Designing and Implementing Innovative Policy for Sustainable Food Consumption: Policy Capacity and Organic Conversion of Kitchens in the Danish Public Sector

It has been recognised for some time that addressing complex policy problems often requires a combination of complementary policy instruments. Promoting sustainable food consumption can be a complex challenge as a number of actors has to be engaged in delivering policy. Using instrument mixes to address complex policy problems increases the complexity of the design and implementation process. Therefore, the existence of policy capacity is an important precondition for designing and implementing policy mixes. This paper brings together the policy instrument and policy capacity literatures to explain how policy capacity can be translated into innovative packages of complementary instruments and effective implementation, using the example of organic conversion of kitchens in the public sector in Denmark. The Danish organic food policy applies a wide range of policy instruments that affect both the supply and demand-side of the organic market. In 2012, the government expanded the repertoire of demand-side policy instruments by launching a new initiative to convert kitchens in the public sector to serving organic food. By pooling expertise and resources within the organic food sector, it was possible to design an innovative package of implementable policy instruments for kitchen conversion within a relatively short period. The combined policy capacities within the organic policy sector were used to activate, motivate and enable a number of private actors within and outside the organic industry to engage in or to support the conversion of kitchens in the public sector. By moving away from a state-centred perception of policy capacity and expanding the notion of target groups and, this paper provides new insights substantiated by evidence from the kitchen conversion initiative. The paper applies a policy sector perspective in which policy capacity is understood as the ability to pool and coordinate the relevant resources available within a policy sector in order to design and implement a package of policy instrument. Resources outside the state may be key to perform policy functions. Generating high levels of sectoral capacity is closely associated with the existence of collaborative governing arrangements actors within a policy sector. While the scholarly focus has been on instruments directed at the primary target groups, this paper suggests that in more complex policy designs, affecting secondary groups can be important as they can provide the conditions for the primary target group to respond optimally to policy. For effective implementation to take place in such situations, it is important to pool the available resources in a policy sector in a coordinated manner.