**5.Obstacles to the implementation of an alternative food policy**

Actually, at the moment, the counter-neoliberal food policy agenda is still a utopia. While many successful experiences of local resistance exist and social movements and heterodox scholars continue to divulgate their programs and principles worldwide<sup>3</sup> , the neoliberal model remains unchallenged, at a political as well as at a cultural level.

Understanding the causes which prevent the counter agenda from prevailing over the old model is essential in order to make food policy move beyond neoliberalism. These causes

<sup>3</sup> Among the various alternatives it is worth mentioning the Local Economy Movement (Posey, 2011; Mount, 2011) and the agro-ecological project (Horlings, Marsden, 2010).

Food Policy Beyond Neo-Liberalism 391

**Behavioral Economics**

**Bioeconomics**

**Marxism**

**0** *Institutional approach* 

The first mystification depends on the fact that when claiming that the economic sphere should be independent from value judgments, many defenders of neoliberalism seem to forget that the standard model is completely imbued with ethics; in fact, in order to retain its theoretical consistency, it must subscribe a well defined ethical theory, that is the

The first argument is taken from the social theory of Coleman (Coleman, 1990) and refers to the legitimization of property rights through power relations. By completely relying on the rational choice theory Coleman, like the economic neoclassical model, assumes exchange and property rights to be the two institutions which are sufficient to have an "ordered"

Nevertheless, unlike neoclassical economics, which does not question where is the source of property right (it is considered a natural right), Coleman locates the source of property rights in power. When explaining the origin of rights, Coleman says that a right is held by an actor "at the pleasure of the relevant others", where the relevant others are those with the

4 In the Coleman's construction actors are conceived as rational utility maximizing individuals, and resources are conceived as rights. Taking for granted the existence of a legal system of property rights, Coleman notes that when exchanging a resource what really is exchanged are the rights to exercise a

The second mystification is more subtle. Two arguments clearly demonstrate it.

**Transaction cost economics**

> **Evolutionary economics**

> > **Economic sociology**

**Caring economics**

**Feminist Economics**

**100**

**? -missing new paradigm**

*Rational choice model assumptions - Methodologi cal individualis m*

**100**

**Standard model**

> **Public choice theory**

Fig. 1. Alternative economic theories

society (as well as an ordered economy)4.

certain degree of control over the resource.

utilitarianism.

**Neoinstitutio nalism**

**Law and economics**

**Neuroec onomics**

are both of a theoretical and political nature. Political causes, such as the existence of consolidated centers of political and economic power backing neoliberal policies, have been more or less well investigated by supporters of anti-neoliberalism; nevertheless there is still a lack of suggestions for possible concrete counterbalancing strategies. Theoretical causes have instead received much less attention and this is maybe one of the reasons why the old paradigm is so hard to defeat. In the following part of the paper an effort is made to show the theoretical flaws of the alternative food policy program, first at a general level and then with respect to the two particular issues of food as human right and private food governance.
