scholarly journals Introduction to the Special Issue on the Patterns of Interplay between Public and Private Food Regulation

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 482-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Verbruggen ◽  
Tetty Havinga

This Special Issue aims to develop a deeper understanding of the interplay between public and private actors in the regulatory governance of food. It starts from the observation that the traditional concept of law as command-and-control legislation and law enforcement by national governmental bodies, including inspectorates and courts, is not adequate to capture today's world of food governance. Nowadays, a broad range of public and private entities acting at national and international level seek to shape and influence the production, trade and handling of food and the risks involved therein. Drawing on data from Europe and the United States, the contributions to this Special Issue seek to unravel the intimate, yet complex ties between public and private actors within governance arrangements regulating food safety and sustainability. The articles are focused around the various phases of the policy cycle for food governance, thus addressing the interaction in stages of agenda-setting and rule-making, adoption and implementation, monitoring and enforcement, and evaluation and review. In descriptive terms, each contribution lays out the ‘who’ (actors), the ‘what’ (activity), the ‘why’ (rationale) and the ‘how’ (instruments) of food governance. In evaluative terms, the papers discuss and explain the results and challenges of the design of the public private governance arrangements. Jointly, the contributions offer original and invaluable empirical insights explaining the rise, design and challenges of mixed governance arrangements in the food sector.

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 690-695 ◽  
Author(s):  
James G. Hodge ◽  
Lexi C. White ◽  
Andrew Sniegowski

Promoting and protecting the public's health in the United States and abroad are intricately tied to laws and policies. Laws provide support for public health measures, authorize specific actions among public and private actors, and empower public health officials. Laws can also inhibit or restrict efforts designed to improve communal health through protections for individual rights or structural principles of government. Advancing the health of populations through law is complex and subject to constant tradeoffs. This column seeks to explore the role of law in the interests of public health through scholarly and applied assessments across a spectrum of key issues. The first of these assessments focuses on a critical topic in emergency legal preparedness.


Author(s):  
Aurélie Mahalatchimy

This chapter addresses the regulation of medical devices in the European Union. The overall goals of the European regulatory framework for medical devices are the same as the goals of the framework for medicines. It aims to protect public health by ensuring that medical devices are of good quality and safe for their intended use. However, the regulation of medical devices in Europe is very different from the regulation of medicines in two regards. First, unlike medicines, there is no pre-market authorisation by a regulatory authority for medical devices to lawfully enter the EU market. Second, unlike in the United States where the Food and Drug Administration is the primary regulator of devices throughout the nation, the European Union does not have a single regulator of medical devices. Instead, several organisations may be involved, and mainly a notified body in specific cases. The chapter then explains what constitutes a medical device in the EU and how devices are classified according to their level of risk in the EU. It then discusses how medical devices reach the market, how their risks are managed all along their lifecycle, and what kinds of incentives are provided for innovation and competition. The chapter also analyses the balance between public and private actors in the regulation of medical devices. It then concludes with case studies of innovative medical technologies that have challenged the traditional European regulatory scheme and that have led to many revisions in the 2017 device regulations.


2006 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL HOWLETT ◽  
JEREMY RAYNER

To analyse convergence and divergence in Natural Resource New Governance Arrangements (NRNGAs) two regimes in the environmentally-related areas of forest and fisheries management are examined. The findings reveal limited convergence across sectors and countries in the general aims and ideas behind NGAs and evidence of significant policy divergence in the tools and mechanisms created for their implementation. The reasons for the differences lie primarily in the policy formulation process. While the impetus for the adoption of both NRNGAs is in the international and regional realms, without the force of either international law or competitive advantage, pressure for convergence is weak. Aspects of the policy formulation process, especially the manner in which the changing capacities of domestic public and private actors active in the affected resource policy arena interact to influence policy design, are critical for explaining policy convergence and divergence. Specifically, the interplay between the effect of the internationalization of resource policy issues, tending to increase private capacities at the expense of the public one, and the declining importance of primary industries, which has the reverse effect, is shown to have played an important role in NRNGA policy dynamics.


Author(s):  
David Varady ◽  
Reinout Kleinhans ◽  
Maarten van Ham

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to assess the current potential of community entrepreneurship in neighbourhood revitalisation in the US and the UK. The global economic crisis has had a major impact on government spending for urban regeneration. In the context of these austerity regimes, in many European countries, community entrepreneurship and active citizenship are increasingly considered as a means to continue small-scale urban revitalisation. This paper investigates recent literature on both British community enterprises (CEs) and American community development corporations (CDCs). Design/methodology/approach – Starting from a seminal article, this paper reviews literature focusing on the role of CEs and CDCs in neighbourhood revitalisation. Differences and similarities are analysed, taking into account national context differences. Findings – While CDCs have a relatively successful record in affordable housing production in distressed areas, CDCs are fundamentally limited in terms of reversing processes of community decline. CEs in the UK have focused on non-housing issues. Research limitations/implications – This paper asks the question what CEs can learn from CDCs in terms of scope, aims, strategies, accountability, assets and partnerships with public and private actors. However, a systematic literature review has not been conducted. Originality/value – This comparison reveals not only similarities but also differences with regard to aims, organisational characteristics, cooperation on multiple scales and community participation. Apart from lessons that can be learned, this paper provides recommendations for further research that should cover the lack of empirical evidence in this field.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-342
Author(s):  
Eija Meriläinen ◽  
Jukka Mäkinen ◽  
Nikodemus Solitander

The influence of private actors, such as non-profit organizations (NPOs) and firms, has been increasing in disaster governance. Previous literature has interrogated the responsibilities of states towards citizens in disasters, but the roles of private actors have been insufficiently challenged. The article politicizes the entangled relations between NPOs, states, and disaster-affected people. It proposes the Rawlsian division of moral labor as a useful, normative framework for interrogating the justice of disaster governance arrangements in which ‘liberal’ states are involved. Liberal states have two types of responsibilities in disasters: humanitarian and political. The humanitarian responsibilities imply provision of basic resources needed for the capacity to make autonomous choices (domestically and abroad), while the political responsibilities imply provision of the institutions needed for the liberal democratic citizenship (domestically). Through this analytical lens and building on the wealth of existing scholarship, we illustrate the disaster governance role of the American Red Cross in the United States (a 2005 hurricane) and in Haiti (the 2010 earthquake). Where, in Rawlsian terms, United States is interpreted as a ‘liberal’ society, Haiti is framed as a ‘burdened’ society. The article proposes five points to consider in analyzing disaster governance arrangements under neoliberal regimes, structured around the division of humanitarian and political responsibilities. The article illustrates how NPOS are instrumental in blurring the boundaries between humanitarian and political responsibilities. This might result ultimately in actual vulnerabilities remaining unaddressed. While the Rawlsian approach challenges the privatization and lack of coordination in disaster governance, it is limited in analyzing the political construction of ‘burdened’ societies.


Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110209
Author(s):  
Carolina Sarmiento

This research investigates how diversity discourse unfolds as part of commercial gentrification when public and private growth actors call for increased diversity in a city that is majority Latinx in the United States. My argument is twofold: first, commercial gentrification is itself a racialised project to manage diversity; second, the discourse around diversity foments spatial strategies used by both state and private actors that dislocate immigrant communities and economies. This in-depth case study using Santa Ana, California, provides a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between diversity and commercial gentrification in a majority Mexican immigrant city. The research finds that, as diversity discourse promotes liberal colourblind practices within a majority Latinx city, it also contributes to distributing resources along racial lines. Diversity discourse presented a liberal and inclusive form of gentrification while also providing a justification for the displacement of immigrant-serving businesses by positioning them as exclusionary or backward. The dislocation or erasure of immigrant-serving businesses occurred through spatial strategies backed by the state to make new property available in the downtown commercial area. Removal was not only physical but also occurred through assimilation, wherein businesses ‘adapted’ to survive. Planning and development actors in this case failed to recognise the value of cultural and economic community networks while also diverting attention and resources away from immigrant-serving businesses. The case provides unique insight into the multiplicity of economic and political interests in a Latinx-majority place.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 4111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Stattman ◽  
Aarti Gupta ◽  
Lena Partzsch ◽  
Peter Oosterveer

The European Union (EU) stands at a crossroads regarding its biofuel policies. For more than a decade, the EU sought to create a market for and govern sustainable biofuels for the transport sector, even as debates over sustainability escalated. It did so by devising novel hybrid (public and private) governance arrangements. We took stock of the nature and outcomes of this experiment in hybrid biofuel governance. We relied on qualitative methods of analysis, whereby we reviewed and synthesized the evolution of EU biofuel governance arrangements over time, through detailed document analysis of secondary and primary literature, including EU and related policy documents and private certification scheme websites. Our analysis reveals that, instead of yielding an increasingly stringent sustainability framework, the hybrid EU governance arrangements resulted in a proliferation of relatively lax, industry-driven, sustainability standards, even as the notion of “sustainable biofuels” remained contested in public and political debate. These findings contribute to an ongoing debate about the merits of hybrid (public–private) governance arrangements, and whether a hybrid approach helps strengthen or weaken sustainability objectives. We conclude that a more stringent EU meta-standard on sustainability needs to be developed, to underpin future governance arrangements.


2021 ◽  
pp. 221-244
Author(s):  
Sahar Aziz

To protect the security of all, we must curtail the liberty of Muslims. That is the narrative the US government has peddled to the American public since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. As a result, national security has effectively served as the pretext for myriad forms of discrimination against Muslims by public and private actors. This overt targeting of a religious minority reveals a glaring contradiction: Muslims are being treated with open hostility by government and private actors alike despite America’s foundational embrace of religious freedom. The author argues that the reason for this lies in the social construction of Muslims as a racial minority, rather than or in addition to being a religious minority—what the author calls The Racial Muslim. This chapter explores the role of Orientalism (European and American) and American imperialism in the Middle East in the racialization of Muslims in the United States.


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