Socio-political dynamics of alternative food networks: a hybrid governance approach

Abstract

ABSTRACT Alternative food networks (AFNs) encounter governance challenges stemming from their own organizational growth pains and their search for cultivable land, but also from their confrontation with urban planning policy and state structures whose affinity with urban agriculture is on average quite low. The agro-food literature does not sufficiently account for the governance complexity of AFNs. As AFNs develop, different governance tensions arise both within their organization as well as in the institutionalization processes in which they are embedded. This theoretical paper makes use of a redefined concept of hybrid governance – different from that in neo-institutional economics (NIE) – to elucidate the governance dynamics of AFNs. Finding inspiration in three strands of theory belonging to the ‘institutional turn in social science’, it redefines hybrid governance as a dialectical nexus of four basic forms of governance (solidarity based, networked, hierarchical, market stirred) reproducing three types of governance tensions (organizational, resource oriented, institutional). Using hybrid governance as an analytical mirror, the paper examines to what extent the agro-food literature has addressed the complexity of AFNs’ governance and how its analysis can be improved.