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² See, for example, Held, David, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Patomäki, Heikki and Teivainen, Teivo, A Possible World: Democratic Transformations of Global Institutions (London: Zed Books, 2004)Google Scholar; Brown, G. W., ‘Safeguarding deliberative global governance: the case of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria’, Review of International Studies, 36:2 (2010), pp. 511–530 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bexell, M., Tallberg, J., and Uhlin, A.. ‘Democracy in global governance: the promises and pitfalls of transnational actors’, Global Governance, 16 (2010), pp. 81–101 Google Scholar; Dryzek, J., Bächtiger, A., and Milewicz, K., ‘Towards a deliberative global citizens’ assembly’, Global Policy, 2:1 (2011), pp. 33–43 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scholte (ed.), Building Global Democracy; Brassett, J. and Tsingou, E., ‘The politics of legitimate global governance’, Review of International Political Economy, 18:1 (2011), pp. 1–16 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Archibugi, Daniele et al. (eds), Global Democracy: Normative and Empirical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2012)Google Scholar.

³ Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Habermas, Jürgen, Between Facts and Norms, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Fraser, N., ‘Special section: Transnational public sphere: Transnationalizing the public sphere: On the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion in a post-Westphalian world’, Theory Culture & Society, 24:7 (2007), pp. 7–30 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Fraser, ‘On the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion in a post-Westphalian world’; Castells, M., ‘The new public sphere: Global civil society, communication networks and global governance’, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616 (2008), pp. 78–93 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Higgot, R. and Erman, E., ‘Deliberative global governance and the question of legitimacy: What can we learn from the WTO?’, Review of International Studies, 36:2 (2010), pp. 449–470 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Germain, R., ‘Financial governance and transnational deliberative democracy’, Review of International Studies, 36:2 (2010), pp. 493–509 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bohman, J., ‘Democratising the global order: From communicative freedom to communicative power’, Review of International Studies, 36:2 (2010), pp. 431–447 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fraser, Nancy et al., Transnationalizing the Public Sphere, ed. Kate Nash (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014)Google Scholar. For an earlier discussion of these dynamics see also Garnham, Nicholas, ‘The media and the public sphere’, in Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (London: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992), pp. 359–376 Google Scholar.

⁵ For example a number of key studies, whilst not attempting to apply public sphere theory in a comprehensive way to an analysis of transnational political dynamics, have used the framework as a methodological reference point in their analyses of civil society, and its interactions with global governance. See, for example, Kaldor, Mary, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War (London: Zed Books, 2003)Google Scholar; Steffek, Jens and Nanz, Patrizia, ‘Emergent patterns of civil society participation in global and European governance’, in Jens Steffek, Claudia Kissling, and Patrizia Nanz (eds), Civil Society Participation in European and Global Governance: A Cure for the Democratic Deficit? (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jan Aart Scholte, ‘Global governance, accountability and civil society’, in Scholte (ed.), Building Global Democracy.

⁶ Kate Nash for example states that ‘At the global scale there is clearly nothing that resembles … a global public sphere judged in terms of Habermas’s theory of democracy.’ Nash, Kate, ‘Towards transnational democratization?’, in Nash (ed.), Transnationalizing the Public Sphere, p. 66 Google Scholar.

⁷ Ibid., p. 61; Couldry, Nick, ‘What and where is the transnationalized public sphere?’, in Nash (ed.), Transnationalizing the Public Sphere, p. 44 Google Scholar; Baynes, Kenneth, ‘Nancy Fraser et al., Transnationalizing the Public Sphere, ed. Kate Nash, Polity, 2014’, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2015)Google Scholar, available at: {https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/55751-transnationalizing-the-public-sphere/} accessed 1 May 2016.

⁸ Nash, ‘Towards transnational democratization?’, p. 74.

⁹ Fraser, Nancy, ‘Publicity, subjection, critique: a reply to my critics’, in Nash (ed.) Transnationalizing the Public Sphere, pp. 129–156 Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Heijden, Hein-Anton van der, Social Movements, Public Spheres and the European Politics of the Environment (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), p. 200 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Calhoun, Craig, ‘Introduction’, in Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992), p. 37 Google Scholar.

¹² Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 49.

¹³ Ibid., p. 36.

¹⁴ Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.

¹⁵ Landes, Joan, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Fraser, Nancy, ‘Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy’, Social Text, 25:26 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), pp. 56–80 Google Scholar; Eley, Geoff, ‘Nations, publics, and political cultures: Placing Habermas in the nineteenth century’, in Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (London: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992), pp. 289–339 Google Scholar; McLaughlin, Lisa, ‘Feminism and the political economy of transnational public space’, in Nick Crossley and John Michael Roberts (eds), After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004)Google Scholar; Calhoun, C., ‘The public sphere in the field of power’, Social Science History, 34:3 (2010), pp. 301–335 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ Stryker, S. D., ‘Communicative action in history’, European Journal of Social Theory, 3:2 (2000), pp. 215–234 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nick Crossley, ‘On systematically distorted communication: Bourdieu and the socio-analysis of publics’, in Crossley and Roberts (eds), After Habermas.

¹⁷ Risse, T.. ‘“Let’s argue!”: Communicative action in world politics’, International Organization, 54:1 (2000), pp. 9–10 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Habermas, Jürgen, The Theory of Communication Action: Reason and Rationalization of Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 4.

¹⁸ Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 357.

¹⁹ John Michael Roberts and Nick Crossley, ‘Introduction’, in Crossley and Roberts (eds), After Habermas.

²⁰ McLaughlin, ‘Feminism and the political economy of transnational public space’; Fraser, ‘On the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion in a post-Westphalian world’; Castells, ‘The new public sphere’; Couldry, ‘What and where is the transnationalized public sphere?’; Cammaerts, B. and Van Audenhove, L., ‘Online political debate, unbounded citizenship, and the problematic nature of a transnational public sphere’, Political Communication, 22:2 (2005), pp. 147–162 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²¹ Fraser, ‘On the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion in a post-Westphalian world’; Conway, J. and Singh, J., ‘Is the world social forum a transnational public sphere?: Nancy Fraser, critical theory and the containment of radical possibility’, Theory, Culture & Society, 26:5 (2009), pp. 61–84 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² Fraser, ‘On the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion in a post-Westphalian world’; Bohman, ‘Democratising the global order’.

²³ Fraser, ‘On the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion in a post-Westphalian world’; Fraser, ‘Publicity, subjection, critique: a reply to my critics’; Higgot and Erman, ‘Deliberative global governance and the question of legitimacy’; Nash, ‘Towards transnational democratization?’.

²⁴ Fraser, ‘On the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion in a post-Westphalian world’; Germain, ‘Financial governance and transnational deliberative democracy’; Bohman, ‘Democratising the global order’.

²⁵ Nash, ‘Towards transnational democratization?’; Couldry, ‘What and where is the transnationalized public sphere?’.

²⁶ Nash, ‘Towards transnational democratization?’, p. 74; Couldry, ‘What and where is the transnationalized public sphere?’.

²⁷ Fraser, ‘Publicity, subjection, critique: a reply to my critics’.

²⁸ Nash, ‘Towards transnational democratization?’, p. 60; Crack, Angela, Global Communication and Transnational Public Spheres (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), p. 197 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁹ Lang, Tim, Barling, David, and Caraher, Martin, Food Policy: Integrating Health, Environment and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 42–44 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ By capturing the degree to which contestation over norms has become a key feature of contemporary food and agricultural policymaking.

³¹ Lang, T., ‘Crisis? What crisis? The normality of the current food crisis’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 10:1 (2010), pp. 87–97 CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³² Barling, D., Lang, T., and Caraher, M., ‘Joined up food policy? The trials of governance, public policy and the food system’, Social Policy and Administration, 36:6 (2002), pp. 556–574 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lang et al., Food Policy.

³³ Maxwell, S., and Slater, R., ‘Food policy old and new’, Development Policy Review, 21:5/6 (2003), pp. 531–533 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁴ Clapp, Jennifer and Fuchs, Doris, ‘Agri-food corporations, global governance, and sustainability: a framework for analysis’, in Jennifer Clapp and Doris Fuchs (eds), Corporate Power in Agri-food Governance (London: The MIT Press, 2009), pp. 8–10 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁵ The initiative Realizing a New Vision for Agriculture: A Roadmap for Stakeholders was ‘championed’ by 17 agribusiness TNCs with massive market presences in seeds, food retail, fertilisers, and processing sectors: Archer Daniel Midlands, BASF, Bunge, Cargill, The Coca-Cola Company, DuPont, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Metro, Monsanto Company, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, Wal-Mart Stores, and Yara International. World Economic Forum (WEF), ‘Realizing a New Vision for Agriculture: A Roadmap for Stakeholders’ (2010), available at: {http://www.weforum.org/reports/realizing-new-vision-agriculture-roadmap-stakeholders} accessed 1 August 2011, p. 3.

³⁶ WEF, ‘Global Agenda Councils’, WEF website, available at: {http://www.weforum.org/community/global-agenda- councils} accessed 9 November 2011.

³⁷ Campesina, La Vía, ‘What is La Vía Campesina?’, La Vía Campesina website, available at: {http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/organisation-mainmenu-44/what-is-la-via-campesinamainmenu-45}Google Scholar accessed 17 November 2013.

³⁸ Desmarais, Annette, La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants (London: Pluto Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Martínez-Torres, M. E. and Rosset, P. M., ‘La Vía Campesina: the birth and evolution of a transnational social movement’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 37:1 (2010), pp. 149–175 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Desmarais, A., and Nicholson, P., ‘La Vía Campesina: an historical and political analysis’, in La Vía Campesina, La Vía Campesina’s Open Book: Celebrating 20 Years of Struggle and Hope, La Vía Campesina website (2013)Google Scholar, available at: {http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/publications-mainmenu-30/1409-la-via-campesina-s-open-book-celebrating-20-years-of-struggle-and-hope} accessed on 2 February 2015.

³⁹ Paul Nicholson, Basque farmer, founding member of La Vía Campesina and four-term member of its International Coordinating Committee, quoted in Desmarais, La Vía Campesina, p. 77. Although the ‘meanings’ of La Vía Campesina are of course many and varied, and extend beyond this particular orientation to include, amongst others, constituting an arena of encounter for rural peoples around the world from diverse cultures and world visions, and providing a solidarity network for anti-systemic and reformist struggles the world over (Desmarais, La Vía Campesina; Martínez-Torres and Rosset, ‘La Vía Campesina’; Desmarais and Nicholson, ‘La Vía Campesina: an historical and political analysis’).

⁴⁰ The IPC is a transnational civil society network working on a food sovereignty platform and committed to the political protagonism of food producer and other rural and food insecure social movements. For an overview see McKeon, Nora, The UN and Civil Society (London: Zed Books, 2009a)Google Scholar. For discussion of the IPC’s engagement within the CFS see also McKeon, Nora, Food Security Governance: Empowering Communities, Regulating Corporations (London: Routledge, 2015)Google Scholar; and Colombo, L. and Onorati, A., ‘Food: Riots and Rights, IIED, FIRAB, and Crocevia’ (2013)Google Scholar available at: {www.firab.it/site/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/foodrights_aw.pdf} accessed 1 Jan 2015.

⁴¹ The aspirations of the Forum organisers to create an autonomous discursive arena through which to try to influence transnational food policymaking is captured very clearly in the invitation letter that went out to delegates, and which stated their intention for the Forum to be ‘an autonomous and self-organized space which aims at debating and articulating processes and proposals on Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Policies as an input to the action of the social movements and to the Intergovernmental Summit’. International Steering Committee for the People’s Food Sovereignty Forum, ‘Invitation Letter to the People’s Forum for Food Sovereignty 2009: Social Movements/NGOs/CSOs Parallel Event to the World Food Summit on Food Security’ (Hard copy acquired by the author during the Forum, 2009).

⁴² La Vía Campesina, La Vía Campesina’s Open Book.

⁴³ Pimbert, Michel, Towards Food Sovereignty (London: IIED, 2009)Google Scholar; Patel, R., ‘Food sovereignty’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 36:3 (2009), pp. 663–706 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Martínez-Torre and Rosset, ‘La Vía Campesina’; Wittman, Hannah, Desmarais, Annette, and Wiebe, Nettie, ‘The origins and potential of food sovereignty’, in Hannah Wittman, Annette Desmarais, and Nettie Wiebe (eds), Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community (Oakland, CA: Food First Book, 2010)Google Scholar; Bernstein, H., ‘Food Sovereignty: A Skeptical View’, Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialogue, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague, The Netherlands, 24 January 2014 Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ For important analyses of La Vía Campesina’s development of innovative rights and responsibilities frameworks see Wittman, H., ‘Reworking the metabolic rift: La Vía Campesina, agrarian citizenship and food sovereignty’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 36:4 (2009), pp. 805–826 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wittman, H., ‘Reframing Agrarian citizenship: Land, life and power in Brazil’, Journal of Rural Studies, 25:1 (2009), pp. 120–130 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Claeys, P., ‘From food sovereignty to peasants’ rights: an overview of Vía Campesina’s struggle for new human rights’, in La Vía Campesina, La Vía Campesina’s Open Book (2013)Google Scholar, available at: {http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/publications-mainmenu-30/1409-la-via-campesina-s-open-book-celebrating-20-years-of-struggle-and-hope} accessed 28 January 2015; and Claeys, P., ‘The creation of new rights by the food sovereignty movement: the challenge of institutionalizing subversion’, Sociology, 46:5 (2012), pp. 844–860 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁵ Cf. World Bank, World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development (Washington: World Bank, 2007)Google Scholar; Timmer, C. Peter, ‘Food policy in the era of supermarkets: What’s different?’, in Ellen B. McCullough, Prabhu L. Pingali, and Kostas G. Stamoulis (eds), The Transformation of Agri-food Systems: Globalization, Supply Chains and Smallholder Farmers (London: Earthscan, 2008), p. 81 Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ The publication of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) in 2009 also communicates the contested nature of twenty-first-century food and agricultural policymaking. Recognising that agriculture faced many urgent social and economic problems, IAASTD underscored that ‘business as usual’ was not an option and was the first global level assessment to recognise the virtues of the type of small-scale agriculture promoted within food sovereignty. The result of an intergovernmental, multi-agency cooperation involving institutions such as the World Bank, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, and the United Nations Environmental Programme, the IAASTD report communicated that even at the institutional core of international food and agricultural coordination, radical departures from mainstream thinking were possible. Pimbert, Towards Food Sovereignty, pp. 4–5. See also: International Assessment of Agricultural Science, Technology and Development, ‘Agriculture at a Crossroads: Synthesis Report, 2009’, available at {http://www.agassessment.org/reports/iaastd/en/agriculture%20at%20a%20crossroads_synthesis%20report%20(english).pdf} accessed 4 June 2010.

⁴⁷ Whilst certainly the largest and drawing membership from the widest geographical spread, La Vía Campesina is not the only transnationally active agrarian social movement. Others – also present in the Committee on World Food Security – include: from Central Africa the Plate forme Sous Régionale des Organisations Paysannes d’Afrique Centrale (PROPAC); from West Africa the Réseau des Organisations Paysannes et de Producteurs de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (ROPPA); and from Asia the Asian Peasants Coalition (APC). For an overview see Borras, S. M. Jr, Edelman, M., and Kay, C., ‘Transnational agrarian movements confronting globalization’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 8:2/3 (2008), pp. 169–204 Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Borras, Saturnino M. Jr and Franco, Jennifer C., ‘Transnational agrarian movements struggling for land and citizenship rights’, IDS Working Paper, 323 (Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2009), p. 38 Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Fraser, ‘Rethinking the public sphere’, p. 67.

⁵⁰ Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 357.

⁵¹ Calhoun, ‘Introduction’, in Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, p. 37; Eley, ‘Nations, publics, and political cultures’; Postone, Moishe, ‘Political theory and historical analysis’, in Craig Calhoun (ed.), ‘Introduction’ (1992)Google Scholar; Calhoun, ‘The public sphere in the field of power’, p. 313.

⁵² Social movements such as La Vía Campesina, therefore, are not just participants within, but are actually constitutive of the transnational public sphere (cf. Castells, ‘The new public sphere’).

⁵³ Fraser, ‘On the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion in a post-Westphalian world’, p. 8.

⁵⁴ Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, p. 74.

⁵⁵ Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 326.

⁵⁶ Ibid., p. 356, referencing Peters, Bernhard, Die Integration Moderner Gesellschaften (Frankfurt am Main, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ For instance, Scholte observes that ‘the contemporary growth in influence of global governance processes has not been accompanied by a corresponding development of formal accountability mechanisms which link these agencies directly to the publics they affect.’ See Scholte (ed.), Building Global Democracy, p. 25. See also McKeon, The UN and Civil Society.

⁵⁸ Nanz and Steffek, ‘Global governance, participation and the public sphere’; Fraser, ‘On the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion in a post-Westphalian world’; Bohman, ‘Democratising the global order’.

⁵⁹ What Fraser has called the ‘efficacy condition’ in ‘On the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion in a post-Westphalian World’, p. 23.

⁶⁰ Duncan, Jessica, Global Food Security Governance: Civil Society Engagement in the Reformed Committee on World Food Security (London: Routledge, 2015), p. 9 Google Scholar; Margulis, Matias E.. ‘Global food security governance: the Committee on World Food Security, comprehensive framework for action and the G8/G20’, in Rosemary Rayfuse (ed.), The Challenge of Food Security: International Policy and Regulatory Frameworks (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar: 2010), p. 232 Google Scholar; McKeon, Food Security Governance, p. 204.

⁶¹ Shaw, D. John, World Food Security: A History Since 1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), p. 206 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶² See, for example, UNGA (United Nations General Assembly), ‘Draft Resolution Referred to the High Level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly by the General Assembly at its Sixty-Forth Session: Keeping the Promise: United to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals’, United Nations General Assembly, Sixty-Fifth Session, 17 October 2010, available at: {www.un.org/en/.../ZeroDraft OutcomeDocument_31May2010rev2.pdf} accessed 15 September 2011; EU-US Transatlantic Development Dialogue, ‘Road Map for Cooperation in Food Security’, available at: {ec.europa.eu/development/icenter/.../eu_us_roadmap_food_security_en.pdf} accessed 15 September 2011; G20, ‘The G20 Seoul summit leaders’ declaration, November 11–12, 2010’, available at: {www.g20.org/ Documents2010/11/seoulsummit_declaration.pdf accessed 15 September 2011.

⁶³ Lang et al., Food Policy, p. 87.

⁶⁴ Brem-Wilson, J., ‘Towards food sovereignty: Interrogating peasant voice in the UN Committee on World Food Security’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 42:1 (2015), p. 8 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁵ Independent External Evaluation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (IEE), ‘FAO: The Challenge of Renewal: Report of the Independent External Evaluation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)’ (2009), available at: {www.fao.org/unfao/ bodies/IEE-Working-Draft-Report/K0489E.pdf} accessed 20 October 2008, p. 178.

⁶⁶ Clay, E., ‘Book review: the UN and global food security’, Development Policy Review, 26:2 (2008), p. 248 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁷ Ki-Moon, Ban, ‘Secretary General Address to the 37^th Committee on World Food Security’, YouTube, available at: {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ycTZmuAeb4}Google Scholar, accessed 19 May 2015.

⁶⁸ The High-Level Conference on World Food Security: The Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy, 3–5 June 2008, The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Rome.

⁶⁹ CFS (Committee on World Food Security), ‘Reform of the Committee on World Security: Final version, October 2009’, available at: {http://www.fao.org/unfao/bodies/cfs/cfs35/index_ en.htm} accessed 19 December 2011), para. 2.

⁷⁰ Ibid.., para. 11. ii.

⁷¹ Ibid.

⁷² McKeon, Food Security Governance, p. 107.

⁷³ CFS, ‘Reform of the Committee on World Security’, paras 5. i, ii, and iii.

⁷⁴ Lang et al., Food Policy, pp. 42–4.

⁷⁵ ‘The Plenary is the central body for decision-taking, debate, coordination, lesson-learning and convergence by all stakeholders at global level on issues pertaining to food security and nutrition.’ CFS, ‘Reform of the Committee on World Security’, para. 20, emphasis added.

⁷⁶ Brem-Wilson, Josh, ‘La Vía Campesina and the UN Committee on World Food Security: a transnational public sphere?’, PhD thesis (2012)Google Scholar, available at: {https://bradscholars.brad.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10454/5706/Jbremwilson_FINAL_PhDThesis.pdf?sequence=1}, p. 217.

⁷⁷ CFS, ‘Reform of the Committee on World Security’, para. 2.

⁷⁸ De Schutter, O., ‘The reform of the committee on World Food Security: the quest for coherence in global governance’, CRIDHO Working Paper 2013/18, available at: {http://cridho.uclouvain.be/documents/Working.Papers/CRIDHO-WP-2013-8-ODeSchutter-CFS-GolbalGovernance.pdf}Google Scholar accessed 23 February 2015, p. 5.

⁷⁹ For a more comprehensive description of the CFS reform process and its immediate context see Brem-Wilson, ‘Towards food sovereignty’, pp. 5–7; and Brem-Wilson, ‘La Vía Campesina and the UN Committee on World Food Security’, pp. 203–22.

⁸⁰ For example, for the period 2015–17, La Vía Campesina is one of six organisations representing civil society in the CFS’s Advisory Group, and holds two of the four slots available to representatives of smallholder farmers in the Coordination Committee of the Civil Society Mechanism. They also constitute one the largest civil society delegations at the annual plenary.

⁸¹ For example, from Central Africa: the Plate forme Sous Régionale des Organisations Paysannes d’Afrique Centrale (PROPAC); from West Africa: the Réseau des Organisations Paysannes et de Producteurs de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (ROPPA); and from Asia: the Asian Peasants Coalition (APC).

⁸² McKeon, Food Security Governance, p. 189; Duncan, Global Food Security Governance, pp. 86, 222, 226.

⁸³ Ruth Hall and Ian Scoones with Giles Henley, ‘Strengthening Land Governance: Lessons from Implementing the Voluntary Guidelines’, LEGEND State of the Debate Report (London: UK Department for International Development, 2016); Land Reform Review Group, ‘Land Reform Review Group Final Report – The Land of Scotland and the Common Good’ (2014), available at: {www.gov.scot/Resource/0045/00451087.pdf} accessed 2 August 2016.

⁸⁴ One such initiative is the ‘New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition’. Launched at the 2012 and 2013 G8 Summits in the US and UK, the New Alliance articulates corporations and donor countries with African countries to channel agricultural investment and promote policy change. It has been heavily critiqued by civil society for a lack of transparency and inclusivity, and for prioritising the interests of corporations over small-scale food producers and the food insecure.

See McKeon, Nora, The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition: A Coup for Corporate Capital? (Amsterdam: Transnational Institute (TNI), 2014)Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Duncan, Global Food Security Governance, p. 232.

⁸⁶ Duncan, ibid., p. 226; Brem-Wilson, ‘La Vía Campesina and the UN Committee on World Food Security’, p. 244. It is important to note though that disagreements (between states, and between states and civil society) about the CFS’s political status were a feature of the reform process and are ongoing. Brem-Wilson, ‘La Vía Campesina and the UN Committee on World Food Security’, pp. 214–19. The ongoing struggle by civil society, for instance, to establish a robust monitoring regime for the CFS’s work, and the resistance this has encountered, are perhaps one of the most recent examples of this.

⁸⁷ McKeon, Food Security Governance, p. 183; Duncan, Global Food Security Governance, p. 146.

⁸⁸ By the CFS secretariat and High Level Panel of Experts, for instance, both of which by being involved in the preparation of CFS reports and agendas have an opportunity to facilitate or suppress the discussion of potentially contentious issues.

⁸⁹ Brem-Wilson, ‘La Vía Campesina and the UN Committee on World Food Security’, p. 246; McKeon, Food Security Governance Food Security Governance; Duncan, Global Food Security Governance.

⁹⁰ Seufert, P., ‘The FAO voluntary guidelines on the responsible governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests’, Globalizations, 10:2 (2013), pp. 181–186 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; International Food Security and Nutrition Civil Society Mechanism (CSM), ‘What is the CSM?’, available at: {http://www.csm4cfs.org/about_us-2/what_is_the_csm-1/} accessed 3 April 2016.

⁹¹ McKeon, Food Security Governance; McKeon, The UN and Civil Society.

⁹² Duncan, Global Food Security Governance, p. 166; McKeon, Food Security Governance, pp. 168, 170.

⁹³ Steffek and Nanz, ‘Emergent patterns of civil society’, p. 28.

⁹⁴ Clarke, Marie (née Brill), ‘And We Walked Out … Conclusion of the Food Price Volatility Work at the CFS’, ActionAid website, available at: {http://www.actionaid.org/2011/10/and-we-walked-out-conclusion-food-price-volatility-work-cfs}Google Scholar accessed 30 October 2011.

⁹⁵ Van der Heijden, Social Movements, p. 200.

⁹⁶ The optimal form of which is subject to debate. See McKeon, Food Security Governance, p. 204.

⁹⁷ Nanz and Steffek, ‘Global governance, participation and the public sphere’, p. 323.

⁹⁸ Bexell et al., ‘Democracy in global governance’, p. 87.

⁹⁹ By systematic, I mean maintaining a singular and consistent focus upon the ‘knowledge object’ of civil society participation in the CFS, and particularly their attempts to convert their formal right to participate into effective or substantive participation.

¹⁰⁰ La Vía Campesina, ‘The Committee on World Food Security (CFS): A New Space for the Food Policies of the World: Opportunities and Limitations’, available at: {www.viacampesina.org/dl/click.php?id=44} accessed 9 December 2013; Kate Eklin et al., ‘The Committee on World Food security reform: Impacts on global governance of food security’, Working Papers No. 03/14 (Iddri, Paris, France, 2014).

¹⁰¹ La Vía Campesina, La Vía Campesina’s Open Book, p. 2.

¹⁰² Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. p. 36.

¹⁰³ Fraser, ‘On the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion in a post-Westphalian world’, p. 18.

¹⁰⁴ Calhoun, ‘The public sphere in the field of power’, p. 323; Fraser, ‘Rethinking the public sphere’, p. 63. This insight is also present in the idea, within Critical Discourse Analysis, that individual participants in a discursive process can be differentiated according to their ‘discourse access profile’. See van Dijk, T. A., ‘Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis’, Discourse & Society, 4:2 (1993), p. 256 Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ The insights developed here are the result of seven years of analysis, observation and engagement with the dynamics of civil society participation in transnational food and agricultural policymaking and governance spaces, with public sphere theory providing an overarching theoretical reference for most of that time. Brem-Wilson, ‘La Vía Campesina and the UN Committee on World Food Security’; Brem-Wilson, ‘Towards food sovereignty’.

¹⁰⁶ Bohman, ‘Democratising the global order’.

¹⁰⁷ Goetz, Anne Marie and Gaventa, John, ‘Bringing citizen voice and client focus into service delivery’, IDS Working Paper 138 (Brighton: IDS, 2001), p. 47 Google Scholar; Scholte, Jan A., Democratizing the Global Economy: The Role of Civil Society (University of Warwick: Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, 2004), p. 19 Google Scholar; Menser, M., ‘Transnational participatory democracy in action: the case of La Vía Campesina, Journal of Social Philosophy, 39:1 (2008), p. 22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁸ See Brem-Wilson, ‘Towards food sovereignty’, pp. 12–16 for a wider overview of the Requisites of Effective Participation in policy-relevant discursive processes.

¹⁰⁹ But are convergent with the aspirations, on the one hand, for La Vía Campesina to channel the ‘voice’ of ‘the peasant movement’ in the ‘global debates on agrarian policy’, and on the other the reformed CFS to include small-scale food producers and other rural, and food insecure constituencies in a politically relevant policy debate.

¹¹⁰ Desmarais, Annette, La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants (London: Pluto Press, 2007), p. 28 Google Scholar.

¹¹¹ Field Notes, Rome, September 2009.

¹¹² English, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese.

¹¹³ Stone, Diane, ‘Global public policy, transnational policy communities, and their networks’, Policy Studies Journal, 36:1 (2008), pp. 19–38 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹⁴ Fairclough, N., ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’, International Advances in Engineering and Technology, 7 (2012), p. 456 Google Scholar.

¹¹⁵ Holzscheiter, Anna, Children’s Rights in International Politics: The Transformative Power of Discourse (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), p. 30 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wodak, Ruth, ‘The discourse-historical approach’, in Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer (eds), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (London: Sage, 2001), p. 66 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹⁶ Gardiner, Michael E., ‘Wild publics and grotesque symposiums: Habermas and Bakhtin on dialogue, everyday life and public spheres’, in Crossley and Roberts (eds), After Habermas, p. 44 Google Scholar, referencing Melucci, Alberto, ‘Social movements and the democratization of everyday life’, in John Keane (ed.), Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives (London: Verso, 1988), p. 249 Google Scholar.

¹¹⁷ McKeon, The UN and Civil Society, p. 91.

¹¹⁸ Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 119, referencing Günther, Klaus, ‘Die Freiheit der Stellungnahme als politisches Grundrecht’, in Peter Koller et al. (eds), Theoretische Grundlagen der Rechtspolitik, Archiv für Rechts-und Sozialphilosophie (Beiheft 54, 1992), p. 58ff Google Scholar.

¹¹⁹ Fraser, ‘Rethinking the public sphere’, pp. 63–4.

¹²⁰ A role that reflects the template for NGO-social movement relations developed in the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty and integrated into the design of the CSM, and which also echoes La Vía Campesina’s own relationships with NGO allies such as FIAN international, and many others. McKeon, Food Security Governance, p. 109; Borras, S. M Jr, ‘The politics of transnational agrarian movements’, Development and Change, 41:5 (2010), pp. 771–803 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹²¹ McKeon, The UN and Civil Society, p. 89. Martens, for example, also notes the tendency of the UN to privilege interaction with civil society organisations that are ‘formally organized’, one consequence of which is a lack of real contact with social movements ‘that lack formal organizational provisions’. Martens, Kerstin, ‘Civil society and accountability in the United Nations’, in Scholte (ed.), Building Global Democracy, p. 54 Google Scholar.

¹²² Mautner, Gerlinde, ‘Language and communication design in the marketplace’, in Ruth Wodak and Veronika Koller (eds), Handbook of Communication in the Public Sphere (New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2008), pp. 131–154 Google Scholar.

¹²³ Holzscheiter, A., ‘Discourse as capability: Non-state actors’ capital in global governance’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, 33:3 (2005), p. 746 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bourdieu, Pierre, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. John B. Thompson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), pp. 172–183 Google Scholar.

¹²⁴ The fact that concrete articulation with a policy discussion can be attained via a range of different means (including electronically or virtually), and involving various types of relationship between actor and arena, is why this category is labeled somewhat abstractly as ‘attaining spatial and temporal convergence’.

¹²⁵ Three years after the reform the evidence suggested they were not: ‘[T]he CFS is an established and formal governance space that operates under formal UN procedures. Thus, while the CFS is in favour of including those most affected by food security, the organization structure, financial mechanisms and the political culture have yet to fully adapt to facilitate their involvement.’ Duncan, J. and Barling, D., ‘Renewal through participation in global food security governance: Implementing the international food security and nutrition civil society mechanism to the Committee on World Food Security’, International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture & Food, 19:2 (2012), p. 157 Google Scholar.

¹²⁶ Nash, ‘Towards transnational democratization?’, p. 60; Crack, Global Communication, p. 197.

¹²⁷ Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere; Fraser, ‘Rethinking the public sphere’.

¹²⁸ Couldry, ‘What and where is the transnationalized public sphere?’, p. 44; Crack, Global Communicationp, p. 197.

¹²⁹ Fraser, ‘On the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion in a post-Westphalian world’, p. 23. A call that in this article I have argued the CFS to a significant extent responds to.

¹³⁰ Whilst perhaps the allegation of utopianism has been most conspicuously leveled at Nancy Fraser, it is important to note that she is acutely aware of the dangers of an ideological approach to social analysis, and stresses the need to avoid this. Fraser, ‘On the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion in a post-Westphalian world’, p. 8.

¹³¹ The need for which has been recognised by, amongst others, Steffek and Nanz, ‘Emergent patterns of civil society’, p. 9.