Most of the written material on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is about the details of the day. This work offers an understanding of why the policies are as they are, how they attempt to tackle the problems faced in the European Union and the degree of success they achieve, and the prospects for change.
"Berkeley Hill's Understanding the Common Agricultural Policy fills a gap in the agricultural policy literature with his comprehensive approach to the policy process and his deep understanding of its past and present. The book combines the up-to-date factual developments of the CAP with the critical views of the author. It is an essential reading for scholars, the policy community and the general public interested to understand why and how Europe transfer public money to farmers."- Sophia Davidova, Professor of European Agricultural Policy, School of Economics, University of Kent
"Books on the CAP typically set out to explain what the CAP is. This book instead addresses what is meant by 'policy' and 'policy process', in order to demonstrate why there is a policy and why it is the way it is. It provides a novel analysis of the CAP as an example of a complex public policy and is thus an important complement to works that provide only a description of the CAP and its instruments."- Professor Rob Ackrill, Nottingham Trent University, UK
"The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is a complicated set of measures used to pursue a range of policy objectives. Its complexity has increased over time as EU policymakers have sought to respond to an expanding array of issues facing food, agriculture and rural areas. It is extremely difficult to provide a comprehensive, integrated and understandable analysis of the whys and wherefores of the CAP. Berkeley Hill's volume succeeds admirably in this task. It is essential reading for those who want to understand a policy that remains central to the identity of the European Union." - David Blandford, Professor of Agricultural and Environmental Economics, The Pennsylvania State University
"This comprehensive and understandable analysis by Emeritus Professor of Policy Analysis at Imperial College London goes behind the Pillar I & II modulation and agri-environment schemes of current reform, to explain the problems that the CAP is intended to address. It looks at the conflicts, trade offs and unintended consequences involved, before putting the present policy in its historical perspective." - SD, Food Ethics, the magazine of the Food Ethics Council
