Wyn Grant

The development, regulation and use of biopesticides for integrated pest management.

Over the past 50 years, crop protection has relied heavily on synthetic chemical pesticides, but their availability is now declining as a result of new legislation and the evolution of resistance in pest populations. Therefore, alternative pest management tactics are needed. Biopesticides are pest management agents based on living micro-organisms or natural products. They have proven potential for pest management and they are being used across the world. However, they are regulated by systems designed originally for chemical pesticides that have created market entry barriers by imposing burdensome costs on the biopesticide industry. There are also significant technical barriers to making biopesticides more effective. In the European Union, a greater emphasis on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) as part of agricultural policy may lead to innovations in the way that biopesticides are regulated. There are also new opportunities for developing biopesticides in IPM by combining ecological science with post-genomics technologies. The new biopesticide products that will result from this research will bring with them new regulatory and economic challenges that must be addressed through joint working between social and natural scientists, policy makers and industry.

Business and politics in Britain

Introduction - The Power of Capital - Government and Business - Banks and the Financial Sector - Large Firms and the Political Process - The CBI and Other Business Associations - Business and Party Politics - Business Associations and Public Policy - Representation of Business Interests at the EC Level - Conclusion

Infectious diseases of animals and plants : an interdisciplinary approach

Animal and plant diseases pose a serious and continuing threat to food security, food safety, national economies, biodiversity and the rural environment. New challenges, including climate change, regulatory developments, changes in the geographical concentration and size of livestock holdings, and increasing trade make this an appropriate time to assess the state of knowledge about the impact that diseases have and the ways in which they are managed and controlled. In this paper, the case is explored for an interdisciplinary approach to studying the management of infectious animal and plant diseases. Reframing the key issues through incorporating both social and natural science research can provide a holistic understanding of disease and increase the policy relevance and impact of research. Finally, in setting out the papers in this Theme Issue, a picture of current and future animal and plant disease threats is presented.

The Consequences of the Global Financial Crisis: The Rhetoric of Reform and Regulation

The Global Financial Crisis is the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression, and although many have explored its causes, relatively few have focused on its consequences. Unlike earlier crises, no new paradigm seems yet to have come forward to challenge existing ways of thinking and neo-liberalism has emerged relatively unscathed. This crisis, characterized by a remarkable policy stability, has lacked a coherent and innovative intellectual response. This book, however, systematically explores the consequences of the crisis, focusing primarily on its impact on policy and politics. It asks how governments responded to the challenges that the crisis has posed, and the policy and political impact of the combination of both the Global Financial Crisis itself and these responses. It brings together leading academics to consider the divergent ways in which particular countries have responded to the crisis, including the US, the UK, China, Europe, and Scandinavia. The book also assesses attempts to develop global economic governance and to reform financial regulation, and looks critically at the role of credit rating agencies.

Intractable Policy Failure: The Case of Bovine TB and Badgers:

The failure to eliminate bovine TB from the English and Welsh cattle herd represents a long-term intractable policy failure. Cattle-to-cattle transmission of the disease has been underemphasised in the debate compared with transmission from badgers despite a contested evidence base. Archival evidence shows that mythical constructions of the badger have shaped the policy debate. Relevant evidence was incomplete and contested; alternative framings of the policy problem were polarised and difficult to reconcile; and this rendered normal techniques of stakeholder management through co-option and mediation of little assistance.

Policy convergence and policy feedback: Agricultural finance policies in a globalizing era

In a comparative study of five countries: Australia, Canada, the Republic of Ireland, the UK, and the USA, this article examines the degree of convergence of agricultural credit policy content, policy instruments, and policy outcomes on a market liberal model. It shows that all five countries have moved toward market liberal policy arrangements over the past quarter century of globalizing and domestic fiscal pressures, but important differences in policy remain. The Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom move further toward a market liberal model than do Australia, Canada, and the USA. The distinct national paths taken to market liberalism give rise to policy feedback that hastens or retards the adoption of a fully market liberal system. Historical choices of policy instruments and path dependence help account for continuing policy divergence.

Biopesticides: pest management and regulation.

Biological controls that utilize natural predation, parasitism or other natural mechanisms, is an environmentally friendly alternative to chemical pesticides. Chemical pesticide methods are becoming less readily available due to increasing resistance problems and the prohibition of some substances. This book addresses the challenges of insufficient information and imperfectly understood regulatory processes in using biopesticides. It takes an interdisciplinary approach providing internationally comparative analyses on the registration of biopesticides and debates future biopesticide practices.

Endemic cattle diseases: comparative epidemiology and governance

Cattle are infected by a community of endemic pathogens with different epidemiological properties that invoke different managerial and governmental responses. We present characteristics of pathogens that influence their ability to persist in the UK, and describe a qualitative framework of factors that influence the political response to a livestock disease. We develop simple transmission models for three pathogens (bovine viral diarrhoea virus, bovine herpesvirus and Mycobacterium avium spp. paratuberculosis) using observed cattle movements, and compare the outcomes to an extensive dataset. The results demonstrate that the epidemiology of the three pathogens is determined by different aspects of within- and between-farm processes, which has economic, legal and political implications for control. We consider how these pathogens, and Mycobacterium bovis (the agent of bovine tuberculosis), may be classified by the process by which they persist and by their political profile. We further consider the dynamic interaction of these classifications with pathogen prevalence and with the action taken by the government.

Policy Instruments in the Common Agricultural Policy

Policy changes in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) can be explained in terms of the exhaustion and long-term contradictions of policy instruments. Changes in policy instruments have reoriented the policy without any change in formal Treaty goals. The social and economic efficacy of instruments in terms of evidence-based policy analysis was a key factor in whether they were delegitimised. The original policy instruments were generally dysfunctional, but reframing the policy in terms of a multifunctionality paradigm permitted the development of more efficacious instruments. A dynamic interaction takes place between the instruments and policy informed by the predominant discourses.

When Policy Communities Intersect: the Case of Agriculture and Banking*

An extensive literature on policy communities has debated the heuristic value of the model, and how one might distinguish a policy community from a policy network. It is generally agreed that policy communities are relatively exclusive and closed to outsiders, have a cohesiveness reflected in frequent, high-quality interaction between participants, are long lasting entities, and are characterized by resource exchanges between members.’ What has attracted much less attention is what happens when policy communities intersect. Vertical segmentation of the policy-making process is a key element of the policy community model, but there are many issues which involve more than one policy community. Some of these issues are, of course, resolved within the budgetary decision-making process where definitive resource allocations have to be made, and more routine issues may be processed by a variety of interdepartmental committees and working parties. The research reported here is drawn from the British and Irish contribution to a seven country project based in Canada,2 on the politics of agricultural credit policies. The project is concerned with the impact of pressures for change such as the liberalization of financial services on distinctive sectoral arrangements for the provision of agricultural credit. The research note draws on semistructured interviews with the heads or acting heads of the agricultural departments of the principal banks in England and Ireland, as well as with senior managers in the specialized agricultural credit institutions in each c o ~ n t r y . ~ Interviews were also conducted with government departments, farming organizations and agricultural accountants. This note is not intended to offer a full comparative analysis of the somewhat different experiences of England and the Irish Republic, nor does it survey the full range of literature relevant to the subject.