THE PUBLIC CHOICE THEORY AS A TOOL FOR CMO WINE ANALYSIS

The objective of this work is to reconstruct the role of agricultural lobbyist and the national alliances, in determining the outcome of the process of the latest wine common market (CMO) regulations entered into force on 1st August 2009 (Reg. 479/2008), and how these have changed the Commission’s initial proposals. Four example of public decisions have been discussed: grubbing up vineyards and liberalization of replanting rights; the abolition of market measures (the case of distillation measures); quality policies (designations of origin) and new rules of wine labels. The approach to the models of Public Choice, included for the first time in a specific context such as the wine sector, has served to focus attention on the processes and the interactions between the politicians and the agricultural associations. The most important innovation in this work is the inclusion of different organizational forms of political interests and wine business representation. It covers not only traditional collective action but also individual action and third party representation. This is fundamentally different from the usual focus on collective action in isolation from other organizational form (Coen, 1997). Public Choice theory has identified as pressure groups or lobby stakeholders, of different size, who participating in the political process. This is often referred to in the honorific terms as doing “public service,” which is contrary to widespread impression, because they are motivated by self-interest the same as the people in the market place (Buchanan, 2003; Downs, 1957; Rausser, et al., 2009). Politicians find themselves in front of a trade off in choosing a policy in the general interest of the community that would lose the support of the lobby or encourage the latter and unleash the electorate: they choose the policy that best maximizes their objective function and generated the condition of win set between pressure groups and public decisions (Olson, 1965; Putman, 1988). This positive sum game view of governmental intervention also presumes a political economy which improves the allocation of resources.