19 better governance and less corruption in public food provision (Besley and Burgess 2002), and rural educational spending (Reinikka and Svensson 2005).

Mass media can also play an important role in agricultural policy by altering the landscape of political competition. As explained above, the literature on the political economy of agricultural policy suggests that group size (e.g., the number of farmers versus the number of food consumers in the economy) helps determine lobbying effectiveness (Rausser, Swinnen, and Zusman 2011). Mass media alter these political-economy mechanisms between group size and political mobilization by providing more information to larger groups (Kuzyk and McCluskey 2006; Oberholzer-Gee and Waldfogel 2005). Strömberg (2001; 2004a) refers to this outcome as “mass-media competition-induced political bias.” He also shows that mass media bias their information toward groups which are more attractive to advertisers. Typically, this bias benefits urban interests over rural ones.<sup>26</sup> Following Strömberg’s (2004a) theory, Olper and Swinnen (2009) argue that mass media will increasingly weaken the political power of small groups (in rich countries, farmers; in poor countries, consumers) and reinforce that of large groups and groups attractive to advertisers (in rich countries, consumers and urban interests; in poor countries, farmers). Thus, a nonlinear effect of mass media on agricultural policies favors rural interests (and thus higher RRAs) in poor countries but urban interests (and thus lower RRAs) in rich countries. Using the World Bank data set, Olper and Swinnen analyze empirically whether there is evidence of such an effect of mass media on global agricultural and food policies. They find that mass media does indeed have a substantive impact on food policy.

# _3.2.5. Structural-Adjustment Programs and Policy Conditionality_

Another key issue is the impact of international financial institutions (such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) and the policy conditions they impose on developing countries as part of their lending. The structural-adjustment programs in Africa and Latin America in the 1980s and the programs in the transition countries in Europe and Asia in the 1990s were very controversial. These programs often required the borrowing governments to liberalize their policies and reduce distortions, with the justification that such changes would enable them to repay the loans on schedule. Some policy reforms were reversed after the loans were in place, but many appear to have stuck (Akiyama et al. 2001; Kherallah et al. 2002). Williamson and Haggard (1994) suggest that the most useful effect of these conditions came not in the form of hard conditionality (“leverage”) but rather from shifting the domestic intellectual climate and public discourse in these countries towards favoring freer markets.

In the transition countries of Europe and Central Asia, this shift has caused a significant reduction of subsidies to agriculture (Anderson and Swinnen 2010). In SubSaharan Africa, the structural-adjustment programs are partially responsible for a significant reduction of taxes on farmers (i.e., an increase in RRAs of approximately 20 percentage points, on average) (Swinnen, Vandeplas, and Maertens 2011).

# _3.2.6. Summary_

The reduction of anti-agricultural and food policies in developing countries during the past decade has been caused by economic growth, by the shift in the political-economic equilibria induced by such growth, and by changes in governance and media structures. Reduced

> 26 Gabszewicz, Laussel, and Sonnac (2008) and Petrova (2008) have found that the media’s incentives to appeal to a larger audience and to attract advertisers may induce editors to moderate their political messages. Biased information will affect agents’ behavior in economic and political markets. These studies have been found to be material to agricultural and food policy (Marks, Kalaitzandonakes, and Zakharova 2003; Swinnen and Francken 2006).