IDEATIONAL POWER IN THE COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY REFORMS:A DISCOURSE NETWORK ANALYSIS OF INTEREST GROUPS' POLICY NARRATIVES

This thesis explores the challenges of achieving a sustainable transition in European agriculture, focusing on the resistance to reform within the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Despite increasing demands for sustainability, driven by external crises, political pressures, and changes in EU decision-making, the CAP has only partially integrated environmental concerns. While new actors and ideas have entered the debate, the core of the CAP remains dominated by long-standing power structures and traditional agricultural interests, making meaningful reform difficult. The study addresses the puzzle of the CAP reform trajectory, showing increasingly multifunctional objectives alongside an exceptionalist core. It investigates how entrenched power structures endure despite increasing criticism. Building on the CAP ideational literature, the thesis explores how policy actors deploy dominant discourses to maintain or change power structures. Using a Discursive Institutionalist lens, this study expands Carstensen and Schmidt's (2016) conceptualization of ideational power by integrating it with the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). It proposes a theoretical model to explain how different forms of ideational power (through, over, and in) interact to shape reform outcomes. Empirically, the research uses Discourse Network Analysis to analyze position papers and public statements from interest groups involved in the 2017-2021 CAP reform. Findings reveal that core actors, particularly established farmers’ organizations, exercise "power over ideas" to control policy venues and marginalize transformative proposals. In contrast, marginal actors attempt to gain influence by aligning their narratives with dominant discourses ("power through ideas"). However, the deep institutionalization of power in ideas within the CAP’s exceptionalist paradigm constrains narrative options, compelling all actors to frame proposals in terms acceptable to traditional agricultural community. The thesis concludes that a combination of ideational, structural, and coercive power sustains the CAP’s resistance to change, creating self-reinforcing dynamics that hinder transformation. Yet, it also identifies reform potential: by strategically using dominant discourses, actors may broaden stakeholder participation and open new venues for change. The study contributes to CAP and Discursive Institutionalism scholarship by clarifying how narrative strategies shape both policy stability and reform, shedding light on pathways to break entrenched policy paradigms.