Innovative Multi-Actor Collaborations as Collective Actors and Institutionalized Spaces. The Case of Food Governance Transformation in Leuven (Belgium)

Abstract

The sustainable transformation of food systems is a particularly prolific field in which innovative multi-actor collaborations (IMACs) are being tested. Despite the growing literature on food governance and transformation of food systems, and on the principles of alternative food networks and local food strategies, little is known about how these are implemented and how multi-actor networks are coordinated and governed. Taking food as a lens, our objectives are to identify (1) how IMACs are established, (2) how collaboration is enacted within them, and (3) how governance innovations in these fields affect and are affected by broader urban governance innovation. Methodologically, we take a transdisciplinary action research approach, combining different groups of researchers with stakeholders involved in two on-going and interacting IMAC trajectories in Leuven (Belgium), i.e., the non-profit governmental organization Leuven2030 aiming to achieve climate-neutrality and the parallel collective development and implementation of the local food strategy “Food Connects.” After reconstructing the trajectory of these IMACs from a governance perspective and discussing their current limitations, we realize that these IMACs perform both as collective actors and as institutionalized spaces for experimentation and transformative change. Our findings demonstrate that IMACs can be an empowering tool for local actors to challenge supra-local and systemic power imbalance and injustice; that networking and supra-local connections of urban actors can increase the legitimacy and outreach of transition processes, mobilization of resources and peer-learning; and that the consolidation of IMACs builds on previous sedimentations of experimentation and benefits from the impulse of political will in specific windows of opportunity. We conclude that the institutionalization of common objectives set within IMACs requires a parallel institutionalization of governance structures that enabled reaching them, which entails defining specific roles and responsibilities among actors and ensuring stable spaces for conflict, deliberation, and negotiation.

The Leuven Gymkhana: Transdisciplinary Action Research Questioning Socially Innovative Multi-Actor Collaborations in COVID Times

“…A full report of the discussion of the results and recommendations with Leuven2030 and City representatives was also developed and shared with participants and other stakeholders in Leuven. 9 This open-access article and a parallel one sharing our learnings about IMACs (Medina-García et al, 2022) are another step in the continuous translation of the results in different formats and styles to valorize and mobilize them among academia and stakeholders of the processes investigated. Table 2 summarizes all the AR artifacts and activities cocreated, reflecting on their role along the AR trajectory.…”

“…The analysis of the Leuven2030 public-civic-private partnership and the parallel development of a food strategy for the city served as case study. While these initiatives were questioned as socially innovative multi-actor collaborations (IMACs) in a parallel publication (Medina-García et al, 2022), this methodological paper specifically addresses our experience with TAR between 2020 and 2021, the involvement of different layers of researchers, stakeholders and participants, the challenges that the specific COVID context posed on our work, the innovation in terms of tools and approaches under such circumstances, and how our TAR trajectory contributed to the ongoing IMACs in Leuven.…”

A Scoping Review of Food Systems Governance Frameworks and Models to Develop a Typology for Social Change Movements to Transform Food Systems for People and Planetary Health

“…These terms include food, nutrition, and/or food systems governance [21,[32][33][34][35]; food safety governance [36]; food security governance [37]; aquaculture governance [38]; agri-food chain and agroecosystems governance [39]; sustainability governance for food systems [40]; and private or corporate food governance [17,[41][42][43]. Many UN system and grey literature sources described aspirational principles to transform food systems, such as collaborative shared governance [44], inclusive food systems and rights-based governance [45][46][47][48], good governance [49,50], responsible governance [51], regulatory and accountable governance [52], and transformative food governance [53].…”

Epistemic outsiders: Unpacking and utilising the epistemic dimension of disruptive agency in sustainability transformations

“…It would equally ask for and pursue the (disruptive) appropriation or conception of institutions to embrace and support deviating beliefs while in turn constraining the pursuit of established ones. With a view to the insider stage of transformations, such processes of transformative institutionalization have been discussed extensively in the literature [124,87,125], although without recognising their fundamental epistemic dimension. However, as Haslanger has pointed out, institutional changes most often follow the changes that occur in the "cultural techne ¯" [126], referring to what we characterised as an epistemic layout.…”