The Role of Food Policy Councils in Policymaking: Advocate, Adviser or Actor in participatory governance?

Considering the massive environmental and sustainability issues associated with current food production and consumption systems, food policy councils (FPCs) have recently emerged as a promising institutional response. To date, the scant scientific literature on FPCs is primarily focused on empirical cases, while we still lack a conceptual understanding: Are FPCs a form of policymaking? Do they mainly serve an advisory function? Or are they a form of political advocacy? For each of these, different academic literatures are relevant. Therefore, this study aims to shed light on the emerging institutional phenomenon by disentangling the concept and by synthesizing the various aspects specific to FPCs. To this end, we firstly review the existing literature in terms of historical development, types and functions of FPCs. Secondly, we study the institutional phenomenon from three different theoretical angles in order to examine different roles of FPCs in policy-making processes. Results of both analyses will coalesce in a typology capturing the identified aspects of key relevance to FPCs and accounting for variations in their manifestation. The three suggested types reflect FPCs´ dominating manner of exercising influence on food policy: advocacy, advice or governance. We close by identifying avenues for applying these conceptual considerations in further research.