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Food Security As Social Provisioning: Insights from the International Approach and the Indonesian Experience

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Food Security As Social Provisioning: Insights from the International Approach and the Indonesian Experience FOOD SECURITY AS SOCIAL PROVISIONING: INSIGHTS FROM THE INTERNATIONAL APPROACH AND THE INDONESIAN EXPERIENCE PETER THOMAS DIROU Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy November 2013 Melbourne Law School The University of Melbourne ABSTRACT In 2006–08, there was an international food crisis. At its peak, 34 countries were severely affected. A total of 850 million people were short of food and a further 100 million were considered to be at risk. Yet, despite the widespread agreement that existed on the unacceptability of hunger, international institutions struggled to take responsibility, and to effectively deal with the problem. I argue in this thesis that this failure to take responsibility is a case of international institutional failure that is rooted in the structure of international law, with its homage to both universal rights and state sovereignty, and in the type of economics that was wired into the international system at the time of the inception of contemporary international law. To illustrate these structural features the thesis traces the evolution of the concepts of food security and the right to food within the UN system, alongside the emergence of international law in the UN era and the consolidation of the neoclassical economic orthodoxy within UN institutions. That economic orthodoxy was highly formal and reflected the neoclassical emphasis on individualism, markets and economic growth, as well as the emergent Keynesian representation of national income and expenditure. The consequence of the way approaches to hunger were framed in the nascent international institutions has been that international institutions try endlessly to reconcile the putatively opposing poles of rights and sovereignty, and the seemingly opposing disciplines of law and economics. Within this frame, attempts to allocate responsibility bounce between growth and markets or human rights, or, national economic responsibility or international economic responsibility. In this thesis I present a heterodox tradition of economics — a tradition that has been referred to as ‘old’ institutionalism, as distinct from new institutional economics — as an alternative way of thinking about, and addressing, problems of food and hunger. For the old institutionalists the subject matter of economics is social provisioning — a concern with the means of life. Institutionalism focuses on the institutional i arrangements for provisioning and incorporates an account of governance and power relations into its theoretical framework. It confronts the imperative of preventing starvation. Institutionalism also emphasises the interconnections between law and economics and accepts that economic relations are affected by a prevailing structure of legal rights. I build on the institutionalist approach to situate the legal dimension of institutionalist thought within a public law framework to draw out the authority and economic duty of government. This approach conceptualises economic policy as a duty to provide and aligns a community and its institutions through this duty. It takes us towards developing a jurisprudence of the institutions of provisioning. In the thesis I use Indonesia as a case study to illustrate a version of social provisioning in practice and to draw out the link between social provisioning and taking up the responsibility for social provisioning. Since independence in 1949, successive Indonesian governments have focused on providing food for the poor, in spite of mostly demanding economic conditions and sometimes turbulent political conditions. The discussion highlights the way in which the penetration of international legal and economic norms into Indonesian national policymaking in recent times has both provoked and shaped a policy struggle between the merits of liberalisation against the implicit social provisioning and associated responsibilities to the people of a nation. This replicates a struggle occurring inside the organisations of the United Nations. The case study shows that this type of struggle accentuates the separateness, rather than the interconnections, of law and economics, and loses sight of the provisioning purpose of old institutional economics. ii DECLARATION This is to certify that: (i) the thesis comprises only my original work towards the Ph.D; (ii) due acknowledgement is made in the text to all other material used; (iii) the thesis is fewer than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of bibliography. Peter Dirou iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My time at the Melbourne Law School has been a rewarding experience. I am indebted to the staff and fellow students I have engaged with during this exercise and value the friendships that have been forged. The greatest debt is owed to my supervisors — Professor Tim Lindsey, Professor Sundhya Pahuja and Associate Professor Shaun McVeigh — for their guidance and help as this work has developed, and, above all, their intellectual generosity. I have been privileged to keep their company. I would also like to acknowledge Professor Ross Buckley from the University of New South Wales and Dr Laura Griffin from La Trobe University for their ongoing encouragement and advice. Lastly, I could not have undertaken this work without the support of my wife, Valerie Dirou, and I thank her for her enduring selflessness. iv CONTENTS Abstract ..............................................................................................................................i Declaration ....................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements........................................................................................................... iv 1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 1 2 FOOD SECURITY AND THE RIGHT TO FOOD: THE INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT ............. 14 The Establishment of the FAO .................................................................................... 15 The FAO and Food Security ........................................................................................ 32 The Right to Food ....................................................................................................... 45 The 2006–08 Food Crisis ............................................................................................. 58 Summary and Concluding Remarks ............................................................................ 73 3 INDONESIA AND FOOD SECURITY ............................................................................... 75 Feeding the Populace ................................................................................................. 77 The Economic Assessment ......................................................................................... 90 The Legal Framework for Food Security ..................................................................... 99 Summary and Concluding Remarks .......................................................................... 108 4 ECONOMICS AND ITS SOCIETY .................................................................................. 110 Locating Mainstream Economics .............................................................................. 111 Growth, Markets, and Welfare ................................................................................. 126 Understanding Institutionalism ................................................................................ 146 Summary and Concluding Remarks .......................................................................... 162 5 THE LEGAL DIMENSION OF SOCIAL PROVISIONING ................................................. 164 Legal Dimension of Institutionalism ......................................................................... 166 Human Rights, Regulation, and Social Solidarity ...................................................... 181 The Public Law Foundations of Institutionalist Thought .......................................... 207 v Summary and Concluding Comments ...................................................................... 218 6 IN THE NAME OF THE INTERNATIONAL .................................................................... 220 An Institutionalist Take on International Trade: A Question of Governance ........... 221 International Law ...................................................................................................... 230 The International Community .................................................................................. 240 Revisiting Food Security: A Clash of Authorities ...................................................... 257 Summary and Concluding Remarks .......................................................................... 263 7 CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................................... 265 Summary ................................................................................................................... 266 Concluding Remarks: Putting Words into Deeds ..................................................... 273 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................. 275 vi 1 INTRODUCTION Following several years of relative stability, international food prices began increasing steadily from early 2002 before rapidly escalating between late 2006 and early 2007. Over the
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