Global Organic Agriculture Governance through Standards as an Organizational Field

The paper deals with the global architecture of the dynamic and multi-sectoral food and agriculture regime. The special focus lies on organic agriculture governance through standards as a cross-boundary and multi-dimensional policy field. The analysis considers the interconnectedness of structure and agency and combines a neo-institutional organizational field approach with research on entrepreneurship. It conceptualizes global organic agriculture governance through standards as a historically grown organizational field that is the result of the interplay of context-specific factors and the inter-institutional engagement of public and private entrepreneurs. It traces three historical phases of institutional development and identifies key entrepreneurs that gained the legitimacy to prescribe how global and regional standard-setting in global organic agriculture governance ought to be designed. Finally, the paper discusses in how far the regulatory shift towards the inter-sectoral interplay of public and private actors poses challenges to the global organic agriculture architecture to be effective and legitimate.