Grassroots Initiatives as Political Actors: Scaling, Capture and Constituency in Food Policy Councils

Abstract

Grassroots initiatives (GIs) play a crucial role in driving sustainability transitions. They adopt different approaches to exert impact through multi-stakeholder governance platforms, such as ‘scaling up’, ‘scaling through’ and ‘amplifying’. This paper argues that understanding how GIs achieve this impact requires viewing them as political actors and recognising multi-stakeholder governance platforms as inherently political spaces. Analysing the history of two food policy councils (FPCs) as case studies, the paper develops and applies a conceptual framework that highlights the political agency and power of GIs in sustainability transitions leading to both sociotechnical and sociopolitical change. Drawing on the concept of ‘constituency’ from social movement studies, the study highlights the political power of GIs to impact sustainability transitions with democratising aims. The findings reveal that the political context—shaped by factors such as a history of collaboration, institutional proximity, and varying levels of competition between state authorities at distinct administrative levels —profoundly influences how FPCs function as political spaces and the approaches enacted by GIs to exercise political power and agency. The study underscores the need for future research to better account for the sociopolitical and cultural context, political power, agency, and different models of impact in sustainability transitions.