Political economy dynamics—that is, conflicts and trade-offs across different interest groups that play an important role in the food system—permeate many decisions about food systems policy and implementation. Development practitioners working in the food systems space—inclusive of agriculture, nutrition, and environmental policies—need to be aware of these dynamics to be able to support policy advocacy, development, and implementation.
To assist in this process, a toolkit was developed to identify potential political economy bottlenecks in six main domains within the national policy systems where they are operating. These six domains include policy stability and inclusionary decision-making, stakeholder preferences, multi-sectoral coordination, multi-level coordination, financing, and administrative capacities. After identifying why these are critical components for effective food systems policies, the toolkit describes subcomponents of each domain and offers metrics for assessing them. In turn, examples of how to aggregate the metrics are provided, with an application to Mozambique.
Throughout this document, examples of best practices for tackling political economy constraints are highlighted so that practitioners can proactively address some of the bottlenecks that they uncover with the toolkit. The toolkit should offer users with a practical way to understand and grapple with political economy dynamics as they work to further food systems transformation.