Accountability beyond measurement. The role of meetings in shaping governance instruments and governance outcomes in food systems through the lens of the Donau Soja organisation

Abstract

Social science research highlights the proliferation of metric-based forms of accountability in contemporary governance, and explores their possibilities as well as limitations in furthering the multiple goals of sustainable development. This work draws critical attention to tensions between the means and ends of governance, and how these can render invisible the power of those who give and receive accounts, and the knowledges created in the process of governance. However, little is said about the fact that accountability is often conducted and deliberated through different kinds of meetings (internal and external, closed and open, etc.) which circulate assessments, discuss results, and deliberate actual and possible future measures. Addressing this lacuna, this paper examines the role of meetings in creating accountability in contemporary agri-environmental governance. Based on research with the Donau Soja organisation, which is the leader in implementing standards to increase the cultivation of soybeans in Europe, we analyse the role of a cross-section of meetings in creating accountability. Building on the assemblage approach, we situate meetings as agentic elements in a configuration of human and non-human actors. This emphasises the relational attributes of accountability as a concept. Meetings form a key part of the assemblage that configures assessment tools for accountability to not only shape technocratic forms of governance but to also strengthen political ontologies of governance. We show that meetings complement metric assessments in the processes of accountability by specifically shaping the meaning of metrics and by shaping the emergence of new accounts. New accounts strengthen the organisations' supraordinate aims for a European protein transition wherein soybeans contribute significantly.

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