Politicisation and Coalition Magnets in Policy Making: A Comparative Study of Food Sovereignty and Agricultural Reform in Nepal and Ecuador

Abstract

Politicisation can be a strategy in which reform advocates use new ideas with coalition magnet attributes to engage a broad range of actors in setting the agenda for policy reform. Comparing the cases of Ecuador and Nepal, the article shows that the generally appealing but ambiguous idea of food sovereignty is a coalition magnet. Through politicisation, agriculture reform advocates in the two countries used the idea to form coalitions of diverse groups supporting reform. But due to the idea’s ambiguities, a coherent set of reform measures is lacking. This has impeded policy reforms in the two countries.

Keywords:

• coalition magnet
• food sovereignty
• politicisation
• Ecuador
• Nepal

Acknowledgements

The authors participated in the special issue workshop at Heidelberg University in March 2019. Which was funded by the Heidelberg Center for the Environment and the Field of Focus 4 on ‘Self-Regulation and Regulation: Individuals and Societies.’ We would like to thank the participants at this event. The guest editors and the two reviewers for constructive comments. The first author thanks the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia, for providing funding under the Australia Awards Scholarship to undertake research in Nepal.

Notes

1. For details about the Maoist rebellion in Nepal and rural people’s support for the rebellion, see, for example, Rai (2016), Sharma (2006a, 2006b), and Joshi and Mason (2007). For details of the king’s power exercise and political parties’ struggle against the monarchy, see, for example, Ganguly and Shoup (2005) and Hachhethu (2007).

2. CPN (UML) and CPN (Maoist) have recently merged to form a single political party.

3. Personal interviews with the general secretary of ANPFa and the chairperson of the National Peasants’ Association (NPA).

4. Also substantiated through interviews with (i) an advocate who was an advisor to the parliament’s Natural Resources Committee, (ii) a senior civil society leader, and (iii) a senior agricultural policy analyst and activist.

5. Personal interviews with leaders of farmer organisations of three major political parties.

6. In due course, 10 other associations also joined the coalition. See, http://anpfa.org.np/index.php/about-anpfa/membership-and-networking

7. Personal interviews with leaders of farmer organisations of three major political parties.

8. Personal interviews with the chairman of NPA, and a senior agricultural policy analyst and activist.

9. Personal interview.

10. Personal interviews with secretary of ANPFa-R and general secretary of ANPFa.

11. Personal interview with one of the drafters.

12. Personal interview with an agricultural policy analyst and activist, and with the president of a farmers’ organisation unaffiliated with any political party. This is in line with the promotion of the idea of food sovereignty by global social movements on food sovereignty (see Bernstein 2014).

13. For details about the contestations that appeared in the course of including “food sovereignty” in Ecuador’s constitution, see McKay et al. (2014), Peña (2016) and Flores et al. (2018).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australian Government [Australia Awards Scholarship].

Notes on contributors

Puspa Sharma

Puspa Sharma is the Executive Director of South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment (SAWTEE), a think tank based in Kathmandu. He holds a PhD Degree awarded by the Australian National University. He has about 15 years of policy research experience focusing on Nepal and South Asia. His research interests are in the area of public policy, specifically food policy and governance, agriculture policy and trade policy.

Carsten Daugbjerg

Carsten Daugbjerg is a Professor at the Department of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen and an Honorary Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy and an Associate at the ANU Centre for European Studies, the Australian National University. His research focuses on agricultural policy reform, agricultural trade negotiations, public and private food standards in global trade, government interest group relations and environmental policy with a particular interest in agri-environmental regulation, organic food policies and biofuels policy.