Governance for innovations in urban food policies

Cities have an important role in developing innovative food policies. This paper investigates whether combinations of governance practices can explain why some cities develop highly innovative food policies, while others are only limited in their innovativeness. Therefore, we apply fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to identify combinations of necessary and sufficient governance conditions to explain innovativeness across 26 European cities participating in the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP). Results show that the absence of specific practices, such as mapping local food initiatives, food-related government integration, developing integrated food strategies, and monitoring and evaluation, prevents cities from being more innovative.