Hybrid governance tensions fuelling self-reflexivity in Alternative Food Networks: the case of the Brussels GASAP (solidarity purchasing groups for peasant agriculture)

This paper applies the concept of Hybrid Governance to the analysis of the GASAP (Groupe d’Achats Solidaires de l’Agriculture Paysanne), a solidarity-based producers–consumers network established in Brussels in 2006. The Hybrid Governance concept allows to capture the role of key governance tensions in driving the self-organisation, scaling out and self-reflexive dynamics of Alternative Food Networks (AFNs). The approach provides a multifaceted and sound socio-political account of the ways AFNs arise, self-organise, associate and build networks in the pursuit of their food allocation objectives, often facing a contradictory socio-institutional environment. Three types of governance tensions, i.e. organisational, resource, and institutional, as well as the interactions among them, are analysed throughout the life-course of the GASAP network. The analysis identifies three phases in the GASAP’s life-course, showing how governance tensions and their interrelations arise and play a critical role in conditioning the overall development of the organisation through time. The paper concludes with highlighting prospective values of the hybrid governance approach for the analysis of AFNs in general. These values relate to: the role of the hybrid approach in illuminating on key drivers behind the scaling out of AFNs; the hybrid governance as a tool to conceptualise and sustain the self-reflexive capacity of local food initiatives and the ways by which this approach unravels challenges to build cooperative alliances and networks among a diversity of agents in the food arena.