Page 73 - Breeding and regulatory opportunities, Renaud

Seed Regulation in the US

On the other hand, we note that while no single stakeholder, not even the

government, can impose or control governance networks (Rhodes 1996), a

government can seek to actively manage network governance, for instance, by

creating institutions that facilitate interaction or lower the costs of engaging

in network governance. A government also may develop various procedural

and substantive instruments to support the particular policy process at hand.

Procedural instruments, i.e. step-by-step processes to achieve an outcome or

result, typically seek to manipulate the type, number, and relationships among

networks, as well as the procedures for interacting with the government [such as

the ‘Expert Groups’ used in the EU to determine allowance of exceptions to the

use of organic seed (Döring et al., 2012). Substantive instruments outline what

the government intends to do through stated plans of action, which are designed

to inluence the mix of goods and services provided through manipulating

the behaviour of individual network actors (rather than that of the networks

themselves). These instruments may include provision of incentives (e.g. taxes,

grants), licenses, regulations, and information (e.g. via communication tools,

education, training). Substantive instruments may have signiicant efects on

how networks behave. For instance, the wording of a regulation may shape the

preferences of stakeholders and the actions that they choose to collaborate on.

Poor drafting of such instruments, as evidenced in the non-speciic wording of

the US organic seed regulation and the lack of clear deinitions for equivalency

and commercial availability, also may shape preferences and action, giving

rise to unintended outcomes. Information-based instruments can strengthen

shared norms and shape how objectives are formulated (e.g. by providing

training manuals on organic seed production). Our research indings elucidate

a comprehensive lack of governance to deploy suiciently efective procedural

and substantive instruments in a timely fashion and a failure to discover

an efective mix of instruments for regulating the organic seed sector. The

outcome does not meet expectation, and does not satisfy the aspirations or

interests of the majority of the stakeholders. Our research indicates that the

sector remains somewhat internally divided and the key stakeholders do not

perceive themselves to share an overriding common interest to compel them

to act in complete concert to develop an optimized organic seed sector, and

arrive at regulatory closure.

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