In the field of global Agrifood governance, the Chair for International Relations and Sustainable Development's team is engaged with research on transnational corporations and food corporations in particular. Here, global and ideal structures that influence the sustainability of the global Agrifood system are of interest. Currently, existing political norms and regulations within the global food and agriculture system are being reorganized in the course of globalization, the emergence of new modes of food production, or the concentration of food trade. Originally, international food and agriculture policy was a matter of negotiations between single governments in affected countries, whereas nowadays policy processes are increasingly dominated by private actors. These actors not only possess the potential to influence decision processes but have also the ability to privately regulate through private standards and corporate social responsibility (CSR), enabling them to implement own rules. These activities not only influence the corporation's actions but have much further reach and influence other actors involved in these processes. As a consequence, questions of sustainability and democratic legitimacy of governing the global food system are central questions the chair's team is concerned with.
Selected publications on that topic
- Fuchs Doris, Gumbert Tobias. 2019. ‘Power without Borders? Transnational Corporations in the Global Food System.’ In The Routledge Handbook of Transnational Studies, edited by Middell Matthias, 267-274. Routledge.
- Gumbert Tobias. 2019. ‘Anti-Democratic Tenets? Behavioural-Economic Imaginaries of a Future Food System.’ Politics and Governance 7, Nr. 4: 94-104. doi: 10.17645/pag.v7i4.2216.
- Kalfagianni, Agni, und Doris Fuchs. 2015. „Private Agrifood Governance and the Challenges for Sustainability“. In Robinson, Guy, und Doris Carson (Hrsg.). Handbook on the Globalization of Agriculture. Houndmills: Edward Elgar, 274-290.
- Fuchs, D.; Kalfagianni, A.; Havinga, T. 2011. „Actors in Private Food Governance. The Legitimacy of Retail Standards and Multistakeholder Initiatives with Civil Society Participation“. Agriculture and Human Values 28 (3): 353-367.
- Clapp, J.; Fuchs, D. (eds.) (2009) Corporate Power in Global Agrifood Governance, Boston: MIT Press.