Governance of alternative food networks through the lenses of experimentalist governance: insights from the city of Bologna

This research comes at a time of concern over the resilience of the current food system. Current practices have proven to be disruptive and have raised international awareness that translated into a complex and lively set of innovations, also known as Alternative Food Networks (AFNs). Available literature already provides definitions and conceptualizations of AFNs. However, there is still a need for a deeper understanding of the governance of AFNs, which would allow us to gather a holistic vision of the innovations these networks generate. To do this, I make use of rich qualitative data from the study of two farmers market Associations in Bologna. Two research questions guide the thesis: RQ1: To what extent and effect does the internal governance of AFNs align with an experimentalist governance framework? RQ2: What are the relations between modes of internal governance of AFNs and their engagement in municipal food policy? This research highlighted novel relations and innovations from the two case studies that enrich the debate on AFNs and their governance. Moreover, it unveiled a set of relations among AFNs, and institutional actors that provided novel knowledge of the complex relations and mechanisms related to the interaction of AFNs with policy-makers and their attempts to contribute to the creation of a transformative local food policy. In the first chapter of this thesis, I provide a literature review of the scholarship on AFNs, highlighting the research gap. In Chapter 2, built on a literature review on experimentalist governance, I present the analytical framework that guided this thesis. In Chapter 3, I describe the methods and methodology used for my study, the context of which is explained in Chapter 4. The empirical analysis of this research is carried out in chapters 5 and 6, where results are presented and later discussed in chapter 7.