Food Price Shocks and the Political Economy of Global Agricultural and Development Policy

The recent spikes of global food prices induced a rapid increase in mass media coverage, public policy attention, and donor funding for food security and for agriculture and rural poverty. This has occurred while the shift from low to high food prices has induced a shift in (demographic or social) location of the hunger and poverty effects, but the total number of undernourished and poor people has declined over the same period. We suggest that the observed pattern can be explained by the presence of a global urban bias on agriculture and food policy in developing countries, and we discuss whether this global urban bias may actually benefit poor farmers. We argue that the food price spikes have succeeded where others have failed in the past: to move the problems of poor and hungry farmers to the top of the policy agenda and to induce development and donor strategies to help them

Locality research and comparative analysis: the case of local housing policy in Sweden

A method is described to trace 'locality', or spatial variation in policy, through comparative analysis. It is argued that the problem of structure versus agency can never be solved once and for all by philosophical arguments, but always has to be rephrased into empirically manageable terms. This is possible through use of the 'most similar' approach of comparative anaysis. When external structural determinants of policy are kept under control, local variations can be traced back to locally specific determinants. These determinants must be examined in depth through case studies. This also paves the way for empirically based counterfactual reasoning. Thus, the extent to which local actors are not just forced by structural determinants to act in a certain way can be estimated. The general approach is illustrated by reference to a case study of local housing policies in Sweden. Some critical questions are raised. One must not forget that structures and actors, whether national or local, are inseperably bound up with processes, and that 'structures' are always just crystallised results of human action.