Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Agrar- und Ernährungspolitik

Transforming Food and Agricultural Policy: Post-exceptionalism in Public Policy, edited by Carsten Daugbjerg and Peter H. Feindt

Food and agriculture policy is widely considered an extreme case of ‘exceptionalist’ policy-making where sector-specific policy ideas and institutions provide privileged access for sectoral interest groups and generate policies that benefit their members. In the last two decades, policy exceptionalism has been under pressure from internationalization of policy making, increasing interlinkage of policy areas and trends towards self-regulation, liberalization and performance-based policies. This book introduces the concept of ‘post-exceptionalism’ to characterize an incomplete transformation of exceptionalist policies and politics which preserves significant exceptionalist features while other parts of the regime have been, or are being, ‘normalized’ through a process of marketization. Chapters on agricultural policy making in the European Union and the United States, the politics of food in Germany and the United Kingdom, transnational organic standard setting and global food security debates demonstrate how ‘post-exceptionalism’ helps to understand the co-existence of transformation and policy legacies in contemporary food and agriculture policies.

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