Economic development and biotechnology: Public policy response to the farm crisis in Iowa

Brian Reichel, Paul Lasley, William Woodman and Mack Shelley

Agriculture and Human Values, 1988, vol. 5, issue 3, 15-25

Abstract: In periods of social crisis, policymakers become particularly vulnerable to interest groups mobilizing to compete for scarce funds. At this point, legislators are no longer able to address the specific needs of their primary constituency directly, but rather are forced to do so in pretext only. New, unfamiliar technologies provide ample ammunition for astute interest groups to take advantage of times of economic turmoil and maneuver for policy support through dramatic campaigns of “salesmanship.” By publicizing a crisis situation, dramatizing it effectively, and advertising an innovation as the solution to the crisis, legislators may be effectively persuaded to give priority to interest group pressures above and beyond those of the local constituency. Iowa's attempts to address the farm crisis through economic development strategies relying on biotechnology is examined in this paper. The results of extensive surveys of Iowa's legislators and farmers are examined and the consequences for Iowa's policy process of using biotechnology under the auspices of economic development are discussed. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1988

Date: 1988
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF02217656 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:5:y:1988:i:3:p:15-25

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10460

DOI: 10.1007/BF02217656

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture and Human Values is currently edited by Harvey S. James Jr.

More articles in Agriculture and Human Values from Springer, The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().