II. i. Contestion and institutional fragmentation in transnational food and agricultural policymaking

Contemporary food and agricultural policymaking is an intensely contested field. By this I mean that a wide range of actors, in a wide range of locations, compete to shape both the ends of food policymaking and the means by which these ends are attained. One way of tracking this contestation is through historical accounts provided by food policy scholars of the postwar evolution of food and agricultural policy. Typically, these accounts are divided into three to four key periods that chart the transition from a postwar productionist ‘consensus’, through an era of neoliberalism, to the present day when food and agricultural policy is taxed by a wide range of issues and challenges (for example, poverty reduction, human rights, ecological sustainability, biodiversity management) but there exists little agreement on how to address them. This means that the ‘optimism’ of the early postwar period has given way, via ‘confusion’, to a situation of ‘competing and contested policy options’.Footnote ²⁹ Indeed, invoking a resonance with Habermas’s thinking on the public sphere,Footnote ³⁰ these new issues or ‘fundamentals’,Footnote ³¹ it is argued, breach conventional or ‘accepted’ frameworks for thinking about food policy (for example, food security and productivist or narrowly economistic approaches), necessitating in their place a new normativity for food and agricultural policymaking, variously conceived as ‘ecological public health’Footnote ³² or the ‘food policy new’.Footnote ³³

The competition over the direction of food policy is signalled from another quarter by the growing emphasis given to the attainment of ‘discursive power’ by some of the most powerful actors in the food system: Transnational Corporations (TNCs). This speaks to their growing attempts to augment the ‘structural’ and ‘instrumental’ influence that they exert over food policy by participating within and shaping its discursive formulation.Footnote ³⁴ Such behaviour is evidenced, for example, in initiatives undertaken by agribusiness TNCs through the World Economic Forum (WEF), including the publication of the report Realizing a New Vision for Agriculture: A Roadmap for Stakeholders and the convening of the Global Agenda Council on Food Security (GACFS).Footnote ³⁵ The GACFS was founded in 2008, when the World Economic Forum created the Network of Global Agenda Councils, each of which focuses ‘on the foremost topics in the global arena’, and seeks to convene ‘relevant thought leaders from academia, government, business and other fields’. The policy orientation of the CACFS is made explicit in its stated intent ‘to capture the best [pro-market] knowledge on each key issue and integrate it into global collaboration and decision-making processes’.Footnote ³⁶

To a significant extent the emergence of the global social movement La Vía Campesina is both illustrative and constitutive of the contestation in twenty-first-century transnational food policymaking. La Vía Campesina was launched in October 1993, and in its own words brings together ‘peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers’ to defend small-scale sustainable agriculture and promote ‘social justice and dignity’.Footnote ³⁷ It has membership in over eighty countries, and counts over 200 million small-scale and peasant food producers amongst its ranks. Supported by ‘exchanges and dialogue’ between farming organisations in different regions in preceding decades, the emergence of La Vía Campesina reflects the development of a collective awareness amongst farming peoples in the North and South that despite their diverse locations, many of the challenges they faced (adverse political and market conditions) were shared. These challenges were from their perspective the result of a transnationalised neoliberalism and modernisation agenda, which the imminent establishment of the World Trade Organization threatened to extend even further. Thus farming peoples in the North and South recognised the need for a global presence to contest these dynamics.Footnote ³⁸

According to its intellectuals, the main purpose of La Vía Campesina therefore is to be the ‘voice’ of ‘the peasant movement’ in the ‘global debates on agrarian policy’.Footnote ³⁹ In order to achieve this goal La Vía Campesina, often in conjunction with its allies such as those within the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC)Footnote ⁴⁰ and beyond, undertakes a number of different types of activities. These include mobilisations and demonstrations before the meetings of international food and agriculturally relevant bodies, such as the WTO; speaking at the podium in meetings of United Nations (UN) bodies, such as the General Assembly, or the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN; and convening autonomous spaces of civil society deliberation. Amongst this last group of activities we can count the movement’s four- to five-yearly International Conferences, the most recent of which was held 9–13 June 2013, in Jakarta, Indonesia, which are attended by hundred of delegates representing small-scale, peasant- and family-farmers arriving from most regions of the world. And also important in this regard are the movement’s collaborations with its allies, through for example providing logistical and personnel support, in the creation of international civil society fora and meetings. These include the Nyéléni Forum for Food Sovereignty, held between 23–7 February 2007 in Sélingué, Mali, and the People’s Food Sovereignty Civil Society Forum, held in Rome, Italy, 13–17 November 2009, the later of these two events being timed to coincide with the World Food Summit held at the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) at the same time.Footnote ⁴¹

Clearly, La Vía Campesina is internationally active in a range of different ways in seeking to create spaces for autonomous civil society deliberation and channel the outcomes of those deliberations into international policy arenas. As we shall see, increasingly this activity takes the form of extended participation in formal policy processes. The framework for La Vía Campesina’s deliberations and interventions is provided by the ‘food sovereignty’ framework, defined as ‘the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems’.Footnote ⁴² Food sovereignty has been variously described as, a call, a concept, a vision a slogan, a policy framework, a manifesto, and a political project.Footnote ⁴³ The primary sense is which I want to present it here however is as a policy-oriented, discursive intervention affirming the ends that food and agricultural policymaking and governance should be pursuing, and the means through which those ends ought to be attained. In terms of ends, for example, food sovereignty asserts the importance of food and agriculture for expressing cultural identity, fostering health, securing the political autonomy of communities and nations, and preserving the environment. In order to secure those ends food sovereignty contemplates a range of different practices and interventions (for example, inclusive food decision-making; locally oriented, agroecological food production; state support for both) and has specific things to say about the rights to be enjoyed and duties owed by different food system actors. Thus, peoples have the right to participate in food policymaking, peasants have the right to be protected by human rights instruments, and governments have the responsibility to manage the food system. TNCs, on the other hand, do not have the right to appropriate control of natural resources, or to impose genetically modified organisms (GMOs) upon either farmers or consumers.Footnote ⁴⁴

Seen as an intervention into the ‘global agrarian debate’, therefore, food sovereignty implicitly contests many of the assumptions and conclusions present within more institutionally sanctioned policy framings, such as the food security framework, or the economistic approaches adopted by the World Bank and other institutional actors. These often reduce food and agriculture to a purely economic function, enabling an apparently unproblematic comparison between farming, on the one hand, and ‘off farm employment’ and ‘urban jobs’ (for example, working in a factory), on the other.Footnote ⁴⁵ Food sovereignty then implicitly and explicitly contests the normative frameworks within which food policymaking is situated, seeking to valorise the specificity of food and agriculture by expanding recognition of the range of ends that food and agriculture needs to serve.Footnote ⁴⁶

Indeed, in the emergence and activities of La Vía Campesina we can discern many of the attributes that are associated with the existence of public spheres. Firstly, we have an affected public, small-scale food producers, who have mobilised from the grassroots upwards (or the periphery inwards) seeking to participate in the ‘global debates on agrarian policy’, precisely at the same time as discursive contestation has become a more general feature of transnational food and agricultural policymaking.Footnote ⁴⁷ An important part of this mobilisation involves the creation of autonomous discursive arenas, including the movement itself, the purpose of which is to enable deliberation and encounter amongst groups for whom collective deliberation opportunities would otherwise not be forthcoming. This aspiration has led to La Vía Campesina being conceptualised as a ‘new citizenship’ space.Footnote ⁴⁸ It is also apparent that the movement and its arenas embody the attributes of a ‘subaltern counterpublic’, defined by Fraser as ‘parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs.’Footnote ⁴⁹

The ‘counterdiscourse’ here is of course food sovereignty, the emergence of which is emblematic of a second key attribute associated with public spheres: competition over the normative direction of political decision-making. Recalling Habermas’s assertion that ‘controversies in the broader public sphere primarily ignite around the normative aspects of the problems most at issue’Footnote ⁵⁰ and both food sovereignty’s implicit and explicit contestation of the normative basis of food and agricultural policymaking, and its articulation by an affected public at the periphery suggest a nascent transnational public sphere being provoked, and indeed, constituted, by La Vía Campesina, and others.

The recognition that La Vía Campesina can be regarded as a constitutional element of a nascent transnational public sphere should perhaps come as no surprise, considering the role that social movements have played historically in terms of expanding both the range of issues under discussion within ‘official’ public spheres, and the number of those participating in their discussion.Footnote ⁵¹ The transnational mobilisation of La Vía Campesina, therefore, and the various types of activities the movement undertakes can be seen as an extension to the transnational of the historic role undertaken by social movements within national public spheres.Footnote ⁵²

However, it is important to note that the aspiration to create a public sphere alone is not evidence that one actually does or could exist, particularly when we recall Fraser’s insistence that the articulation of the discursive arenas of the public sphere with political authority is absolutely central to its ‘critical force and political point’.Footnote ⁵³ In STPS, for instance, Habermas argues that a key stage in the development of the bourgeois public sphere, at least in the UK context, was the transformation of the medieval assembly of estates into a modern parliament able and willing to respond to the newly emergent discursive arenas of the bourgeois. Indeed, it was through this process of linking that the public sphere was finally able to fulfill its political function as ‘an organ for the self-articulation of civil society with state authority corresponding to its needs.’Footnote ⁵⁴ In Between Facts and Norms, within which Habermas shifted from the historical analysis of STPS to present the public sphere as part of an overall ‘methodological fiction’,Footnote ⁵⁵ Habermas sees the articulation of the wider public sphere of the ‘informal public’ with the ‘formal public’ of institutionalised decision-making as occurring, at least in part, via:

As we might expect, given the development of transnational institutions and governance processes outside of anything resembling ‘citizen engagement’, we can find very few examples of mechanisms and processes that exist to systematically articulate the working of these institutions and processes with ‘communication flows’ emanating from wider publics.Footnote ⁵⁷ Those working explicitly within the framework of transnational public sphere theory, therefore, have both invoked the need for, and examined, potential mechanisms and principles of articulation to remedy this.Footnote ⁵⁸ It is important to note, moreover, that to fulfil the political authority component of the public sphere, such institutions or ‘public powers’ need to do more than simply articulate with wider, affected publics. They also have to translate that communicative interaction into ‘binding laws and then into administrative power’, on the one hand, and possess the capacity to regulate against the violation, and towards the realisation, of this public’s aspirations, on the other.Footnote ⁵⁹

In the specific domain of food and agriculture, however, the possibility of articulating discursive arenas, such as those being constituted by La Vía Campesina and their allies, with authoritative policymaking and governance at the transnational is complicated by the fragmentation that exists therein.Footnote ⁶⁰ For example, when in 1990 the no longer existing World Food Council surveyed UN agencies working on hunger and malnourishment issues, it identified ‘well over 30 multilateral institutions’ at work in this area.Footnote ⁶¹ More recently, the twenty bodies participating in the UN Secretary-General’s High Level Task Force (HLTF) convened in respond to the 2007/2008 ‘food price crisis’, and the importance given to the need for ‘coordination’ in the post-food price crisis agenda, again, underscores the fragmentation that exists in this domain.Footnote ⁶²

These headline facts communicate that the articulation of affected publics with authoritative transnational food and agricultural policymaking is not a simple matter. Multiple entities, addressing different issues (for example, trade, food aid, agricultural finance, nutrition, development, food safety) coupled with other transnationalised dynamics with regulatory effects on local and national food systems (for example, investment flows, private standard-setting/retail standards, philanthropic/donor initiatives) present both countries and non-state actors alike seeking to engage with and influence these processes with a disorienting array of options and demands. Of course, the challenges posed by this terrain weigh disproportionately upon the resource poor, which leaves richer actors enjoying the advantage of being able to ‘shift the debate across a range of policy-making arenas’.Footnote ⁶³ Indeed, La Vía Campesina have themselves keenly felt the sharp edge of this challenge, and the attainment therefore of a single, authoritative food and agricultural arena at the global level, in order to enable their effective participation, has been a strategic priority for them for some years.Footnote ⁶⁴ The reform of the UN Committee on World Food Security in 2009 has arguably made a fundamentally important step towards that goal.

II. ii. The reformed UN Committee on World Food Security

The UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) was established in 1974 at the World Food Conference, and tasked with the responsibility of monitoring the hunger elimination commitments that governments made there. Whatever its track record in between, by the mid-2000s the CFS enjoyed something of a precarious status, and some envisaging its winding down, or at least, a significant reduction in its work load.Footnote ⁶⁵ Some commentators even questioning whether the UN had any role to play in food security efforts more generally.Footnote ⁶⁶ However, in October 2009 the CFS emerged from a relatively quick (six month) negotiation process with a blueprint for its reform that emphatically affirmed its status in the international food and agricultural institutional architecture, and outlined an organisational structure that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon subsequently hailed as a ‘model of multistakeholder governance – an example for all’.Footnote ⁶⁷

The catalyst for this transformation was the 2007–8 ‘food price crisis’. Involving food riots and social unrest in over thirty countries in response to sharp, sudden rises in the international prices of some key food staples (which made them inaccessible to certain populations), this event had the effect of propelling food security significantly up the agenda of global elites such as the G8, the G20, and the senior bureaucracy of the UN. As well as seizing the agenda of an international summit,Footnote ⁶⁸ and a raft of new funding pledges, one important consequence of this increased attention was the transformation of a simmering discontent with the performance of the international food security institutional architecture into a concrete process of reform. This led, via a set of highly favourable circumstances, to the revision of the CFS from a fairly irrelevant body at the margins of the UN system, to one that now aspired to be the ‘central United Nations political platform dealing with food security and nutrition’.Footnote ⁶⁹ Three properties of the reformed CFS are particularly relevant.

The first feature of note in the reformed CFS is its inclusivity. The CFS is an intergovernmental committee. It was created by states, and states, predominantly via their diplomatic representation at the CFS’s host institution, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), are its principal actor. However, in part as a response to the number of different transnationally and otherwise located entities and actors who are relevant to food and agricultural policymaking, the CFS now extends formal participation rights, excluding decision-making authority reserved for states alone, to a wide range of actors. These include representatives of International Financial Institutions, such as the World Bank; representatives of agricultural research centres; those from the private sector; and representatives of other UN bodies with a specific mandate in food and agriculture. Crucially, the CFS now also aspires to meaningfully include those ‘most affected by food security’, and identifies 11 civil society constituencies whose inclusion in its work should be a matter of ‘particular attention’.Footnote ⁷⁰ These are: ‘smallholder family farmers, artisanal fisherfolk, herders/pastoralists, landless, urban poor, agricultural and food workers, women, youth, consumers, Indigenous Peoples, and International NGOs whose mandates and activities are concentrated in the areas of concern to the Committee’.Footnote ⁷¹ The extension of formal participation rights in an intergovernmental committee to representatives of small-scale food producers and other marginalised constituencies is, of course, ‘unprecedented’ in the history of UN-civil society relations.Footnote ⁷²

The second feature of note is the CFS’s aspirations to become a site of policy debate. This aspiration is signalled within its reform blueprint both implicitly and explicitly. Implicitly, it follows from the focus of the CFS, expressed via its roles, upon promoting global level policy coherence and coordination.Footnote ⁷³ Given both the current state of food and agricultural policymaking, characterised by ‘competing and contested policy options’Footnote ⁷⁴ and the range of actors now permitted to participate in the CFS’s work, it is to be expected that this journey towards coherence and coordination would be attended by no small measure of debate and contestation. Indeed, the reform blueprint communicates as much, and explicitly recognises the role of the CFS as a site of inclusive, global level policy debate.Footnote ⁷⁵

And finally, the last key feature to note about the reformed CFS is its aspiration for political centrality. As noted, prior to its reform some observers assigned the CFS a precarious status. Indeed, in the context of the post-2007–8 food price crisis and the concern this provoked amongst policy elites with reform of the international food security institutional architecture, there was an apparent attempt by some powerful states to shift the locus of international food security coordination from Rome (home of the FAO, the CFS, and three other UN entities with mandates in food and agriculture) to Washington, DC, home of the Bretton Woods institutions and the International Food Policy Research Institute.Footnote ⁷⁶ This possibility never materialised, however, and following its reform the CFS declared itself to be: [T]he central United Nations political platform dealing with food security and nutrition.’Footnote ⁷⁷ An aspiration that, in part, is why legal scholar and former Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter has argued that the reformed CFS represents ‘an innovative way to overcome the challenge of fragmentation in international law’.Footnote ⁷⁸

Following its reform the UN Committee on World Food Security now manifests three important aspirations: to be inclusive, to be a site of policy debate, and to be politically central. It therefore promises to embody many of the properties sought by La Vía Campesina in the global governance of food and agriculture. This is not an accident, and reflects to some extent the high degree of influence that La Vía Campesina and their allies in the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) were able enjoy during the process of negotiating the vision for the CFS’s reform. The opening for them in this process came in part as a result of many years investment of time and energy cultivating a presence before FAO (the CFS’s host institution) and other Rome-based food entities such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development. When the IPC was formally invited to participate in the CFS reform discussions, this gave La Vía Campesina an opportunity to initially observe, but then become more active in the reform discussions as the process continued. To key La Vía Campesina personnel participating throughout its final stages, both the level of participation they enjoyed in the CFS reform process, and their influence over its outcome greatly exceeded their expectations at that time.Footnote ⁷⁹ And following the adoption of the reform blueprint in October 2009 La Vía Campesina has continued to invest a high level of participation in the reformed CFS, being an active participant both in its intersessional work, and its annual plenary.Footnote ⁸⁰

The presence of La Vía Campesina, and other transnational social movement actorsFootnote ⁸¹ in the its meetings and work means that the CFS promises to include small-scale food producers and other rural peoples in a policy arena that aspires for political centrality and in which the contested nature of contemporary food policy is implicitly and explicitly recognised. It promises, in other words, to articulate the ‘communication flows’ emanating from an affected public and its allies’ subaltern counterpublics, with transnational public authority, and by so doing provide the institutional component of a transnational public sphere. The vehicle of that articulation is of course the direct participation of affected publics, underpinned by a formal right of inclusion in the CFS’s work.

There is of course a key distinction to be drawn between the promise contained in a text (the CFS reform blueprint) and the delivery of that promise in practice (the actual functioning of the CFS). To fulfil the institutional criteria of a transnational public sphere the CFS must deliver on its three key dimensions simultaneously. It must become meaningfully: politically central, a site of policy debate, and inclusive. To be sure, none of these goals looked like it was ever going to come easy, and recent studies covering the post-reform period indicate that mixed progress is visible within each area.

For example, in terms of its aspirations for political centrality, various dynamics communicate that the CFS has undoubtedly established itself as a key forum for food security discussion at the global level. These include increased participation in its work by key states and regions, the private sector and International Financial Institutions such as the World Bank. They also include discursive recognition, at least, of the role of the CFS as a key site of global food security coordination from other global policy fora, including the UN General Assembly, the G20, G8, and UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).Footnote ⁸² Perhaps more importantly, there is now clear evidence that CFS policy instruments are influencing the behaviour of both state and non-state actors. The ‘Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security’ provide probably the best illustration of this. Adopted by the CFS in 2012, the Guidelines are already showing signs of impacting upon national legislative processes, have been recognised by the UK government, for example, as providing a ‘globally agreed standard’ for land governance, and appear to be influencing outcomes at the ground level in their domain of influence (governance of land and natural resources).Footnote ⁸³ This indicates then, that although falling short of the production of ‘binding laws’ and the exercise of ‘administrative power’, the CFS is making important progress in its pursuit of ‘political centrality’. In the context of its emergence – the institutional fragmentation of transnational food and agricultural policymaking – this is important.

However, it is also the case that many global policy entities simultaneously duplicate, ignore, or even contradict the work of the CFS in their own activities,Footnote ⁸⁴ an outcome that in the eyes of some commentators clearly undermines the CFS’s ‘mandate and legitimacy’.Footnote ⁸⁵ Intense resistance offered by some states to the CFS’s attempts to expand its discussions into the area of international food and agricultural trade, the domain of the World Trade Organization, provides another pertinent illustration of the challenge facing the CFS as it aspires for ‘political centrality’.Footnote ⁸⁶

Similar variability is evident in the CFS’s aspirations to operationalise ‘policy debate’. There can be no doubt that since its reform the CFS has maintained a prominent place for inclusive, sometimes heated dialogue involving state and non-state actors in its work. This dialogical ethos is sometimes referred to by member states as the ‘spirit’ of the CFS, and provides an environment that denies traction to more conventional diplomatic carrot and stick approaches, particularly evident in those moments when traditionally powerful states fail to strong-arm other states into alignment with their positions using such means.Footnote ⁸⁷ However, it is also the case that the CFS exhibits significant uncertainty about how best to realise its aspirations for policy debate. One example of this is the general lack of clarity in the reformed CFS about the relationship between policy debate and decision-making authority, formally the preserve of member states. This ambiguity means that on some occasions, reflecting a prevailing tendency towards consensus promotion characteristic of UN processes, decisions are taken ‘up stream’Footnote ⁸⁸ to restrict the terms of a CFS debate in a way that eliminates potentially contentious topics or positions before they get to the wider membership. Unevenness in the chairing and facilitation skills of state representatives (who chair CFS policy processes and negotiations) also affects the quality of policy debate in the CFS in a way that undermines its full potential.Footnote ⁸⁹

It is perhaps in respect to the CFS’s aspirations for inclusivity where progress has been most clearly visible, particularly where civil society participation is concerned. As noted, the formal rights now enjoyed in the CFS by small-scale food producers and other rural, and food-insecure constituencies, are unprecedented in the history of UN-civil society relations. Civil society now literally sits side by side with state representatives, both in the CFS’s ‘intersessional’ work, and its annual plenary. They participate in the governance of the CFS via their representation in the ‘Advisory Group’, a multi-stakeholder governance organ supporting the purely member state constituted Bureau. And they have operationalised the principle of civil society autonomy in their engagement with the CFS via their creation of a Civil Society Mechanism (to facilitate their participation in the CFS on an ongoing basis) and their management of their own participation in specific policy processes, such as that to formulate a set of Guidelines on governance of natural resource tenure, adopted by the CFS in October 2012.Footnote ⁹⁰

Compared to their historical experience in the meetings of the CFS and its host institution, the FAO, where their participation was largely episodic (confined to specific events such as the 2006 International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development) or discretionary (depending on the chair of a specific meeting opening up floor space for them), these gains are profoundly significant.Footnote ⁹¹ And crucially, civil society participants in the CFS have been able to see the impacts of their inclusion: shaping the terms of key debates, introducing new perspectives into the CFS’s work, and influencing the content of important CFS outcomes.Footnote ⁹² Such instances of civil society impact on transnational policymaking are extremely rare, and further underscore the unique character of the CFS.Footnote ⁹³ However, progress here has also not been seamless. A civil society ‘walk out’ in 2011 in response to their exclusion from an important debate illustrates that the full realisation of their formal participation rights can still be dependent upon the discretion of the individuals chairing CFS sessions at any given moment.Footnote ⁹⁴

It is evident then that, although uneven, the post-reform CFS is making significant progress realising the promise contained within its reform blueprint in the three areas of relevance to public sphere theory. From the perspective of this article, and public sphere theory’s transnational turn, this is highly significant, because it means that we can indeed now recognise the existence of a nascent transnational public sphere, with the CFS providing its institutional component. The relationship between La Vía Campesina and the CFS, in other words, signal that it is possible to apply public sphere theory to the transnational in a way that is neither utopian, nor which requires a dilution of its critical theoretical potential. In regards to this latter concern, this means that we don’t have to abandon public sphere theory’s normative conditions in order to recognise the democratic potential of the LVC-CFS dynamic. Indeed, far from requiring a dilution of its critical theoretical potential, the LVC-CFS relationship allows us to develop this critical theoretical potential further, by applying public sphere theory to an ongoing evaluation of the degree to which that democratic potential is continuing to be fulfilled, or failed. I am talking here about the development of an empirical research agenda for public sphere theory’s transnational turn, something that has been lacking at both the national, and transnational level.Footnote ⁹⁵

For example, examining the CFS’s aspirations to be a site of policy debate could involve focusing more precisely upon the deliberative processes that unfolds within its various arenas, specifically the ways in which (policy) norms become established and contested therein. Or, focusing on the CFS’s aspirations to be politically central, it would seem particularly important to identify whether the CFS’s inclusion of marginal and resource-poor stakeholders has any bearing upon the impact of the policy instruments that it generates, for better or worse. Whatever the area of focus selected, some degree of methodological bracketing will be required, so as to enable focus on one area at a time. It is essential to recognise, however, that no individual area is more important than another as an indicator of progress towards the full realisation of the CFS’s potential. Each is necessary to the realisation of that potential, but not sufficient. For instance, it might be that the CFS does go on to establish itself as the ‘central political space’ for food security policymaking at the global levelFootnote ⁹⁶ but that all of its decisions are the result of non-discursive influence (e.g. backroom deals amongst the most powerful states). Or, inversely, the CFS might establish itself as a forum of policy debate to the satisfaction of all interested parties, but remain politically irrelevant. In either case the CFS will have realised an attribute that is necessary, but not sufficient for the attainment of its potential as the institutional component of a transnational public sphere.

III. i. Proposition one

The articulation of communication flows from the periphery of informal or affected publics, via their direct participation, with (transnational) policymaking, necessitates their attainment of certain conditions: the Requisites of Effective Participation.

For example, at a minimum, to communicate the perspectivesFootnote ¹⁰⁶ of their constituencies and critically debate and shape formal policy processes, civil society participants in the CFS need to have some idea of what is being discussed, how this might potentially affect their constituency, and what that wider constituency’s aspirations are for the policy-issue under considerationFootnote ¹⁰⁷ Likewise, to be able to take up their formal right to participate in the CFS, small-scale food producers and other rural and food insecure constituencies need to be able to travel to the location of its meetings (usually Rome), and once there, know how to gain entry into actual discussions (that is, negotiate the protocols and procedures of an intergovernmental arena). And, furthermore, successful interventions in such spaces require that the participants are psychologically, emotionally, and physically comfortable with the scales and modes of participation; can communicate their perspectives and positions is a way that gains traction with other interlocutors in the arena; and enjoy a commitment to be heard from those same interlocutors, particularly the decision-makers: member states.

In short, we can say then that the Requisites of Effective Participation, comprise:

• ∙ Attaining spatial and temporal convergence with the arena;

• ∙ Communicating intelligibly and persuasively;

• ∙ Being informed (about what is being discussed and how it potentially affects your constituency);

• ∙ Being (physically, emotionally, and psychologically) comfortable with participation in the arena; and

• ∙ Being recognised as having the right to speak (by the other interlocutors in the arena).Footnote ¹⁰⁸

These conditions embody a notion of effective participation informed in the first instance by public sphere theory’s insistence that legitimate political decision-making hinges upon the articulation of communication flows from informal with formal publics.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ To put it another way, they address the question: If the articulation between global formal and informal publics is going to be achieved by the formal participation of the latter in the arenas of the former, then what conditions have to be achieved? Crucially, they have to be situated within an awareness of the fact that such participation is representative participation, and necessitates for those coming up into the intergovernmental milieu a constant bridging of the formal and informal spheres. Thus, being informed would entail the representative of the affected public (for example, smallholder food producers) both understanding the policy issue under consideration, but also, importantly, how it affected them and their constituency. This might well entail regular consultation between the global level representative and the wider constituency. Historically, La Vía Campesina representatives have vigilantly guarded their right to be in ongoing dialogue with their grassroots membership.Footnote ¹¹⁰ This has naturally affected their ability to respond to the tight rhythms of intergovernmental policy processes, causing frustration even amongst so-called sympathetic UN officials.Footnote ¹¹¹ The point here is simply that this dual responsibility to the exigencies of effective participation in the arena, on the one hand, and the core constituency, on the other, create tensions that need to be negotiated moving forwards.

III. ii. Proposition two

These are abstract conditions of effective participation, but, as has been alluded to above, their attainment, or not, is in part a matter of engaging with, and working through concrete participatory opportunities embodied in a specific arena and its processes. For example, in the case of the CFS, to attain spatial and temporal convergence requires, most of the time, travelling to Rome. To communicate intelligibly and persuasively demands, at minimum, speaking one of FAO’s six official languages.Footnote ¹¹² And often, particularly outside of formal meetings, it requires speaking English. And to be psychologically comfortable with participation in the arena and its processes requires, in the case of the CFS’s plenary meetings certainly, an ability to speak before an audience of several hundred people, most of whom are global elites (diplomats, senior politicians, and UN and national officials) and other ‘policy professionals’.Footnote ¹¹³

Needless to say, if you are deficient in the specific capacities that are required by the participatory opportunities embodied in an arena such as the CFS, then either you can’t participate, or your participation will be compromised. For example, if an aspirant interlocutor doesn’t speak one of FAO’s official languages, then they can’t communicate in CFS meetings. In the context of the framework that I am discussing here, a non-official-language-speaking aspirant interlocutor would be identified as experiencing an REP deficit. And similarly, if an aspirant participant in the CFS is already overstretched in terms of time and workload (capacity), and if briefing documents and agendas are released very near to the dates of actual meetings (participatory opportunity), then they won’t be informed about the meeting, and its potential implications for their constituency (REP outcome).

Capacity is not, however, the only agent-centric attribute that bears upon the quality of an interlocutor’s ‘take up’ of the participatory opportunities within an arena like the CFS. Participatory preferences are also key components. Intelligible communication, for example, extends beyond the need to be clear to one’s interlocutors. It also necessitates being true to what one is trying to say. The CFS is an intergovernmental arena, and operates within a specific ‘genre’,Footnote ¹¹⁴ a particular style of speaking that is characteristic of the diplomatic milieu. Such formal-technical ‘conventionalised discourses’ impose particular constraints upon those whom work within them.Footnote ¹¹⁵ For representatives of marginalised, or subaltern constituencies, who may pursue very different ‘strategies of representation’,Footnote ¹¹⁶ such discourses might therefore frustrate their efforts of intelligible communication by denying them the opportunity for accurate self-expression. Indeed, in the specific history of civil society’s engagements with formal intergovernmental processes of food and agricultural policymaking, there have been instances when officials, only familiar with La Vía Campesina via their participation in the formal spaces, upon entering their autonomous discursive arenas have become conscious of until then not quite understanding what the movement is, and what it has been trying to say.Footnote ¹¹⁷

And finally, it is also important to recognise that along with capacity, on the one hand, and participatory preferences, on the other, identity is also significant as a factor that affects an individual’s ability and willingness to engage successfully with arena-specific participatory opportunities. For example, recognition of the right to speak requires in the case of an arena like the CFS, at a minimum, the formal right to participate in its meetings and spaces. Those without this formal right cannot participate (they would not even get past security at FAO headquarters, the location of the CFS). Beyond this, however, to be able to debate and contest with a potential interlocutor (such as member states) requires of that potential interlocutor a willingness to extend to you a commitment to hear you speak. Indeed, for Habermas, the successful enactment of the public sphere needs to go beyond this, in that in requires affected publics’ attainment of ‘communicative freedom’, which entails:

This delineates the necessity of a specific attitude or ‘illocutionary obligation’, on the part of one’s interlocutor (member states), including their willingness to justify the ‘validity claims’ raised within a particular speech act, or, by extension, policy decision or framing. Identity is relevant here because even amongst those whom have made it into the room, differences in identity connected to gender, race, class, age, and more, have very significant impacts upon who gets to speak, when they get to speak, who gets listened to, and who gets responded to.Footnote ¹¹⁹

In summary, we can recognise then that in the first instance the attainment or not of the Requisites of Effective Participation is a result of the dynamic interplay between agent-centric (capacities, identity, and participatory preferences) and arena-specific (participatory opportunity) properties. If, for instance, a participant’s capacities (for example, language skills, financial resources, time, knowledge) are insufficient to negotiate a particular participatory opportunity, then the result will be a REP deficit. It is important to also recognise, however, that distance between the agent and the arena can be bridged through the provision of third party facilitation. This might involve the delivery of financial resources, trainings, interpretation or translation services, briefing documents and policy guides, organisational capacity, and more. In the context of the CFS this insight is particular important, because it recognises the roles that are very much being played there by NGOs, who via their membership of the CSM support social movement and affected public participation through the provision of much of the above.Footnote ¹²⁰

Carrying these insights forward, the second proposition asserts then that:

REP outcomes are a result of the degree of convergence between the capacities, participatory preferences and identity of the actor, the participatory opportunities within the arena, and the degree of third party facilitation that is available to make up any divergence between the two.

The framework outlined above communicates that different actors (who vary according to their capacities, participatory preferences, identities, and access to facilitation) will experience the same participatory opportunities differently. It therefore underscores the importance of specific attention to the ongoing efforts of small-scale food producers, and other non-elite civil society constituencies, seeking to convert their formal right to participate in the CFS into effective participation. Such a disaggregated approach (that is, disaggregating these actors from NGOs, and other non-state actors formally entitled to participate in the CFS) is key to understanding what challenges they face, and how and if these are being overcome. Equally important, however, is the need to also capture the experiences of actors from the other constituencies formally entitled to participate in the CFS, including the private sector; representatives from other UN agencies with mandates in food; and representatives from International Financial Institutions. This comparative analysis would enable differentiation between those challenges that are uniquely being faced by small-scale food producers, and other non-elite civil society constituencies, and those that are being encountered by a wider range of constituencies, and are therefore more like to be ‘arena-specific’.

The REP framework, however, is not only a methodology for analysing non-elite participation in a transnational policy processes. It also identifies three different types of intervention that are potentially available to address REP deficits. For example, if the participatory opportunity within the arena is speaking English, and the aspirant participant only speaks Spanish, then one route to remedying this REP deficit would be via the addition of Spanish as a formal, interpreted language within the arena. Alternately, another route would be the potential participant learning English. And finally, it would also be possible for a third party (for example, a civil society ally) to facilitate the potential participant’s participation by providing interpretation services themselves. These three responses indicate the three different routes to remedying REP deficit: arena-adjustment; actor-adjustment; and facilitation. To use another example, in the case of converging spatially and temporally with the arena, if the participatory opportunity involved travelling to Rome, and the actor lacked sufficient capacity to achieve this, the three potential responses are: changing the location of the meeting to accommodate the actor’s capacity (arena-adjustment); the actor reallocating resources to enable their journey (actor-adjustment); and, a third party providing the funds for the journey (facilitation).

The recognition of these three potential routes is especially crucial in a context where historically civil society has been responsible for making up the gap between themselves and the formal sphere of UN/transnational food and agricultural policymaking.Footnote ¹²¹ Typically, such bridging creates the danger of ‘professionalisation’, or adaptation to the modes of working and speaking prevalent in the institutional arena.Footnote ¹²² This dynamic generates at least two key concerns. Firstly, if effective participation is attainable only by those actors capable or willing to adjust to the intergovernmental milieu, then this, by excluding the great many actors who can’t or won’t adjust, greatly constrains the democratic potential of such arrangements, where democratic legitimacy hinges upon the effective participation of affected publics in key decision-making and policy processes. Secondly, even and perhaps especially when adaptation is successfully undergone, this creates the risk of ‘estrangement’ between the nominal representative, and the constituencies and communities they are meant to be representing (though of course, as is captured in Table 1, none of the potential routes to remedying an REP deficit is without risk).Footnote ¹²³ Thus, given its historical absence, but potential value, a key goal for the analysis of the democratic potential within institutional innovations such as that embodied in the reformed CFS concerns the identification of actual instances of, or potential for, arena adjustment to enable the participation of affected publics.

Table 1 Examples of REP deficits, remedies, and risks in two areas.

This would involve, for example, identifying if institutional process managers – the diplomats and officials who collectively manage and shape the dynamics of meetings – are willing to accommodate or initiate arena adjustment. Or to put it another way, this would entail capturing the degree to which institutional process managers are able to denaturalise the modes and structures of participation that perhaps most accommodate their own capacities, identities, and participatory preferences. Particularly important in this regard will be identification of the conditions under which arena adjustment does, or could take place. For example, at the CFS in 2012, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon was afforded the opportunity to engage with the plenary via webcast.Footnote ¹²⁴ Perhaps this instance of arena adjustment was connected to high recognition amongst institutional process managers of the UNS-G’s right to speak and, indeed, the fact that his participation confers increased legitimacy on the CFS as it seeks to establish itself as a politically central global level food security coordination mechanism. Whether this was the case or not, the question is: Are institutional process managers in the CFS willing to adjust the participatory opportunities within its arenas and processes to enable the participation of affected publics therein? The answer to this question has profound implications for the democratic potential of the CFS, and beyond.Footnote ¹²⁵