Coalitions and Policy Change: Environmentalists and Agricultural Policies in England and France

Based on the example of the agri-environmental measures of the Common agricultural policy, this article aims to address the varying capacities of English and French environmentalists in building coalitions to influence the formulation of national agricultural policies from the nineties. This comparison points three types of determinants to explain coalition formation: a coalition can emerge if an actor produces a new vision of the relations between one sector and the overall socio-economic conditions; the result of the ideological struggle lead by this actor to find allies depends on the cohesiveness of the traditional coalition; and, finally, the formation of a coalition depends on the resources of the actor who initiates it, by which the latter produces a world view and militates in its favour.