The Political Economy of Regulation of Biotechnology in Agriculture - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 668

decisions. The European community, for example, is made up of many countries,
and the perceptions and political considerations in each of these countries regard-
ing agricultural uses of biotechnology are different. Kurzer and Cooper (2007)
demonstrate how the current European stand on strict restrictions on GM crops
was the result of political choices at the national level that contradicted and dom-
inated policies that were proposed by the European Commission. Just, Alston,
and Zilberman (2006) document how decisions about regulation and use of GM
crops are made by multiple agencies, including regulators and legislative bodies at
national and regional levels, as well as direct voting. Our framework suggests that,
in all cases, decisions reflect a weighted sum of the benefits of the proposed pol-
icy as perceived by the various constituent interest groups. However, preferences
change over time, and the weights of different interest groups vary across loca-
tion and institutions, as new information is constantly being introduced. Thus,
a good understanding of controversial policies requires precise identification of
the relevant interest groups, reliable estimates of their net benefits from the pol-
icy, and their credibility and weight with the actual voters. The United States has
50 different states, each of whose voting procedures are different, but we consis-
tently observe that the United States, Canada, and Latin America have, for more
than a decade, held a more positive disposition toward agricultural biotechnology
than Europe (Gaskell et al., 1999). Each voter in the European parliament or in
European member states' national parliaments place different weights on the net
benefits of interest groups in considering alternative biotechnology policies. It is
the alignment of those benefits filtered through the political weighting that deter-
mines the European policy regime.
The impacts of agricultural
biotechnology innovations on
different interest groups
In reviewing empirical studies of the political economy of environmental policies,
Oates and Portney (2003, p. 337) pose the challenge that, “In any particular applica-
tion . . . the identification and characterization of the relevant interest groups is an
essential and challenging part of the analysis.” In taking up the challenge of Oates
and Portney (2003) to identify the key interest groups affecting the policy debate
and policy outcomes in agricultural biotechnology, we turn first to the existing
quantitative economic studies assessing the distributional impacts of commer-
cially adopted agricultural biotechnologies. We then broaden the analysis to con-
sider the extent and mechanisms by which the full range of interest groups are
likely affected.