Eco-social policy in the global political economy: Analysing shifting discourses on agricultural subsidies

Abstract

While critical political economy (CPE) has yet to play a prominent role in eco-social policy research, this paper argues that a deeper engagement with CPE and a better understanding of the global political economy can enhance eco-social policy debates. CPE can help us to see the contradictions in and impediments to integrating environmental and social policies, and particularly why both of these categories continue to be mediated and shaped by economic logics. In order to develop these arguments, we analyse recent international discourses on agricultural subsidies promoted by key policy actors such as the Food and Agricultural Organisation, the World Bank, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. By examining agriculture as a nodal point between diverse scales and domains such as the local, global, environmental, social, and economic spheres, we explore how certain positions are prioritised over others. We argue that the discourse on ‘repurposing subsidies’ in global agricultural policy expresses a ‘new critical orthodoxy’ that recognises the need for transformation but fails to address the structural conditions of the global political economy responsible for environmental and social crises. Instead, the proposed solutions rely on existing institutions and capitalist logics to resolve current crises, even if the latter are underpinned by these logics. Our analysis underlines the need for eco-social policy scholarship to be cognizant of how environmental and social policy integration is always embedded within a particular global political economy that reproduces certain inequalities and is not a neutral policy terrain.