Theorizing on the Emergence of Boundary-spanning Policy Regimes for Food Security

This paper introduces a theoretical framework for studying the emergence of ‘boundary-spanning policy regimes’ (BSPRs) that span across various policy subsystems and administrative levels. Particularly issues such as food security and climate change require more integrated policy arrangements to overcome the challenges of creating coherence and consistency across policy subsystems. However, the process of BSPR emergence has hardly been theorized. This paper connects BSPR theories with literature on policy entrepreneurs to propose an actor-centred framework for the emergence of BSPRs. Based on a systematic literature review we 1) define a range of different types of entrepreneurs and their skillsets and 2) theorise about their strategies in forming a BSPR on food systems. The framework is exemplified by the case of Climate Smart Agriculture, a newly emerged concept in food systems governance that aims to integrate existing efforts on agriculture, food and climate change into a new BSPR.