Sustainable agriculture in Guatemala and Cuba: A theory of agenda setting in development policy

With increasing environmental degradation around the world, some as a direct result of modern chemical-based agricultural technology, there have been global calls, such as those made at the Rio Summit, for a new direction. More often than not, rhetoric rather than action has been the international public policy response. Development is slowly being rethought, particularly by international governmental and non-governmental organizations. Two issues that have come to the fore recently in environmental policymaking are the interaction of the policy actors in the formulation of environmental policy as well as the process in which conservation policies are enacted. This dissertation addresses both of these issues.;This study demonstrates how an issue moves from the realm of ideas to the policy agenda within a comparative case study on development policymaking. The results of this study are consistent with Kingdon's findings that problems, politics and participants work together to create the conditions under which an issue can be formulated as a policy proposal. This thesis extends Kingdon's findings on two fronts: (a) methodologically within a most-different systems comparative case study approach; and (b) theoretically, that is, within the realm of comparative development policymaking.;Within the comparative public policy literature, attention has been paid to the high-level decision maker, but relatively little attention has focused on the relationship between outside experts and policy makers. This work examines the interaction between the "experts" and policymakers. The study draws from government documents, interviews conducted in Guatemala and Cuba with the relevant officials, and the literature on public policy to trace the placement of an environmentally sustainable agricultural policy on the development agenda.;This thesis argues that adoption of a sustainable agricultural policy can lead to a decentralized local-based decisionmaking process because the alternative agriculture model necessitates the inclusion of the "local" into the policy equation. Adoption of such a model also provides opportunity for a nation to address and alleviate some of the most pressing environmental and economic problems which have resulted from the utilization of a chemical-based agricultural model, that is, destruction of the natural resource base and farmworker poisoning, as well as debt associated with the purchase of such agricultural inputs.