Keeping with this section’s focus on a broad view of animal protection politics, this chapter presents an overview of the policy domain in which animal welfare issues are discussed and addressed. The policy domain is a ‘meso-level’ unit of analysis: it exists above the micro-level of individual actors (which I will consider in Part 3), but below the macro-level of national and societal institutions, which we have examined in the preceding two chapters. An analysis of such meso-levels can help us to understand the complex patterns of interactions between individuals and organisations.

By focusing on the interactions between political actors involved in making and implementing policy, we can begin to map the policy-making space. This map can then be used to examine the enduring pattern of recurrent relationships between actors involved in policy debates and policy development. To do so, in this chapter I will draw on the concept of resource exchange, and on the dependence model of policy networks. We will see that in the field of animal welfare, the policy network is structured around a small network of animal protection and welfare organisations. It can be described as a loosely coupled system of governance, in which power is distributed widely and originates from sources other than traditional state authority. This has implications for how policy is made, as well as for power relations within the policy domain.

​The domain orientation

A policy domain is defined as ‘a component of the political system that is organized around substantive issues’ (Burstein 1991, 328). That is, the main focus of analysis is not on institutions or structures (such as federalism or the parliamentary system), but on how a shared interest in a particular policy area binds actors together, irrespective of where they sit in the structural map. Policy networks are notoriously hard to define, but for the purposes of this book I will use Knoke’s notion of a network of ‘public and private actors linked by communication ties for exchanging information, expertise, trust and other political resources’ (italics added) (Knoke 2011, 211). The point about exchange is a critical one, and we will expand its application in the next chapters. In complex policy areas, policy-making is no longer the preserve of unitary actors with complete authority. Through design, luck or activism, policy development and implementation are now disaggregated across a range of participants, each with their own scope of influence, expertise and capacity to act. Policy-making via networks, therefore, conceives of the policy process as a negotiated series of exchanges.

Focusing on the policy domain and the networks within it involves looking at regular and comprehensible patterns of substantive policy-making. This follows a post-war political science tradition of disaggregating polities into more manageable, functional, intermediate-level units for analysis and comparison (Jordan and Maloney 1997). Browne (1999) points out that this approach has the advantage of emphasising relationships and the interconnected nature of policy formation in complex polities, without sacrificing depth. This approach also recognises the importance of thinking about a broader range of non-state actors. Such actors are increasingly engaged in policy development and/or administration. While there is a tendency to assume that this is a recent phenomenon (the participation of non-state actors in the policy domain is often associated with the 1980s and the era of New Public Management; Wallis and Gregory 2009, 257), the history of animal welfare policy in fact shows that the involvement of non-state actors in the policy landscape was pioneered in this field much earlier, with societies for the protection of animals and animal welfare leagues playing a significant role ever since Richard Martin’s private prosecution of offenders under the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act of 1822.

​The animal welfare and protection domain

Animal welfare and protection debates, even in a small polity like Australia, are expansive and attract large numbers of participants. While an exact estimate is difficult – if not impossible – to determine, the plurality of stakeholders is clear. As we will see in Part 3, as many as several hundred organised interests may in theory be active in the policy space at any given time, thanks in part to the dramatic proliferation of animal welfare and abolitionist organisations in Australia since 1980 (between 200 and 300 organisations) and to a similarly high number of relevant industry organisations. Animals valued for their status as human companions are ‘represented’ by a raft of generalist and breed-specific organisations and appreciation societies (this ‘representation’ may be direct, as in organisations directly concerned with the animals’ welfare, or indirect, in organisations that represent the interests of the animals’ owners). Similarly, animals employed industrially and for recreational pursuits are represented by both specialist and generalist organisations, as are the human actors involved in every stage of these activities.

In the high number of participants, the animal protection domain is similar to agriculture more generally. Different farming systems and environments are represented by both specialist and generalist organisations (Moore and Rockloff 2006). In addition, the historical emphasis on agriculture’s role in Australia’s economic development means that state governments have retained considerable control over policy development in this area, despite the prevailing tendency towards centralisation post-federation: in many cases, this multiplies the number of active organisations nine-fold, with separate organisations for each of the six states and two major self-governing territories, as well as national and peak bodies. Given this array of actors, understanding the policy network is essential if one is to make sense of the processes and relationships in the policy domain.

In this world of network and exchange, it is generally considered that highly dense relationships in a policy network indicate efficient policy subsystems and the efficient exchange of resources, whether by consensus or necessity. Networks with dense ties can also be attributed to high levels of trust, and/or to the work of policy entrepreneurs – actors who resolve collective-action problems by identifying opportunities and mobilising resources (Mintrom and Vergari 1996) in order to build relationships (Henry et al. 2011, 422). Where a network contains subclusters, particular actors may act as gatekeepers, chokepoints or bridges between the various sub-nets.

In Image 16 – a simplified map of the policy domain – we can see that the graph is quite attenuated in places, with clusters focused on specific industry segments, animal types or political groupings. A graph of the complete network,1 including all actors captured in the data collection (n = 396), shows that this extends to the whole network, which has a high ‘modularity’(0.661): it is comprised largely of subgroups with high levels of inward links, but limited linkages between clusters (what we will later discuss as ‘siloisation’). The overall diameter of the network is 14 (wide), with an average path length between any two actors in the network of 4.58 (the ‘degrees of separation’). This indicates that the flow of information across the network is likely to be comparatively slow. That the network does not reflect the ‘small world’ phenomenon is evident in its extremely low density of ties (0.008) and low average network clustering co-efficient (0.236; low transitivity).

​Factors structuring the domain

The forces behind this structure are threefold. First, some clustering within the policy network is associated with the federal nature of animal welfare policy. This is axiomatic: compared with their national counterparts, state and territory ministers for agriculture and related areas have more frequent and significant relationships with bureaucrats, local animal welfare service providers, non-government enforcement bodies, members of parliament, and internal party interest groups. Farm and animal industry bodies tend towards clear delineation of engagement along federal lines, having evolved to reflect Australia’s federal distribution of powers and responsibilities. That these structures continue today reflects the significance of departments of agriculture in the production of animal protection policy at the state level, but also the influence of history and path dependency, which stabilise institutions over time (Pierson 2000).

Similarly, even though some animal protection organisations have adopted a federal structure, they still demonstrate a tendency to clearly delineate spheres of operation between local branches (interview: executive officer of an animal welfare organisation, 9 October 2014). This is also evident in the noticeable absence of major clustering around the Commonwealth government. This is due largely to constitutional constrains and to the Commonwealth government’s comparatively small area of responsibility in regards to animal welfare (which is largely limited to co-ordinating the production of national standards, and to narrowly focused areas of policy such as the regulation of live exports). Additionally, following the abolition of the Commonwealth-funded Australian Animal Welfare Strategy Advisory Committee in 2013 (as part of a general policy of abolishing Commonwealth boards and committees following the change in government in late 2013; Vidot 2013a), another cross-jurisdictional and cross-cluster bridge was dismantled (interview: D. Kelly, 25 August 2014).

Second, some clusters are associated with specific industry segments or animal protectionist groupings. While state-based activist and welfare organisations tend to engage with other network actors at the state level, the relatively low level of access of many of these organisations (some of which are quite small) to government actors means their strongest ties are often within the animal protection community itself. Even some notionally national organisations, if their resources are limited, may exhibit mainly local relationships purely due to proximity and limited capacity (interview: S. Watson, 25 June 2014). By the same token, smaller activist groups do not always restrict their activities to their state jurisdictions (interviews: L. Drew, 23 July 2013; D. Tranter, 22 September 2014), but may respond to tactical opportunities and seek out new arenas for action. This points to the tactical flexibility (Larson 2013) of some activist organisations. Centrally placed bridging organisations such as Animals Australia (originally formed as a peak body) and Voiceless tend, therefore, to act as information hubs between smaller groups, as gateways and gatekeepers between them, and as decision-makers in interactions with industry and government.

Third, the network incorporates and expands upon pre-existing market and supply-chain relationships. The increasing uptake and adherence to non-government standards and quality assurance systems by producers, processors and transporters means that the policy network often mirrors the power structures of industrial supply chains. Rahbek Pedersen (2009, 111) has observed that consumer expectations about corporate social responsibility standards can produce a blurring of the boundaries between organisations within the same supply chain. Policies about sourcing, for example, can become quite prescriptive. The implications of these policies often extend upstream to ensure the availability of products perceived to be ethically produced.

Where this leads to premium pricing, it can produce principal–agent problems, if purchasers are not aware whether or not suppliers are meeting their contractual obligations, particularly for ‘intangibles’ such as ethical production; this can necessitate action to ensure that standards are met or risks managed. Where principals have power, this can entail intrusive and directive intervention in upstream providers’ production practices (Wiese and Toporowski 2013): a form of non-state industrial regulation. This is clear in animal industry, where retailers actively monitor standards for ethically produced products using quality-assurance systems (interviews: a representative of the chicken industry, 31 January 2014; a representative of the grocery industry, 9 April 2014; a representative of the retail industry, 22 April 2014).

In summary, the policy network for animal welfare and protection appears complex, comprised of very diverse actors whose relationships are structured by a variety of pre-existing legal, economic and political opportunity structures that shape the strategic and tactical choices of political actors through the provision of access and/or resources. Compared with other comparatively cohesive closed ‘policy communities’ that are dominated by small numbers of ‘insider’ groups, such as those seen in defence policy (Grant 2001, 337), the animal protection domain can be described as an ‘issue network’, in which barriers to entry are limited and participation is highly pluralistic. This is in line with findings regarding changes in food-policy networks in the United Kingdom, where food standards were ‘re-politicised’ following successive salmonella and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (‘mad cow’) crises (Smith 1991).1 However, despite the consensus-breaking impact of these events on the national policy domain (in opening the network to new entrants after the demonstrated failure of previous policies), the animal protection domain as a whole is a network with a contested centre. In Australia, the key network participants tend to be major animal protectionist advocacy organisations (such as Animals Australia and Voiceless), long-standing animal welfare NGOs (such as the various RSPCAs and Animal Welfare Leagues), and key industry groups. Therefore, rather than network structures reflecting tradition or continuity, the emphasis away from state regulation in Australia means that entrepreneurialism dominates over hierarchical power, leading the network to be more dynamic and changeable than other areas of policy-making.

This non-state centrism is different from the type of policy networks discussed by Rhodes (1996) in his formative work on the exchange model of network governance. While his model of quasi-autonomous networks recognised the growing role of non-government actors in the development of a policy context in which the state’s role consists of ‘steering not rowing’, in this type of network ‘insiders’ are those with resources such as money, expertise and implementation capacity. In policy subsystems such as the animal protection domain, however, groups conventionally seen as political ‘outsiders’ are able to become brokers of interest. This is not a general or theoretical criticism of Rhodes’ model (and in fact, Rhodes [2007] has observed that network scholars tend to over-emphasise the role of state institutions in structuring networks), but rather appears to be case-specific. In this case, the lack of a single authoritative actor has given service providers and activists greater significance, making this policy network quite atypical.

​Understanding the relationships

Given the complexity of the animal policy domain, the number of actors involved and the many distinct clusters of participants, relationships within it cannot be characterised in a single way, but consist of an array of connections, both stable and transient. To understand the network, it is necessary to examine the types of relationships that exist both between and within important clusters. These exchanges provide insight into where the centres of power (or dominant actors) lie, what the sources of this power are, and why the network tends to exhibit stability over time.

​Exchange relationships, power and stability

The concept of the policy network implies that network actors come together to exchange resources with the objective of achieving long-term policy goals. This reflects the complexity of the contemporary policy environment: solitary actors are unable to achieve policy objectives alone, but are mutually dependent on one another. While some exchange relationships may be temporary or one-off, enduring relationships are significant in the long-term process of policy development and implementation. This underlines the observation that policy change can only be meaningfully understood over a longer time period (Sabatier 1997, 278), as the implementation process (including innovation and refinement) means policy is realised on the ground. This longer view also allows for an agenda-setting process that includes strategic action as well as simple proximate causes (as illustrated in the long ‘prehistory’ of live-export activism, dating back to the 1970s and 1980s).

Organisations engaged in enduring relationships tend to be those that are captured by the issue (often involuntarily, by regulation), have a commitment to it, and have resources that they are willing to trade (as opposed to possessing a monopoly on resources, which could encourage others to develop alternatives). Table 5.1 lists a range of resources generally accepted by policy scholars, along with the type of actors most likely to possess them.

Resources are exchanged in a range of ways to produce stability. These include:

• Memoranda of understanding: Animal welfare inspection and prosecution activities undertaken by NGOs are commonly governed by formal agreements with government departments, law-enforcement agencies and public prosecutors. These documents serve both to delineate spheres of activity, and to establish processes of investigation and prosecution (for example, in states where commercial animals are not subject to RSPCA inspections, memoranda of understanding set out the process for complaints) (interviews: M. Beatty, 16 April 2013; M. Mercurio, 4 June 2013).
• Fee-for-service: Welfare training for commercial and research organisations working with industrial animals is undertaken on a cost-recovery basis by animal welfare agencies (interview: director of a bureau of animal welfare, 21 August 2013). Where organisations are formally or legally required to use qualified staff (for example in animal research), these costs are compulsory.
• Formalised information exchange: A range of standing policy committees, such as ministerial advisory groups and policy advisory committees for animal welfare, serve as ‘institutionalised venues’ for information exchange (Leifeld and Schneider 2012). These lower the cost of information exchange and bring together a wider range of participants than would otherwise occur (see the discussion of homophily below). The capacity to form and abolish these venues is a power of political elites.
• Standards-making bodies: Standards regimes involving NGO ‘branding’ (such as RSPCA-approved meats and eggs) also involve ongoing interaction. Fee-for-service quality assurance and brand licensing provide financial resources to the NGO involved, while necessitating the exchange of information with producers (interview: M. Mercurio, 4 June 2013). This occurs primarily at the level of peak bodies (interview: a representative of the chicken industry, 31 January 2014), but also on the ‘shop floor’ when inspectors interact with producers and their staff.
• Homophilic ties: The animal policy network demonstrates Leifeld and Schneider’s (2012) finding that shared preferences encourage information exchange. Groups seen to be ‘shooting in the same direction’ are more likely to exchange information, both technical and strategic. While this produces mutual exchange, there does appear to be a tendency for information to flow towards those actors perceived as more influential, both in general (interview: C. Neal, 16 April 2013) and in order specifically to provide a ‘heads up’ about opportunities to organisations seen as having the greatest capacity to act (interview: an animal welfare advocate, 5 September 2014). Other exchanges take the form of capacity aggregation: that is, where activists participate in one another’s campaigns based on proximity and shared interests (interviews: L. Levy, 30 August 2013; D. Tranter, 22 September 2014). In some cases, staff move between organisations working in the same sector (interview: M. Beatty, 16 April 2013).

In addition to these ongoing, stabilising ties, some relationships are impermanent. A good example of this is seen in project funding in the activist community. One emerging type of exchange has been the provision of specific project funding by generalist organisations, such as Voiceless (interview: D. Campbell, 30 January 2014), to specialist activist organisations, commonly to develop informational campaigns. By offering such grants, the larger organisation can diversify its reach without needing to increase its internal capacity. Additionally, these exchanges secure greater authority for Voiceless, both through the distribution of resources to smaller organisations and through the formal application and reporting process, which ‘disciplines’ the smaller organisations (which must meet minimum organisational criteria and must structure their programs according to the strategic objectives of the funding organisation). In the process, the funding organisation becomes a network hub, through which more information flows (interview: D. Tranter, 22 September 2014).

​Power in supply chains

The role of commercial interests is unremarkable in the study of interest-group-based politics. These organisations demonstrate both the attractive and repulsive tendency noted in homophilic clusters above: they are drawn together by common interests, but may be driven apart by commercial competition. Attraction stems from shared interests in the wider agricultural policy space (for example, a desire to attract government support for industry, for the consideration of agriculture in free-trade negotiations, and to minimise regulatory requirements), cultural affiliation among primary producers, and cohesion in the face of opposition from other social movements (Polletta and Jasper 2001, 297; interview: general manager [policy], National Farmers’ Federation, 14 November 2014). Repulsion stems from internal market rivalries, as well as dissent from individual producers, who may be resistant to the voluntary adoption of industry standards (interview: R. Cox, 2 October 2013).

In the animal policy domain, power relationships inscribed in supply chains are also a significant variable in explaining the relative position and influence of different actors. The best illustration of the significance of these power structures is the way activists have focused on real and perceived supply bottlenecks, treating them as what social scientists call political opportunity structures – potential opportunities for political success – and adjusting their tactics in response to these opportunities over time (Goldner 2001, 71–2). Major restaurant chains (such as KFC and McDonald’s) and retailers (such as Coles and Woolworths) have been subject to activist pressure to alter their purchasing policies, with the expectation that their marketplace power will achieve the policy outcomes that have proven extremely difficult to secure through legislative strategies (interview: M. Pearson, 5 June 2013). The tendency towards consolidation in some agricultural supply chains gives certain actors considerable power in dealing with their upstream suppliers (interview: J. Toohey, 4 July 2014). A good example is the highly concentrated egg industry in Australia, which is dominated by a small number of very large processors. While these producers have maintained their capacity to resist the adoption of higher welfare standards, pressure from retailers has had a greater impact than that from legislators in seeing the adoption of higher standards.2 Legislation, in this case, has tended to follow the adoption of industry or NGO standards, reifying these new norms.

The use of supply-chain power to shape welfare outcomes can be seen in an array of voluntary standards adopted for eggs, chicken meat, pig meat and – temporarily at least – sheep mulesing. However, the significance of this supply-chain power tends to be limited to industries that display a combination of characteristics:

• Their products are undifferentiated in nature – that is, there is little discernible difference between the products of different brands or producers, either because:
  • the product is seen by consumers as a ‘natural’ commodity
  • there are few niche markets for the product
  • there is low consumer understanding of the product, or
  • the product has been ‘re-branded’ under a generic label in some way (for example, Australian wool).
• Alternative downstream buyers for the product are few, either because:
  • the supply chain displays increasing concentration closer to the end consumer
  • the product undergoes reprocessing or finishing involving expensive equipment, and/or
  • the capacity to switch to alternative purchasers is limited by a reduced ability to export, or by long-term binding contracts.
• Internal industry processes are standardised.
• Geographical factors are not significant (that is, production practices do not change dramatically across Australia).

If egg production demonstrates what happens when the factors above are present, beef production in Australia shows what happens when they are not. The product is highly differentiated, with large numbers of primary producers and processors and a more competitive retail sector that includes both large retailers and small independent butchers (interview: I. Randles, 30 September 2013). Production systems differ across the industry (for example, between feed-lot and pasture farms), and vary geographically in both type and scale, owing to Australia’s diverse ecologies. Beef is exported in a variety of forms (live, processed simply and processed complexly) to a wide range of regional and international markets, many of which are seen as growth areas (interview: J. Toohey, 4 July 2014). The presence or absence of these factors allows us to predict the extent to which supply-chain factors will or will not be significant in the propagation of welfare standards.

​Change in the network

Given the overall low transitivity of the policy domain – that is, the relative slowness and inefficiency of exchanges across the network – relationships within clusters are considerably more coherent than relationships between them, and it can be relatively easy for new actors to enter this loose network. The establishment of Voiceless in 2004, for example, demonstrates the openness of the network to new organisations that position themselves as cluster cores and bridges. While Voiceless is an advocacy organisation, its focus on animal law recognised a specific area of advocacy where Australian organisations were comparatively under-represented and ill-equipped. In a tight policy community this would only have been achievable through the expenditure of considerable resources – that is, the new organisation would have had to force its way into the network – or through an external reconfiguration of the operational environmental. The relative openness of the animal welfare domain, however, meant that a new organisation willing to expend some resources could join the network relatively easily. This openness appears to be more common within the activist community, which is in line with the observations of Stern (1999), who has argued that political interest groups and social movement organisations can be seen to engage in a form of ‘competition’ to successfully create and occupy ecosystem niches due to the often intangible nature of their concerns when compared with producer groups.

Additionally, the diverse ideological mix of the various activist groups is idiosyncratic, and does not represent a neat spectrum. Among the loosely affiliated Animal Liberation organisations, abolitionism has been taken up by those in Victoria, the ACT and Queensland, but not by the NSW organisation, the largest group. Although it is the largest single Australian jurisdiction, NSW lacks a significant abolitionist organisation. This points to a determining driver of organisational choice. An abolitionist organisation in NSW would be an attractive niche if ideological differentiation was a significant factor to (actual or potential) organisational publics (both members and other stakeholders). The emergence of an abolitionist public in NSW would serve to motivate the formation of an activist organisation in that area, as this public would provide resources for that organisation. This highlights the usefulness of applying resources competition more generally to understand intra-cluster competition over time.

The emergence of new commercial interests, by contrast, tends to be associated with the generation of new markets. While Stern focuses on membership numbers and policy victories as measures of success (following the resource-mobilisation tradition of social-movement research from which her work stems), a focus on resource exchange highlights the importance of considering a wider range of resources that may be subject to intra-group competition. This may be particularly important where policy victories are unlikely, but alternative markers of success may be used to measure the health of the policy network. My interviews with members of animal protection organisations reveal that they sometimes have difficulty determining how effectively to measure their own performance. Internally, protection organisations tend to measure success in strategic and tactical victories in policy change (interview: L. Drew, 23 July 2013; M. Pearson, 5 June 2013), which may in turn liberate other politically useful resources (access, information, prestige, etc.).

Two other potential sources of change or instability in the policy network are worth noting. The first comes from within the network itself. By altering consumer preferences, activists can reshape the commercial operating environment. This can lead to the emergence of new market segments and the creation of new industry bodies. The second cause of change is external. The use of non-government processes and bodies to set and enforce welfare standards reflects a more general tendency in public policy towards market-based instruments, and an environment subject to more rapid change as policy can be developed and implemented incrementally through the conversion of private organisations’ internal policy on a piecemeal basis (interview: H. Marston, 23 September 2013). This facilitates change within the network, as the existence of competing voluntary standards systems permits producers to switch relatively easily and cheaply between regulatory regimes. This competition also means, however, that the exchange relationships involved in non-governmental standards regimes are fragile: in order to limit defection, NGOs may have to provide concessions, at the same time as pushing for welfare improvements in order to ensure their reputation.

​Conclusion

In identifying the animal-welfare policy domain as one of network governance, we can understand why policy-making in this area tends to be disaggregated. This has implications for how policy is made, both in terms of the diversity of policy instruments employed as well as the actual policy settings. The loose nature of the domain does mitigate against a consistent and cohesive national policy. In this way, the policy domain reflects the incoherence of popular opinion established in Chapter 3. This could be interpreted as a causal claim – that policy-making is indexed against popular opinion in the Habermasian sense – but it is not. Given the role of industrial and activist organisations in shaping public opinion (established in the previous chapter), the chaotic nature of the domain could just as easily be seen to drive the confusion in popular opinion through the generation of competing messages regarding human–animal relations.

In the next part of the book, we turn from the meso to the micro level, looking at specific political actors and the strategies and tactics they employ to achieve their policy objectives, before examining more closely the role of state policy elites.