New Models of Governance for Food and Agriculture

Abstract

Over the recent two or three decades the nature of policy making in the agricultural and food sector has gradually changed and has challenged the compartmentalised style of policy making and its sector-specific, exceptionalist legitimation. The policy agenda has been considerably broadened with agricultural policy issues now interlinking with other policy domains (food safety, global food security, bio-technology and patents, energy supplies, environmental protection, development aid, trade, climate change, biodiversity, etc.). Another trend in agricultural and food policy making that occurred in the same period is the internationalisation of policy making. National policy domains have been opened up to the influence of new global discourses, ideas and governance arrangements which have not been primed by agricultural exceptionalism. This has challenged governance models in the agri-food policy arena. New domestic as well as global policy actors have been mobilised and actors who previously were only sporadically and marginally involved in agricultural policy making have now become more important players. This has led to new policy alliances being formed and new ideas being brought into the policy debate. The interlinkage between the agricultural policy domain and other domains takes place within an already existing landscape of sectoral institutions in which the policy agenda expands to include new extra-sectoral challenges or certain policy aspects become internationalised. Such a development does not necessarily undermine existing policies and institutions but result in a need to coordinate, and to varying extents integrate, policies with other policy domains. The way in which such processes unfold are not well-understood. Therefore, the first aim of this panel is to analyse the new governance models emerging in the food and agricultural sector and to explain the new developments. The second aim is to present novel approaches to the study of food and agriculture policies that reflect the more complex and fluid nature of the policy field. Finally, the panel intends to contribute to broader discussions about the conditions of public policy-making in contemporary societies which face multiple challenges, including globalisation and internationalisation, increasingly fluid political and interest group systems, and the sustainability challenge.

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