Procedural politics, the conduct of everyday politics with respect to rules, occurs under predictable conditions, by predictable means, and with predictable effects. It occurs when incentives, conceived as possible gains in influence, and opportunities, conceived as the creation of new institutional alternatives because of jurisdictional ambiguity, align. It characteristically involves procedural coalition formation and strategic issue framing, and it influences rules choices, policymaking efficiency and outcomes, and constitutional change. The previous chapter examined these issues in the context of European Union environmental politics and policymaking, showing that procedural politics outperforms alternative explanations of environmental positions taken, issue frames advanced, coalitions formed, and outcomes generated. When rules are at least partly endogenous to the day-to-day political process, accounts of politics with respect to them must augment and in some cases substitute for accounts of politics within them if we seek to understand legislative behavior, policymaking outcomes and efficiency, and institutional change.

The present chapter extends the empirical examination to a second sector: agricultural policymaking. This sector, when coupled with environmental policy, offers many interesting methodological opportunities. Agriculture is often viewed as the antithesis of the environmental sector in terms of history, issues, operative institutions, and legislative dynamics. Where environmental policy is a “new” area of EU competence, part of the treaties only since the mid-1980s, agriculture enjoys the longest pedigree of any EU policy with the possible exception of the customs union. Environment also represents a “new” (i.e., postmaterial) issue, while agriculture is a classic “old” (i.e., redistributive) one.