Representing and managing farmers' interests in Australia

It has generally been understood that the instability of corporatist arrang ements arises from the difficulty that participating interest groups have i n legitimating policies to a membership which is distant from the policy-ma king process. This instability often manifests itself through inopportune m obilization of group members. The 'action framing' and the 'incentives' int erest groups offer to their constituency are often an important mechanism i n managing the mode and level of mobilization. However, the extent to which managing mobilization becomes necessary is contingent on the heterogeneity of interests the group represents. The paper explores the corporatist rela tionships between farmer interest groups and the state in Australia in this context. The interest group representing farmers in NSW, Australia, the NS WFA has, broadly speaking, moved away from a public militant, to a private 'bargained consensus,' model of policy development. This has created instab ility which, it is argued, the NSWFA has attempted to reduce by pursuing a strategy to attain guarantees of survival external to membership. The combi nation of action frames and incentive management which currently prevail ha ve facilitated this transfer by replacing a 'willingness to act' with a 'wi llingness to pay' amongst its membership. The implications this transition has on the organizational stability of the NSWFA and the broader political representation of farmers is explored.