Feeding the Future The Global Emergence of School Lunch Programs A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Jennifer Geist Rutledge IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Kathryn A. Sikkink, advisor June 2009 © Jennifer Geist Rutledge, 2009 Acknowledgements Writing my dissertation was simultaneously an extremely solitary and extremely shared experience. Many people contributed to both phases, either in helping form my dissertation or helping me to not get lost in the solitary phases. Those who shared in forming the dissertation include my amazing advisor, Kathryn Sikkink, who, I think, signed up to work with someone on water law, and instead got a project about school lunches. Despite the shift in topic, she never flinched and provided invaluable advice and support at all stages of this project. This project is much richer that it could possibly have been without her help. I am grateful as well to my other committee members, Dan Kelliher, Sally Kenney and Ben Ansell, who provided wonderful advice on matters of both the dissertation and life throughout the last three years. In addition, Teri Caraway, although not on my committee, supported me throughout this project, by encouraging me to present my work at various stages at the Comparative Politics Proseminar. Although I dreaded each time, the comments I received at the sessions, and the experience of gathering and organizing my thoughts were crucial to the development of this project. The shared portion of this dissertation also owes a great deal to Kathryn’s Dissertation Group, whose revolving membership over the years has included Susan Kang, Hunjoon Kim, Sandra Borda, Carrie Walling, Robyn Linde, Darrah McCracken, Zhenqing Zhang, Tuba Inal, and Veronica Michel. Whether we spoke on Skype or in person, each of these people contributed their time and ideas to this project. The dissertation is stronger because of their thoughts and I am indebted to each of them. Straddling the line between solitary and shared is my mother. In addition to constantly supporting me with her love, and even, eventually, becoming interested in my project, she also travelled with me to Rome and spent more time than she ever wanted in the FAO library making copies. She is owed a special thanks for that task. Thank you for everything. Some of those who helped me through the solitary phases of dissertation writing are those who reminded me to come outside and see the world again. Special thanks are owed to Bethany for a thorough knowledge of the Mississippi River paths, to Melissa i for Project Runway Nights, and to Christopher, who let me lecture him about emotional availability. Others helped me during the solitary phases by being with me when I wrote. My father passed away, unexpectedly, while I was writing this. I did not work for three months after his passing. Eventually I started again because I realized that one of the best ways to honor his memory would be to complete this project. It was the memory of him that helped me push forward on those days when the words just wouldn’t come out. I thank him for his love, which I know continues despite his passing. More tangibly, Rumpus and Pippi sat with me everyday that I worked on this dissertation. They were the best companions for the most solitary moments of writing this dissertation. They were both happy to listen if I needed to talk out an idea and Rumpus even learned not to attack the printer every time it went on. The greatest debt is owed to Autumn - the seed of this project started with her off-hand suggestion several years ago when I was searching for a research paper topic. She keeps me grounded in a world outside of political science, always asking me how my work matters in a larger context, a line of questioning for which I am grateful. She also, quite simply, loves me, and I am better in my life and in my work because of that. ii Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my father, Frank C. Rutledge. I did not write this for him, but in many ways I wrote it because of him. I will always regret that he did not see the project finished. iii Abstract My dissertation is motivated by a puzzle of international social policy and norm emergence and diffusion. Today, children in one hundred and forty-one countries receive free or subsidized school lunches. Yet less than a century ago, no state had a national child nutrition policy. Feeding children was clearly not considered a state responsibility a century ago, why is it considered one today? In addition to analyzing this policy emergence and diffusion, I argue that this policy emergence represents an emergent international norm - a norm that there is a public responsibility beyond the family to feed children. Scholars tend to explain policy and norm emergence and diffusion as due to the work of activists, diffusion effects or with world polity theory. However, these explanations tend to focus on either the national or international level as the causal source. Instead, I look at how the national and international levels interact in the creation of policy. In addition, my argument incorporates ideational factors into the field of social policy, which has long focused on material factors to explain policy emergence. I do this by utilizing insights from constructivist international relations theory. Specifically, my argument focuses on the ability of policy entrepreneurs to manipulate certain, internationalized, frames, or ideational cultural structures, within their domestic context in order to produce school lunch programs. The dissertation is structured around the historical development of school lunch programs and traces their progress from their inception as food surplus disposal and military readiness programs, to their current use as a development tool by the international community. After using my global dataset of school lunch programs to assess conventional social policy theories, I develop my argument through in-depth case studies of the US, UK, Canada, India, the UN’s World Food Programme, Catholic Relief Services and the New Partnership for African Development. In each case study I focus on the interaction between the different ways the problem of child malnutrition was framed in each context and the political consequences of the emergence of structural agricultural surpluses at the global level. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements i Dedication iii Abstract iv List of Tables vi List of Figures vii Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: A Cross-National Survey of School Lunch Programs and An Analysis of Conventional Social Policy Theories 48 Chapter Three: Historical Patterns: The US, UK and Canada 100 Chapter Four: International Diffusion: The UN’s World Food Programme 159 Chapter Five: International Fragmentation I: India’s Mid –Day Meal Programme 207 Chapter Six: International Fragmentation II: Catholic Relief Services, Africa’s Home Grown School Feeding Programme and a Return Trip to Canada 248 Chapter Seven: Conclusions: A New Norm 289 Bibliography 317 v List of Tables Table 1.1: Case Selection 43 Table 2.1: Countries that Do Not Have Programs 51 Table 2.2: Lunch Provision by Region 51 Table 2.3: Programs by Funding Agency 52 Table 2.4: Countries with Programs Provided by NGOs 53 Table 2.5: Current WFP Sponsored Countries 54 Table 2.6: Current Government Run Programs 55 Table 2.7: Year of Program Initiation in S. America 62 Table 2.8: Countries with School Lunch Programs by Import and Export Status, Post 1961 76 Table 2.9: Top Three Exports of Exporting Countries with WFP or NGO School Lunch Programs 78 Table 2.10: Agricultural Importing Countries with Government Funded School Lunch Programs 79 Table 2.11: Top 20 Wheat, Bean, and Cereal Producers and School Lunch Program Status 81 Table 2.12: Percent Countries with a Program by Income Category 86 Table 2.13: 2006 Global Hunger Index 89 Table 2.14: Types of UK Colonies 95 Table 3.1: Number of Children Being Fed in the UK Before the National Program 121 Table 3.2: Growth in City School Lunch Service (US) 125 Table 3.3: Number of Children Being Fed (US) During the Lead Up to the National Program 139 Table 3.4: Percentage of Married Women in the Workforce 154 Table 4.1: Global Hunger Index for Phased Out WFP Countries 201 Table 6.1: Catholic Populations in CRS Countries 267 Table 6.2: Global Hunger Index for CRS Countries 268 Table 7.1: Organizing Body for School Lunches by Phase 310 Table 7.2: Frames By Phase 311 vi List of Figures Figure 1.1: General Process By Which Policy Entrepreneurs Use Internationalized Frames to Produce School Lunches 10 Figure 1.2: Percentages of Malnourished Children, 1990 and 2006 22 Figure 1.3: Interventions for School Children 34 Figure 2.1: Number of Countries with New Programs, Globally 56 Figure 2.2: Number of Countries with New Programs Initiated by the Government 57 Figure 2.3: Number of Countries with a new WFP Program 59 Figure 2.4: Explanations of Policy Emergence 61 Figure 2.5: Country Income Status and Administering Agency for School Lunch Programs 85 Figure 2.6: The Colonizing Country for Those Countries that are Agricultural Importers and Currently have their own School Lunch Program 93 Figure 2.7: UK Colonies and School Lunch Program Status 94 Figure 3.1: Development of School Lunches in the US and UK 144 Figure 4.1: Development of School Lunches as WFP Policy 192 Figure 5.1: Mid-Day Meal Implementation Across India as of 2003 228 Figure 5.2: Development of School Lunches in India 239 Figure 6.1: Development of School Lunches in Catholic Relief Services 265 Figure 6.2: Development of Africa’s Home Grown School Feeding Programme 280 Figure 7.1: Nested Children’s Feeding Norms 296 Figure 7.2: General Process By Which Policy Entrepreneurs Use Internationalized Frames to Produce School Lunches 306 vii Chapter One: Introduction Today children in one hundred and forty one countries receive free or subsidized school lunches.