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has shown that the cost to outsiders is large, even though up to 90% of the welfare gains of full liberalization would actually go to the EU itself (Tokarick 2005). This has led Giovanni Federico (2009) to call the CAP “the worst agricultural policy in the 20th century” ( 271). Such a bold judgment raises intriguing questions. Why does such an inefficient, market-distorting policy still exist? What policy measures could address this criticism? An improved theoretical understanding of CAP’s reform processes is needed to answer these questions. Starting off with a case, instead of a theory, might seem problematic at the first glance. However, Robert Bates et al. (1998) explicitly resist the idea that there should not be a priori selected case in research design. They argue that in “effect, our cases selected us, rather than the other way around” (13). These authors do not find this problematic because the goal of the research is to “construct logically persuasive and empirically valid accounts that explain how and why events occurred” (13). Therefore, reverse selection sequence—from case to theory— is not necessarily a flawed approach. One of the most useful theoretical frameworks that can be employed to understand CAP reforms’ political and economic problems is called Multi-Level Games Theory (MLGT). This theory of international relations and domestic negotiations has successfully explained CAP reforms before. Lee Ann Patterson (1997) and Robert Paarlberg (1997) have used versions of 3 MLGT to analyse the first major reform that the CAP has gone through, the MacSharry Reform of 1992. Patterson (1997) also used MLGT in the same paper to analyse one of the first spectacular failures to agree on a substantial reform, the 1988 Milk Quota Reform. Therefore, MLGT has already shown that it can explain both major overhauls of the CAP and minor, incremental reforms which failed to produce substantial improvements of the policy. This paper 3 The four reforms of significance usually discussed are called the MacSharry reform (or 1992 reform), Agenda 2000 (or 1999 reform), Fischler Reform (or Mid‐Term Review or 2003 reform), and the CAP Health Check (or 2008 reform) respectively. 9