The Application of the multi-level governance model outside the EU-context - the case of food security. EDAP 1/2011

Marzeda-Mlynarska, Katarzyna. (2011) The Application of the multi-level governance model outside the EU-context - the case of food security. EDAP 1/2011. [Working Paper]

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Abstract

The problem of food security governance is systematically gaining in importance but at the same time constitutes one of the less researched areas within the global governance debate. Food security has never been ensured on a global level despite the amazing progress of science and technology. What is more, the changing nature of the threats to food security makes this goal even more distant. Given the multidimensional nature of the food security concept, answers to this challenge have been sought through processes of international negotiations between nation-states. However, it is increasingly clear that nation states, because of its contradictory interests, are unable to solve this issue and meet their international commitments for addressing this issue without more explicit engagements with sub and supranational actions. Involvement of other actors operating on different levels seems to be crucial to the process of governing of food security. The idea of multilevel governance has acquired unprecedented importance today. It not only suggests ways of dealing with new conditions of globalization, but it is said to be an essential term for understanding the transnational processes and for identifying non-traditional actors involved in governance processes on different levels. The idea of multilevel governance was developed into a theoretical account of the European Union in opposition to state centric or intergovernmental accounts. It refers to a particular subset of contemporary governance arrangements in which decisionmaking authority is distributed across more then one level of relatively autonomous public-sector institutions. This paper deals with the problem of food security governance and attempts to answer the question whether multilevel governance becomes a gradually institutionalized new international practice or is it only a theoretical model useful in academic debates, without practical meaning to governance of food security?

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