From farm to force

The EU-wide agricultural protests in 2023–2024 have highlighted the systemic challenges of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), but have only served to block the agenda for the environmental transformation of agriculture. Building on the literature on popular movements and the (post-) exceptionalist CAP, this article argues that the outcome was shaped not only by the co-optation of regressive populism by established actors, but also by a conservative framework of representative and decision-making institutions that locks in (traditional) agricultural interests.