Diversity in Regional Organic Food Policy. Comparative Case-Studies Between Bretagne, Auvergne-Rhône Alpes (France), Hessen and Nieder-Sachsen (Germany)

This paper sets a comparison between the regional organic farming policies in two French Régions (Bretagne and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes) and two German Länder (Hessen and Nieder Sachsen). The thesis is to show that despite a convergence movement in the role of the regional institutional unit in the support of organic farming in both countries, there are many divergences between the regional policy, particularly with regards to policy governance and choice of policy instruments (Le Galès and Lascoumes, 2010). France and Germany are two different political systems. Whereas Germany is a federal state in which Länder are territorial autonomous units with their own constitution, France is a centralized state where Regions have elected body with no legislative power. In spite of this original divergence, these two levels of governance, Länder and Region, seem to converge in the organic farming policy. This institutional convergence is mainly due to the Europeanization of agricultural policy which have had an ambivalent and complex effect on the territorial regimes of the two countries. An opposite effect of the Europeanization, centralization in Germany (Jeffery, 2005) and regionalization in France (Pasquier, 2012) lead in the field of organic farming policy to a convergence of the role of Region and Länder in a multi-level-governance from local to UE stage (Benz and Eberlein, 2011). In the organic-farming field, another convergence can be perceived affecting the political dimension. The increasingly importance of the organic farming sector and the institutionalization of organic farming support policy in western countries give the impression of a depoliticization of the issue. However, despite this institutional and political convergence, divergences between the organic farming policy of each regional unit come into sight. These divergences include the kind of governance which is settled (pluralist, bilateral, unilateral) and the kind of policy instruments which are used (direct farm subsidies, operational subsidies for intermediate actors). This study at the regional level shows that those divergences are linked with the tension in the organic-farming sector between two professional conceptions and ways of farming : alternative vs conventional (Guthman, 2004). The main factors of the policy divergences are to be found both in the political trend of the regional executive power and the territorial shape of agricultural sector organizations on a regional and infra-regional stage. Our paper is based on a comparative case-studies (Gerring, 2007) from a political science PhD research. The empirical material consists mainly of semi-structured interviews with representatives of organic and conventional farming, elected regional officials and civil servants in the agricultural policy field at the regional and local levels (between February 2014 and October 2017).