The administrative state in food policymaking: a fait accompli

PurposeThis paper analyzes scholarly literature and the development of a nonstate food strategy in Canada, the Conference Board of Canada's Canadian Food Strategy, to explore the role of the administrative state in food policymaking.Design/methodology/approachThis research is based on an exploratory case study drawing data from 38 semistructured interviews, including elite interviews. It also draws on policy documents from the nonstate food strategy.FindingsThis paper shows that various nonstate actors, including large food industry players, identify a role for the state in food policy in two ways: as a “conductor,” playing a managing role in the food policy process, and as a “commander,” taking control of policy development and involving nonstate actors when necessary. The complex and wicked aspects of food policy require the administrative state's involvement in food policymaking, while tamer aspects of food policy may be less state-centric.Originality/valueThis paper fills gaps in studies exploring food policymaking processes as well as the administrative state's role in food policymaking in a governance era. It contributes to a better understanding of the state's role in complex and wicked policy domains.

The Power of Knowledge: How Think Tanks Impact US Foreign Policy

Studies on foreign policy consider government as the key actor in policy formulation and implementation. Research, apparently, has devoted far less attention to impact of knowledge brokers, such as think tanks, on policy-making. How and why do think tanks influence US foreign policy? An analysis of five think tanks that differ in terms of their proximity to elites, origin, and ideology reveals two types of nonstate actors’ impact on foreign policy. Think tanks either advocate for own alternative policy proposals, solutions, and actions (“alternatives’ facilitators”), or clarify, justify, and legitimize those of the governments (“policy legitimizers”). These two roles dictate special mechanisms and think tank impact directions. In the first type, think tanks are less oriented toward mass media, but more oriented toward coalitions with nonstate actors and influence the opinions of elites. The second type is the opposite: higher orientation toward mass media and more pronounced connections with elites, and influence on the public. Different origins and strategy of think tanks may be the reasons for some observed differences.

Examining the Dynamics Between Formal and Informal Institutions in Progressive City Planning

What explains the institutionalization of progressive city planning practices? Using Medellín as a case study, I analyze how state and nonstate actors target both formal and informal institutions in efforts to maintain the continuity of progressive public space provision practices. I introduce the idea of institutional compounding, defined as the quest by networks of individuals and organizations to create and sustain both formal and informal institutions, where each maintains its particular defining features while together they provide continuity and legitimacy to an existing practice. I draw on in-depth, semi-structured interviews, direct observation, and document analysis to demonstrate that continuity efforts are more likely to have an effect when actors engage in institutional compounding, since the strategy minimizes the shortcomings of formal and informal institutions alone. The findings contribute toward conceptualizing how nascent institutions become effective, highlighting how actors strengthen practices and how they seek to embed them through networked efforts.

Economic Sanctions

Chapter 3 covers U.S. government economic sanctions, which may be imposed upon entire countries (as embargoes), specified economic sectors, or individual state or nonstate actors. These comprise approximately thirty different programs that are governed principally by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), various other sanctions legislation, and the regulations of the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The chapter explains: which types of transactions are subject to the OFAC regulations; the basis and criteria for those restrictions; how to determine whether your transaction is prohibited without a license and, if so, whether you are likely to get a license for it; how to seek a license if one is required; and the potential penalties for violating the rules. The chapter also explains how the OFAC regulations relate to the regulatory regimes covered in other parts of the book.

A Struggle over Recognition and Nonrecognition: The Internationalization of the Abkhaz State University

The Abkhaz State University (ASU) is internationally isolated, despite its cooperation with universities in Russia. Georgia combines its refusal to recognize Abkhaz statehood with a policy of nonrecognition of its university, which sets the direction for other countries. But the Abkhaz policies of nonrecognition are also to be taken into account. Abkhazia opposes any form of internationalization of the ASU generating closer ties with Georgia. The article examines how the Georgian and Abkhaz policies of nonrecognition hamper the internationalization of the ASU within the European educational space. It explores a conflict on recognition and nonrecognition of status and identity, where status does not refer exclusively to statehood. In the field of higher education, European integration involves a large number of state and nonstate actors in 49 countries and a wide variety of forms of recognition and nonrecognition, ranging from the certification of individual qualifications and the publication of lists of unrecognized universities, to the setting up of joint educational programs. This integration process is largely state driven but based on the principle of the institutional autonomy of universities. Using the ASU as a case study, the way that policies on nonrecognition affect status in the field of higher education is examined.

Grand Strategy Beyond the West

This chapter examines two of the most famous grand strategies with origins in Asia, identified with Sun Tzu and Gandhi. On the surface they would appear to be unfit for comparison. While Sun Tzu belongs to a tradition of military strategy, and is now part of the classical canon, Gandhi is identified with the nonviolent strategy of nonstate actors. The intention in examining the two together is to explore a family resemblance in their respective conceptions of grand strategy, even while recognizing that they are very distinct. After setting out some broad contrasts regarding cosmology, ontology, and epistemology, the chapter zooms in on the relevance of these points more specifically for understanding Sun Tzu or Gandhi. It concludes with some reflections on why the contrasts are important in a globalizing world. Both cases highlight the importance, if possible, of achieving objectives without recourse to military force, which, it argues, arises from a relational cosmology, where harmony and diversity coexist, and in which truth is not uniform but multiperspectival.

Grand Strategy and the Tools of Economic Statecraft

Economic statecraft provides great powers with a set of valuable tools they can employ in pursuing grand strategies, but the importance of its contribution is often overlooked. This chapter provides a conceptual framework for understanding how policymakers can leverage the tools of economic statecraft to achieve major objectives in pursuit of their grand strategies, including: bargaining, balancing, generating power and prosperity, signaling and norms promotion, and influencing nonstate actors. It then maps how economic sanctions, foreign aid, strategic commercial policy, and institutionalized economic cooperation can best contribute to the realization of these objectives. The analysis reveals that the flexibility of economic sanctions and foreign aid in achieving numerous objectives helps explain why great powers rely so heavily upon them.

The Grand Strategies of Violent Rebel Groups

This chapter examines a range of strategic options violent nonstate actors such as terrorist groups and insurgencies have used over the years with varying degrees of success. These include trying to wear down government forces, attracting significant foreign help, winning over the local population, and intimidating a range of foes in the hope of undermining the government. In many cases, strategies focus on organizational survival, trying to endure and attract resources and recruits while making an area ungovernable or inhospitable for regime forces. The chapter weighs the requirements, strengths, and weaknesses of each approach and how the enemy government shapes the best strategy for the group. It illustrates its arguments with examples from history and a longer description of the Palestinian experience. The chapter concludes by discussing how states might disrupt violent rebel group strategies through diplomacy, political reform, better intelligence, and effective military operations.

Beyond the State, beyond War

This chapter argues it is important to move beyond the focus of most scholarship on the ethics of intervention (on states intervening militarily or with other coercive means) and pay closer attention to interventions undertaken by nonstate actors and/or using less adversarial or coercive means. It clearly delineates the boundaries of the category “reform intervention.” It identifies several dimensions along which reform interventions can vary: the degree of control interveners exercise over recipients, the urgency of interveners’ objectives, the costs an intervention poses to recipients, and how interveners interact with recipients’ existing political institutions. It sketches some preliminary ideas on how these variations might affect an intervention’s permissibility. In so doing, the chapter also introduces several real-world cases of reform intervention.

Introduction

This chapter proposes that we need a new political theory of global politics to guide us in a world increasingly marked by global interconnection, transnational activism on the part of nonstate actors, and political actors that utilize many different means (besides force and coercion) to exert influence on the world stage. The book develops such a theory by examining how justice-promoting intervention (reform intervention) implicates the values of toleration, legitimacy, and collective self-determination. The book then examines how this theory could be put into practice in the real world. Ultimately, the book argues that some reform interventions are morally permissible and may even be morally required. Moreover, we are sometimes morally required to open our own societies to reform intervention. The book presents a vision of conscientious global political contestation in which the achievement of justice everywhere can be the legitimate political concern of people anywhere.