Abstract
Since the 2007/08 food price crisis there has been a proliferation of multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs) devoted to bringing diverse perspectives together to inform and improve food security policy. While much of the literature highlights the positive contributions to be gained from an opening-up of traditionally state-led processes, there is a strong critique emerging to show that, in many instances, MSPs have de-politicizing effects. In this paper, we scrutinize MSPs in relation to de-politicization. We argue that re-building sustainable and just food systems requires alternative visions that can best be made visible through politicized policy processes. Focusing on three key conditions of politicization, we examine the UN Committee on World Food Security as a MSP where we see a process of politicization playing out through the endorsement of the ‘most-affected’ principle, which is in turn being actively contested by traditionally powerful actors. We conclude that there is a need to implement and reinforce mechanisms that deliberately politicize participation in MSPs, notably by clearly distinguishing between states and other stakeholders, as well as between categories of non-state actors.
Highlights
Reflecting on the landscape of contemporary food security it can be concluded that efforts to ensure stable access to adequate and appropriate food for all have not succeeded
In this paper we have interrogated a trend in the de-politicization literature that suggests enhanced participation of stakeholders, through multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs), restricts politics (Tsouvalis and Waterton 2011)
As scholar-activists concerned about this trend, we have sought to explore the conditions or mechanisms that enable the politicization of MSPs
Summary
Reflecting on the landscape of contemporary food security it can be concluded that efforts to ensure stable access to adequate and appropriate food for all have not succeeded. By creating spaces where these fundamental disagreements can be articulated can we start to find shared meanings and design global policies in which a broader range of the global population can benefit (Clark et al 1996) Towards this end, Rancière (1998) argues that to repoliticize policy spaces, actors need to: a) agree to a common set of rules of engagement; b) ensure a diversity of views are represented; and, c) ensure everyone, including ‘extremists’, have the right to speak. Recognizing that these conditions are overlapping and interconnected, in what follows we use them to guide our analysis of processes of politicization across the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). Our exploration into the third condition looks at how the ‘extremists’, who in the case of the CFS would be the social movements representing the most affected, have self-organized through the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM)
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