to take better account of changes in the way policy-making was taking place: state actors were sharing public authority with selected non-state actors. Empirical studies were yielding findings that contradicted the conventional notion of a clear separation between state and society, with the state being seen as the highest centre for social and political control. As Mayntz (1993) observes, social modernization was bringing more importance to formal organizations in all areas of society, thus fostering an increasing fragmentation of power. With the state no longer claiming to be the sole entity capable of organizing society, there has been a dispersion of expertise and competence, a multiplication of channels for mediation and agreement, and the involvement of different levels of actors from the local to the supranational (Jouve 1995). Consequently, public policy was characterized more often by strategic interaction among several or many policy actors, some being part of the state and others being non-state organizations. Each of these would bring a particular understanding of the problem and its own individual or institutional self-interest to the policy process (Scharpf 1997).

The author would like to thank Daphné Josselin and William Wallace, as well as Wyn Grant, Eric Montpetit, Adam Sheingate and Stefan Tangermann, for their comments on the earlier draft of the paper.