Leiden University Student Repository

Vainstoc, Eldad (2023)

The Conquest of Grain: Multinational Corporations in the Global Food Security Regime - A Neo-Gramscian Perspective

Master thesis | Political Science (MSc)

This thesis explores the lobbying strategies used by multinational agribusinesses to shape the global food security regime as part of global capitalism management. My case study focuses on how the four largest grain traders in the world lobby the Food and Agriculture Organization to promote market-based policies for global food security. I find substantial evidence for four strategies: multi-stakeholder fora, corporate-FAO partnerships, lobbying national governments, and revolving door practices. The four strategies help agribusinesses be involved in decision-making, increase their market and structural power, and promote the private sector as a legitimate and essential actor in the regime’s governance. The findings fit within a neo-Gramscian framework and can be interpreted as strategies used by the transnational capitalist class to support the transnationalization of social relations of production and the promotion of the neoliberal world order.

Neoliberalism

global governance

international organizations

lobbying

Food and Agriculture Organization

multinational corporations

neo-Gramscianism

Author

Vainstoc, Eldad

Faculty

Faculty of Social & Behavioural Sciences

Specialisation

International Organisation

Supervisors

van Meegdenburg, H.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en