The Political Economy of Regulation of Biotechnology in Agriculture - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 678

In policy areas like agricultural biotechnology, where uncertainty causes anxiety levels
to be high and unfamiliarity causes information levels to be low, incentives exist for activist
organizations to provide information, or even misinformation, that accentuates this anxi-
ety and undermines trust in the information provided by others. Yet, complete resolution
of a policy issue tends to have an unfavorable effect on donations to activist organizations
as well as their political relevance. Thus, those organizations that tend to persist are those
that periodically achieve high-profile but partial “wins” in the policy arena, enough so that
the organizations can claim credit and legitimacy for making progress but not so much as
to assuage donors that their underlying problems have been fully resolved. Furthermore,
the success and survival of these organizations depends upon information revelations and
policy actions being reliably communicated to an often highly dispersed donor base.
Mark Lynas (2013) suggests that objection to GM crops became a major program
emphasis of several environmental groups, which made them attractive to certain
donors. Those groups may then persist with this nominal position regarding biotech-
nology and the environment even when new evidence does not support it. Thus, the
political-economic analysis must recognize this distinction and the potential for objec-
tive tensions between the interests of the environment, per se , and the interests of
environmentalists.
he media
There appears to be a natural symbiosis between activist organizations and the media.
Analyses indicate that economic interests of the media mirror those of successful activ-
ist organizations' strategies, as revenues to media are enhanced by repeating familiar
stories, perpetuating stereotypes, playing on public anxieties, and emphasizing bad
news over good news (Curtis et al., 2008; Gaskell et al., 1999; McClusky and Swinnen
2011). The media can be considered as having an influence over policy decisions, but
there is not necessarily a direct impact on its welfare resulting from the outcome. The
media does play an essential role in the public debate, and gains from reporting the news
generated in the course of the public controversy regardless of how it gets settled in the
end. If anything, like environmental groups, the media tend to benefit from the perpetu-
ation of controversy rather than resolution.
Applying a dynamic version of
the framework to explain the
political economy of agricultural
biotechnology regulations in Europe
We adapt the voting model developed in the second section to explain the factors lead-
ing to the practical ban of GM in Europe. This model suggests that “voters” (citizens,