Un approccio di governance multilivello per le politiche agricole [A multi-level governance approach for agricultural policies]

The world of agriculture which is defined as primary sector is almost unknown to most of the citizens and consumers and to all the scientists who are involved in social sciences. However agriculture provides interesting research questions to analyse in many multidisciplinary fields. Our study is focussed on the public and “semi-public” institutions at local, national and international level. The analysis of the agricultural policies involves the study of complex actors and actions in the context of the relationships between Italy and the European Union, and between the State and the Italian Regions (viz. The federalism reform). Within this institutional framework, agricultural policy plays a crucial role: the CAP (Community Agricultural Policy) for long time represented the main pillar of the European Union policy and matter of conflict between the State and some Regions since 1970. The study of public policies determinants for agriculture requires an appropriate approach. Therefore our choice is to adopt the Multi-Level Governance (MLG) tool. Previous scientific literature (Scharpf, 2002; Hooghe, 2001; Hooghe and Marks, 2001) identified MLG as the most promising research approach to highlight the main features of the agricultural sector. The history of the agricultural policies can be analysed by three levels of analysis: the national, the European and the local ones. Moreover we can consider a global level represented by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Our study adopts the multi-level policy approach for the agricultural sector to underline the main novelties provided by the Political Sciences disciplines and to be a contribution for innovative interdisciplinary research directions.