The New Zealand Dairy Board & international dairy trade policymaking: an analysis of the process of international dairy trade policy formulation in New Zealand.

Abstract

The object of this study is to analyse the sources of influence on the international dairy trade policymaking process. The study reviews a number of societal and system-based theories from the field of International Political Economy and argues for an 'eclectic approach' to analysing the trade policymaking process, one able to fully explain the wide range of influences that originate from within both the global and domestic political economies. The level of analysis adopted is primarily the national level, with emphasis on the role of state institutions in mediating and transmitting influences in to the policymaking process. Concentrating exclusively on the level of society or the international system does not allow a clear picture to be formed of the many influences that impact on a country's trade policy choices.. The organisational structure of the state is determined by a number of factors, including the effect of historical experiences, the development of state-society relations, and forces generated by the global political economy. The institutional framework that characterises the organisational structure of the state mediates domestic and global influences that shape international trade policy. The institutional framework of the state is given cohesion and stability by policy networks, which bring state and societal actors together in a ruling coalition. Key societal actors are drawn into this coalition through a process of institutionalisation. Policy networks serve as lines of communication, and influence, for all the groups involved in international dairy trade policymaking, and are further reinforced by the adoption of a dominant ideology, which serves to maintain these groups' access into the policymaking process. Power within the policymaking system is derived from a number of sources in the domestic and global political economies, and is used to ensure that the key state institution representative of powerful societal interests, the New Zealand Dairy Board, is able to exert considerable influence over the international dairy trade policymaking process. The conclusions reached support the argument that an analysis of trade policymaking must include influences from both the societal and systemic levels, and that the most successful method of achieving this lies in adopting an institutional approach, that recognises the position institutions occupy within the state, as the prime mediators of forces that originate from within the domestic and global political economies.