Working together in project-based multi-actor partnerships in the agro-food sector in Europe: Compromises, clarifications and denunciations

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Current policy discourse in the European Union and elsewhere identifies the ‘multi-actor approach’ and ‘co-innovation’ as powerful tools for ‘speeding up’ innovation in agriculture and related sectors. This paper analyses tensions in five project-based multi-actor partnerships (MAPs) in Europe. The ways in which actors form partnerships and the evaluation principles they follow to coordinate their work are explored through a focus on ‘objects of justification’. We identified four objects, on which partners express different opinions and disagreements: the creation of partnerships, how actors work together, their attitudes to societal challenges (in particular, the environment) and their understanding of the benefits of participation. The tensions that arose around these four objects were linked to different evaluation principles that the partners employ, which in turn were attributable to their contrasting experiences of working in MAPs. Convention Theory was applied to understand these points of tension and to identify significant problems that the project activity can generate. These included segmentation between the partners that influences the way the project objectives and activities are formulated, inadequate addressing of practical problems by the set project objectives and conflicts of environmental perceptions. Opportunistic actions may compromise the benefits of the project activity. To work together and overcome tensions, partners most often use a strategy of compromise. Denunciations and clarifications, although present, do not necessarily lead to a premature end of the project activities.