Constructing the Rational Actor: Boundary Work in U.S. Codex Politics

• In Event: 425 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Paper Session. Global Governance and Local Practices

Abstract

World polity theory suggests that definitions of rational actorhood drive a great deal of action in global politics. But what happens when the nature of rational action is unsettled and contested? This is the scenario in the field of food safety policy, where governance must, by international law, be guided by science, but the nature of good regulatory science is hotly contested. The WTO’s SPS (Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary) Agreement, which governs food safety, mandates that all signatories base regulations on science. It also delegates rule-making to a treaty-based organization, the Codex Alimentarius, where ostensibly science-based standards are set in consensus-based committees. Both organizations have become flashpoints in a longstanding transatlantic battle over the appropriate relationships among evidence, human harm, and public regulation. The consequence is a policy field in which defining good scientific actors is a strategy to define good legal actors and good international actors. This working paper examines how members of the U.S. food policy network deploy this strategy. Drawing on the concept of boundary work (Gieryn 1983, Jasanoff 2012) from Science and Technology Studies (STS), I examine the way members of the network demarcate real from false science, good international actors from bad, and legitimate from illegitimate regulation while discussing the politics of the SPS Agreement and the Codex. The paper is based on qualitative interviews with over 30 high ranking regulators and industry representatives.

Author

• Jessica Epstein, Reed College