The United States and Multilateral Institutions: Patterns of Changing Instrumentality and Influence by Margaret P. Karns & Karen A. Mingst

Author:Margaret P. Karns & Karen A. Mingst [Karns, Margaret P. & Mingst, Karen A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415081108
Goodreads: 7590787
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1992-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

International Food and Agriculture Regime Formation

Formal organizations are a central part of the international food and agriculture regime. Some forty bodies in the United Nations system alone deal with international food affairs in areas ranging from research to famine relief (Puchala 1988). Six organizations specialize in food and agriculture; three of these, based in Rome, are the focus of this chapter: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), established in 1945, the World Food Programme (WFP), founded in 1963, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), founded in 1977. The other three important food IGOs are the International Wheat Council (IWC), the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and the World Food Council (WFC; see Kriesberg 1984).

Other IGOs involved in food policy include the OECD and its committees on Agriculture and Development Assistance, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) with their agricultural trade interests, the World Health Organization (WHO) with its nutrition and food standard interests, and the general financial bodies with a major stake in agricultural investments: the World Bank, the regional banks, the IMF with its “food facility,” and the UN Development Program (UNDP; Kriesberg 1984).

The three major institutions (and several of the others) are the result of three waves of international regime building since World War II.1 Each successive wave has left its legacy on institutional order through the creation of new organizations or changes in established ones. Thus each international food organization has exhibited changing norms and practices as it has responded to changing membership and changing goals among its members.

The three regime-building waves contained distinctive goals: (1) the liberal wave of 1944–60 that aimed at harmonization of commercial interests and the coordination of information standards and research; (2) the development wave of 1960–73 that sought to accelerate the expansion of economic modernization, especially in nonindustrial, poorer states; and (3) the structural conflict wave of 1973–81 in which coalitions of southern or G-77 states sought to control issues, agendas, and budgets in IGOs in order to exercise power and extract resources from industrialized states.

The first wave was led by the United States and was part of the larger effort to establish a liberal and stable world economic order. For agriculture the goal was to harmonize national agricultural policies with free trade principles. A dominant coalition of states in the FAO led by the United States felt it would be desirable to coordinate commercial agriculture policy, establish common standards, share information, provide technical assistance, and address worldwide problems of agricultural surpluses and shortages (U.S. Government 1976). In addition, the Food and Agriculture Organization was to address problems of wartime food trade, nutrition, and famine. FAO was launched by a 1943 planning conference in Hot Springs, Virginia, and began operations in 1945 in Washington near the Department of Agriculture. At the behest of European states, it moved to Rome in 1951. During this period the FAO and other UN specialized agencies developed autonomously within the UN system. Each had its own membership, rules of procedure, and assessed budget.

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