Normative Divides in Post-Exceptionalist Agri-Food Governance

Abstract

In 2017, Carsten Daugbjerg and Peter H. Feindt proposed the concept of ‘policy post-exceptionalism’ in a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy to capture the combination of a less compartmentalized policy arena (institutions and interests) with an updated set of policy ideas that retain at its core claims that a policy sector is special, albeit with updated arguments that relate to the problems on the evolving policy agenda and which trigger novel policy instruments. Post-exceptionalism in the agri-food policy sector implies a partial transformation in which an exceptionalist policy sector has not been completely ‘normalized’ and in which old and new ideas, institutions, interests and policy instruments coexist. Post-exceptionalist agri-food governance is facilitated by new trends, e.g. internationalization, financialization, cross-policy linkages, sustainability concerns, and new consumerism. Agri-food governance has long been based on apparent consensus about the basic norms. However, under the influence of globalization and the prospect of scarce resources at global level, new normative divides appear along multiple lines, in particular within the agro-food area, between different levels of governance, between multiple international regimes or between political parties. The contributions to this panel analyze how multiple interdependent relations within and among societies produce new normative divides in post-exceptionalist agri-food governance and lead to contestation over norms and ideas at different regulatory levels. The panel consists of papers that address in particular the following questions: How do new ideas, norms and discourses challenge and affect agri-food governance systems? Do conflicts over norms strengthen or weaken the capacities of agri-food governance systems? How does norm contestation affect the locus of political authority to formulate, disseminate, and represent future visions of effective, equitable and fair agri-food governance systems? And what are appropriate democratic measures to settle conflicts over norms and ideas?