Policy Integration in the EU Governance of Food Security: Do Actions Speak Louder than Words?

Food security has received a great deal of attention of EU policymakers since the food price crises. This spike of attention has been accompanied by a shift of thinking amongst scholars that addressing food insecurity requires more coherent, and integrated approaches. We examine whether this shift of thinking has resulted in an actual change, i.e. a more integrated form, of the EU governance of food security. We do so by applying a policy integration framework we designed. This approach centres around four degrees of policy integration: subsystem policymaking, policy cooperation, policy coordination, and full policy integration. These degrees of policy integration differ in terms of the strength of the ties of subsystems involved, coherence of policy goals, and consistency of instrument mixes. (Preliminary) findings suggest that although some degree of integration between subsystems has been realized, a shift from subsystem policymaking to full policy integration has not occurred.