Crop Insurance and Agricultural Policy Paradigms: How Market-Oriented is US Agricultural Policy?

US agricultural policies are usually considered to have witnessed a shift from a state-assisted agricultural policy paradigm – focusing on productivism and sufficient farm income by means of state support – to a more competitive agriculture paradigm, emphasizing agriculture as an economic sector like all others (e.g. non-exceptional) that would be served best by allowing market forces and curtailing government intervention. These changes coincide with what has recently been dubbed a development in views on agriculture from exceptionalism to post-exceptionalism, signaling important changes in ideas, interests, institutions, and policies. The shift in US agricultural policies towards more crop insurance at the expense of particularly direct income payments to farmers is usually considered to reflect the dominance of a competitive-market paradigm in line with a shift towards a more post-exceptional if not non-exceptional agriculture. In this respect it is now presented as a ‘safety net’ for farmers in times of need only. This paper argues, however, that the way crop insurance has evolved over time in the US – both in terms of policy motivation and legitimation as well as the policy instruments themselves (e.g. more insurance options, increased premium subsidies) – raises questions as to whether it does not rather function as an instrument of farm income support through other means, affecting production choices and enabling market distorting effects. The policy appears to have become less market-oriented over time. This paper contributes to the current research on agricultural reform by assessing the US crop insurance program to identify whether policy changes in line with a shift towards post-exceptionalism exist and to what extent these policy changes reflect post-exceptionalism based on its conceptualization by Daugbjerg and Feindt (2017). By looking into the four dimensions of exceptionalism, namely idea, institution, interest and policy, this paper argues that rather than transitioning to the competitive paradigm, the US crop insurance policy is more of a manifestation of an incomplete transition from exceptionalism to post-exceptionalism. The analysis is based on qualitative data analysis, focusing on 1) the policy discourse, and 2) the policy outcomes in terms of instruments and settings. We focus on the period from 1980 until the 2018 Farm Bill, including both governmental (Administration, United States Department of Agriculture, Risk Management Agency, Congress) and non-governmental actors in the analysis (farm associations, insurers, environmental groups), identifying and analyzing the dominant discourse with respect to the definition and the role of crop insurance as part of the agricultural policy toolkit, and the dynamics between the different actors. This analysis not only allows us to better understand the policy and its changes over time, but will also offer important reflections on what this means for existing conceptualizations of policy paradigms as well as the debate on (post)exceptionalism.