There are “two kinds of international organisations”: A case study of La Vía Campesina’s reaction to the WTO and the FAO opening up

Abstract: A prominent movement for change of the current food system is Vía Campesina, a peasants’ movement advocating that food policy should incorporate perspectives from the most affected. Since the 1990s, international organisations (IOs) have opened up to non-state actors, allowing movements like Vía Campesina to occupy spaces ‘inside’ organisations instead of opposing from the ‘outside’. This thesis examines how Vía Campesina perceives and responds to the opening up of space within the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). These IOs were identified as examples of ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ strategies respectively, although both IOs had opened up toward civil society. To explore this interaction a theoretical framework developed by Anderl et al. (2021) on perceptions of opening up was applied to the two cases. The opening up of the WTO was mainly perceived as a legitimation attempt, while the opened up FAO was perceived as a strategic opportunity for Vía Campesina to establish their own space. Thus, the framework offers some explanatory potential to movement’s perceptions of the quality of IO opening up in shaping consequent reactions. However, other factors, such as the ideological framework, resource availability, and the movement’s own strategizing against perceived international power structures, were also identified as influencing responses.