Beyond the Shadow State: The Public–Private Food Assistance System as Networked Governance

Abstract

The public–private food assistance system (PPFAS) emerged during the 1970s to address “emergency” food needs and has since grown into a regularized social welfare system of grocery and meal provision and related program delivery, realized through the collective efforts of organizations and individuals. We explore the context, history, and organization of the PPFAS to better understand how and why public and private actors work together to provide for the social welfare of poor people. We find that the PPFAS is organized as a multiactor, multiscalar network within which the relations between state, market, and civil society are continuously negotiated. The PPFAS may seem like the quintessential example of privatized governance with its attendant movement of decision making outside of the public sphere Rather than consider the PPFAS as a neoliberal fait accompli, we view the PPFAS as a site of contestation about how social welfare and, more broadly, democratic governance is organized.

Keywords

governance democratic participation community food security social welfare

Each week, hundreds of residents from New Brunswick, New Jersey and nearby communities visit one of New Brunswick’s more than 19 food pantries and two soup kitchens to pick up free groceries or to eat free meals. The food pantries and soup kitchens are nodes in the national public–private food assistance system (PPFAS), a multiactor and multiscalar network of governmental and nongovernmental organizations and individuals that organize or participate in the purchase, donation, and distribution of meals, groceries, and other items to people in need.¹ Although the PPFAS began as a voluntary “emergency” effort to collect and distribute food in the 1960s, it has since grown into an institutionalized public–private social welfare system comprising federal and state food programs; Feeding America, the third largest nonprofit in the United States, which organizes a national network of food banks; thousands of food aggregation and distribution organizations (such as food banks, food pantries, and meal programs); and millions of donors, volunteers, and recipients. The assistance provided through the PPFAS has become an increasingly important social benefit that relieves hunger and household budgets in a context of shrinking public social welfare programs and austerity, declining or stagnating wages, and increasing living costs.

The article is inspired by community-based research conducted by faculty and students at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; the New Brunswick Community Food Alliance, New Brunswick’s food policy council; and the Feeding New Brunswick Network, a coalition of emergency food providers in New Brunswick. The partners conducted a multiyear food assessment and planning process to improve community food security. Through the food assessment, faculty and students interviewed 15 food pantry directors, two food bank directors, and 20 food pantry recipients to learn more about food pantry organizations, how food flows through the system, and what food pantry directors and clients would like to change.

With this grounding in the organization and operation of the PPFAS as viewed from the place of New Brunswick, we explored what the PPFAS could tell us about the organization of social welfare governance in a neoliberal era and the relations between state, market, and civil society. We sought to describe the PPFAS as it is. Although the organization and operation of the PPFAS is often described in neoliberal terms (e.g., market logics and privatization), the multiple logics through which it works suggest that describing it only in this way fails to capture its reality (Cloke, May, and Johnsen 2010; DeVerteuil 2012).

In reaction to growing social welfare problems that are not addressed by the state, organizations and networks within the PPFAS have expanded their programmatic focus beyond food provision to improve food quality and to provide goods and services that address other social welfare concerns such as education, job training, job creation, physical and behavioral health care, entrepreneurial and small food business development, and community gardening. These services are offered with a variety of objectives such as to provide care for unmet needs, reduce poverty, and address the structural problems that underlie why people are poor. As this public–private social welfare system has grown, it has engaged a considerable number of people in doing the work of social welfare governance, which raises a set of questions about the implications of this participation in the PPFAS and society.

Our understanding of the PPFAS in practice leads us to characterize it as a heterarchical network mode of governance comprising multiactor, multinodal, and multiscalar networks. The strong roles of the federal and state governmental feeding programs and the existence of Feeding America suggest that the PPFAS operates within a dual public and private shadow of hierarchy in which those two national actors play a strong organizing role (Scharpf 1994). However, the governmental programs and the national nonprofit do not fully define PPFAS operations because of the participation of so many other actors.

The objectives of PPFAS governance and how the PPFAS organizes itself to meet those objectives are established through a flexible, constantly changing set of relations in which public and private actors work together to provide food, goods, and services to people who need them. Without a centralized steering mechanism, the PPFAS moves forward as the product of the collective actions of the individual participants who work together through aggregation and distribution nodes within the public and private shadows of hierarchy. What the PPFAS is at any moment in time, what its objectives are, and how those objectives are met are the result of the combined interaction of public food programs and their implementation rules; the actions of national and regional food banks; the donations of food, money, and goods; and the interplay of companies, nonprofit staff, volunteers, and donors. The system’s porous structure engages people whose participation reflects different rationalities, such as receiving food, preventing food waste, fulfilling religious beliefs or commitments, and accessing tax breaks. As they work toward accomplishing their varied goals, these participants imbue the PPFAS with a range of objectives and strategies to achieve them. Viewing the PPFAS in its entirety rather than through a solely reductionist lens makes it possible to better understand the organization of social welfare governance and society’s role in it.

Because governance in a variety of social policy domains is trending toward the type of heterarchical network system evidenced in the PPFAS, there is an imperative to understand how such systems function in practice. There is growing concern that the hollowing out of the state and the privatization of social welfare are decreasing spaces for public decision making. Rather than consider the PPFAS as a neoliberal fait accompli, we view the PPFAS as a site of contestation about how social welfare and, more broadly, democratic governance is organized. We find spaces of hope within the PFFAS. Through self-reflexive governance, for example, PPFAS participants have placed an increased emphasis on the provision of fresh, refrigerated, and frozen food; decreased the distribution of high sugar snacks and beverages; and expanded benefits and services to reduce poverty. The incorporation of so many people into the PPFAS has expanded the number of people who are directly engaged in social welfare governance. Although these efforts have not fundamentally transformed democratic governance, food provision, the broader social welfare system, or the structural causes of poverty, they provide limited evidence of self-reflexive learning and broad societal engagement in addressing social welfare needs.

Currently, though, there is differential access to food and other services and differential responsibility in providing it. Some communities and individuals devote considerably more time and money to the PPFAS than others, and what social benefits people receive depends in part on their access point to the PPFAS (Cloke, May, and Johnsen 2010; Lake and Newman 2002). Yet even as the participants confront the many challenges within this system and the demand for these services grows, they work together to improve food delivery and the social welfare context within which the demand for food arises. How this system will continue to evolve is as yet unclear. Jessop ([2003] 2014) stresses the importance of democratic participation within heterarchical forms of governance. This suggests the value of experiential as well as intentional civic education through democratic participation in the PPFAS.

In the following sections, we discuss literature about how governance is organized in the neoliberal era, examine the PPFAS in practice, and investigate the possibilities for self-reflexive democratic governance within the PPFAS.

Governance in the Post-Fordist Era

A growing body of literature considers how governance, that is, the relationship of state, market, and civil society, is organized in an era shaped by neoliberal trends of decentralization, destatization, and privatization (Goodwin and Painter 1996; MacLeod and Goodwin 1999). This literature explores changing relations between state and civil society, and considers the implications for the organization of social welfare governance. Although some of this literature views these processes as narrowing the spaces for and freedom of the nonprofit sector, other parts of the literature see opportunities to expand democratic participation to achieve socially desirable and potentially more equitable outcomes.

Early work on the organization of social welfare governance viewed decentralization, destatization, and privatization as reducing the role of civil society. Wolch (1989) conceptualized the “shadow state” to explain the expanding social welfare governance work of nongovernmental actors in the context of welfare state withdrawal. As the state withdrew from providing social service benefits, it devolved that responsibility to nonprofit and voluntary organizations. Yet it retained authority over those organizations and, through program rules, shaped what they do and how they do it, effectively constraining nonprofit and voluntary organization independence (Wolch 1989). Gittell (1980) similarly observed constraints on grassroots voluntary organizations. As these organizations shifted their work from community organizing to service delivery, they shifted their focus, attention, and objectives toward organizational maintenance, acquiring funding, and providing services, and relatedly, away from community participation. For Gittell, this was an important transformation because grassroots voluntary organizations, in her view, are structurally important entry points to the democratic political system, especially for those who lack political access and, therefore, power through formal electoral processes. Wolch (1989) and Gittell (1980) both suggest that the incorporation of nonprofit organizations into the work of social welfare governance limited their independence and, thus, their function of expanding participation in democratic governance.

Other work describes the relationships between state and civil society actors as considerably more varied. Even as some service delivery organizations become highly bureaucratized and professionalized, and operate through state logics, others are grassroots community organizations that set their agendas through democratic participation (Elwood and Leitner 2003; Fyfe, Timbrell, and Smith 2006). This variation means that though some organizations deliver social services in contract with the state and do not question the programs or seek to shape public policy, others contract with and simultaneously challenge the state. Others fall somewhere between those two extremes. Trudeau (2008) conceptualizes these relationships between the state and civil society as falling along a continuum. For Trudeau (2012) nonprofits are neither state nor civil society, and they have the potential to expand the social benefits of citizenship even, at times, beyond the confines of the benefits embedded in national citizenship.

Reflecting on the growing role of governing actors beyond the state and capturing the idea of varied relationships, Jessop (2000, 2014) frames contemporary governance as a blended approach to governing in which heterarchical relationships emerge as the result of a reluctance to depend entirely on either the state or the market. Swyngedouw describes this networked approach to governance as “governance-beyond-the-state” (Swyngedouw 2004, p. 1993). The reality he describes is less hierarchical and more horizontal than the shadow state conceptualization and is organized in what he describes as “polycentric ensembles” (Swyngedouw 2004, p. 1992). Governance, then, is understood as involving a multitude of variegated public and private actors and relationships that operate through multiscalar and multiactor networks (Healey 2012; Mayntz 1993). This brings ideas of fluidity and scale into conceptualizations of governance.

The idea of heterarchical governance helps explain how governmental and nongovernmental actors work together to govern and reflects real-world changes in the organization of society. Interest in this way of thinking about governance has grown in response to the emergence of metastate organizations such as the European Union and the devolution of former government functions, such as providing for the social welfare, to markets and civil society. Society reorganized the relations between state, market, and civil society by shifting responsibilities from the state to the two nonstate actors (Jessop 2013). As Jessop (2016, p. 26) explains, “In the modern state, governance straddles the conventional public–private divide and may involve ‘tangled hierarchiesm’ parallel power networks, or other linkages across tiers of government and/or functional domains.” These ideas help illuminate the complex and nuanced ways in which public and private for- and nonprofit actors work together across time and space and help get closer to describing the world as it is.

Governance then is not merely the result of the federal government devolving responsibility to nonprofit organizations in a unidirectional process, downward in ways that constrain local authority, but instead is the product of community organizations, governmental actors, philanthropies, corporations, and individuals negotiating and renegotiating the relations between them to govern. A heterarchical mode of governance is the space in which state, civil society, and market negotiate their relationships (Jessop [2003] 2014). Those negotiations, as Scharpf (1994) observes, may take place within what he describes as the “shadow of hierarchy.” New and old forms of governing often coexist because state, market, and civil society relations change over time often in an iterative fashion. The meta governance of the European Union, for example, provides a hierarchical shadow to member nation state governance.

The dominant shift toward a more neoliberal governance framework has generated concerns about diminishing spaces for democratic steering and accountability (Rhodes 1997). If the state’s role in providing for the social welfare decreases, and market and civil society roles expand, where do the public discussions about social welfare take place? Instead of social welfare as a set of societal benefits for all, do social welfare benefits depend on how the tangled hierarchies Jessop describes are organized in time and place (Lake and Newman 2002)?

Jessop (2003 [2014]) observes that heterarchical governance is heavily dependent upon communication between and within state, market, and civil society actors. Steering is difficult because of the communication challenges between the different sectors and because there may be gaps between the people doing the steering and “those whose interests and identities are being represented” (Jessop [2003] 2014, n.p.). The communication and steering challenges within heterarchical modes of governance compound a core tension in how the problems identified as the object of governance are defined, by whom, and with what consequences (Jessop 2000). Despite these intractable challenges, society continues to reorganize the relations of governance in a struggle to achieve seemingly unattainable outcomes. Given this reality, Jessop (2000) stresses the importance of institutionalizing structures for participatory self-reflective governance that suggest hints of a Rancierian vision of democracy.

Other scholars see value in emphasizing democratic processes and participation as well. Healey (2012) suggests that emerging modes of governance present opportunities to expand “people-focused” or participatory democratic governance. Small actions or “micro-practices” can reframe political culture to normalize democratic inclusion (Healey 2012, p. 21). This vision is realized as people work together in decentralized multiactor systems, where, regardless of the rationales that brought people together, she explains, “We build a sense of ourselves through recognition of, and interaction with others around us—among family and friends, but also among the ‘neighbors’ with whom we share urban life” (2012, p. 30). Hankins (2017) sees a long-term benefit to these processes. She describes a “quiet politics of the everyday” (2017, p. 3) in which everyday actions transform political culture over time, but those quiet politics do not happen automatically; they are nurtured.

To support this sort of democratic participatory governance, Healey (2012) identifies a set of “qualities to foster,” which includes respect and inclusion within the state and civil society. Her discussion is oriented around a “sense of being part of a political community,” which she says “provides the basis for the feelings of solidarity and fairness upon which support for such values as distributive justice and environmental care builds” (Healey 2012, p. 32). Her vision seemingly lays the everyday groundwork for Iris Marion Young’s conceptualization of governance as a shared responsibility of society (Young 2013). After reviewing the theories that explain poverty as the result of individual actions or structural conditions, Young concludes that individual responsibility is, as some assert, not only the responsibility of people who are poor to become not poor but the responsibility of everyone to reshape the conditions in which poverty persists.

Each of these perspectives on governance is reflected to some extent in the PPFAS and helps illuminate the nuance, complexity, and underlying contradictions of the PPFAS in practice and its potential to expand democratic processes and equitable outcomes. In the following section, we discuss the PPFAS in place.

PPFAS in Place

We use the PPFAS as seen from New Brunswick, New Jersey to consider these changing relations between state, market, and civil society. A midsize city of about 55,000 people in central New Jersey, New Brunswick is home to at least 19 food pantries and two soup kitchens that distribute groceries, meals, self-care items, and other goods to, and operate a variety of programs for, New Brunswick residents and people in surrounding communities. These organizations are the community “face” of the national multinodal and multiactor PPFAS that is organized through heterarchical multiscalar networks. These networks enable public, private, and civil society actors to work together nationally, regionally, and within communities to aggregate and distribute money, food, other goods, and to offer related programs and services.

Multinodal Networks

Food and other goods flow into, through, and out of the PPFAS through multilevel aggregation and distribution nodes that operate in neighborhoods, regions, and states, and through national networks. Food flows horizontally into the nodes at all levels and vertically from national to regional to local nodes. The food comes from governmental and nongovernmental actors who also provide cash and, in many cases, the volunteer labor to move the food through this system. Volunteers and businesses produce, pick, purchase, and donate food or money; move the food to and through aggregation nodes such as food banks and food pantries; and organize and distribute groceries and meals at food pantries and meal programs such as soup kitchens. (These actors and their relationships in New Brunswick are pictured in Figure 1.)

Figure 1.

Schematic of New Brunswick PPFAS.

In New Brunswick, food pantries and soup kitchens receive food directly from private donors. They also receive it from government-organized Middlesex County Food Organization and Outreach Distribution Services (MCFOODS) and from the Community FoodBank of New Jersey (CFBNJ). These two food bank nodes aggregate food, money, and other goods such as diapers from a variety of sources.

CFBNJ, which was incorporated in 1982, is a node for food aggregation and distribution in a multicounty region of New Jersey. It provides additional assistance during and after natural disasters, such as Hurricane Sandy, and economic downturns. In addition to food aggregation and distribution, CFBNJ trains and supports local food distribution organizations and offers job training programs, advocacy, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) outreach, and programs to provide after-school or summer meals to children (CFBNJ 2017a). Like many food banks across the nation, CFBNJ belongs to Feeding America, which coordinates a national network of food banks, solicits corporate food donations and funding to distribute to members, facilitates the implementation of federal and state food programs, and provides technical assistance (Barrett 2016; CFBNJ 2017b; Prendergast 2017; Warshawsky 2010b).

Of the 43 million pounds of food that flowed through it in 2016, CFBNJ received 58% from private donors, including businesses, foundations, and individuals (CFBNJ 2017a). The biggest donors included large supermarket chains with stores in New Jersey; major corporations, especially those with corporate headquarters in New Jersey; financial institutions; foundations; and Feeding America. Among the many private efforts that move food into the PPFAS, Ocean State Job Lot corporation donated 35,000 pounds of food, purchased in collaboration with other businesses and consumers (CFBNJ 2017c). In a different effort, CFBNJ collected about 54,000 pounds of food and 4,600 turkeys in a physical and virtual community Turkey Food Drive in 2016 (CFBNJ 2017d). Through a program called Students Change Hunger™, CFBNJ partnered with students in schools who collected nearly 46,000 dollars and about 147,000 pounds of food (CFBNJ 2017a).

CFBNJ received almost one-quarter of its food through government programs: about 19.5 million dollars in food through The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and nearly four million dollars through the New Jersey State Food Purchase Program (SFPP) in fiscal year 2016 (CFBNJ 2017b). Through TEFAP, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) supports food producers by purchasing commodities for state agencies, such as the New Jersey Department of Agriculture, to distribute to regional or local agencies, usually food banks. In New Jersey, the SFPP supplements this stream of food by purchasing and distributing state agricultural products (New Jersey Department of Agriculture 2017). Both programs also provide cash for administrative needs.

Grocery and meal programs are another set of food aggregation and distribution nodes, located within New Brunswick neighborhoods. Most of the city’s food pantries serve anyone who qualifies for federal or state food programs, but some food pantries are embedded within and serve discrete communities such as families of students within particular schools, residents of public housing, or residents of the city (Ralph W. Voorhees Public Service Fellows 2015). A few pantries operate in schools through a partnership with a community organization that provides supportive services to families to improve educational outcomes. Some food pantries, namely, those that do not participate in federal and state food programs, set their own guidelines about who receives the food they distribute.

Food pantry host organizations are another important source of cash, food, and other donations, including labor. For example, food pantries housed within religious institutions may receive cash and food donations from congregation members. Some food pantries receive assistance from partnerships with other religious communities: A suburban church supports a city-based pantry by running a monthly food drive and organizing volunteers who help pack and distribute food bags. Volunteers from a different religious organization gather day-old bread from stores to deliver to food pantries. Religious communities even participate through virtual processes. Elijah’s Promise, a community food organization that began as a soup kitchen, received funding through an online donation effort to transform their soup kitchen into a more welcoming community café.

Heterarchy and Hierarchy

Although we might be tempted to understand the PPFAS as predicated on the federal TEFAP program and Feeding America at the top, the PPFAS is not strictly hierarchical in practice. Government food programs provide food and set regulations regarding who can access the food and how much they can receive, passed down from the federal and state governments to the food banks, and through the food banks to the distributing organizations. In this sense, food banks and local food distribution organizations operate in the shadow of state hierarchy, which is reinforced and even expanded by Feeding America. The food that Feeding America collects from corporate donors and distributes to its more than 200 partner food banks comes with its own set of requirements and practices (Prendergast 2017).

However, other types of food and cash donations do not come with parameters. Like the food bank described above, food pantries and soup kitchens receive food from businesses (such as food distributors, restaurants, food stores, and farmers), organizations and individuals (through organized food drives and individual food donations). Many of the New Brunswick meal and grocery programs receive food from food banks; some purchase food from stores; some grow food in pantry gardens; and all receive direct donations. The mix of food and funding sources in New Brunswick reflects national findings: For food pantries that partner with Feeding America, only about 62% of their food comes from a Feeding America food bank. The programs purchase about 22%, and individuals or businesses donate 13% (Weinfeld et al. 2014). Some food pantries do not participate in the federal and state food programs, and a few only distribute private donations. This range of donations allows for flexibility in what is offered and how.

Independence in pursuing their mission and daily operations also results from donated labor. While some organizations employ staff who organize the food, volunteers, and paperwork, most rely heavily on volunteer labor to operate. Individual or groups of volunteers in various distribution nodes determine the practices of their organization such as opening hours, variety of food provided, target recipients, and requirements to receive food, which all play a large role in structuring the ultimate delivery of services. Indeed, because of the intentional and unintentional variations in these characteristics and the donations of food, cash, and other goods and labor, the provision of food and other assistance varies from node to node. For example, some pantries have received donations of money or equipment that enable them to store refrigerated and/or frozen products. Other pantries are active participants in the city’s community garden coalition, growing fresh produce for pantry distribution. Elijah’s Promise created a community garden so that residents could grow their own food. Actions taken by even the smallest grassroots pantry organization reshapes the system in real time because the system’s benefits are shaped through people’s experience at the food pantry or soup kitchen where they receive groceries or meals.

Multiactor

The food that arrives in the system and how it is distributed results from the variety of actors that participate and their differing rationalities for participation. A vast number of actors participate for many different reasons, and their participation individually and collectively reshapes the system’s logics. These motivations and objectives for engaging in the PPFAS and the resulting actions determine how the system conceives of and creates social welfare outcomes.

Private donors are instrumental in getting food into the PPFAS, and they donate in a variety of ways and for different reasons. Individuals are motivated and encouraged to “help those in need,” accompanied by a religious imperative in some communities. Meanwhile, donations at the grocery store or to a food drive have become regularized activities: Attendees are often asked to bring a can of nonperishable food to events, and collecting food has become a go-to event for children who conduct community service projects. These food drives, especially at schools, are an important source of food for food banks and pantries, and affect the types of foods available for distribution—usually cans of foods chosen by the donor.

Corporate volunteers host food drives, volunteer at food banks, and participate in other efforts to increase the flow of food into the PPFAS, such as gleaning events. Farm participation in the PPFAS allows different types of foods, usually fresh produce, to enter the system. New Jersey’s Farmers against Hunger and America’s Grow-a-Row are nonprofit organizations that engage farmers and a cadre of volunteers to glean food that they then distribute through the PPFAS. The more than 5,500 people who volunteered with America’s Grow-a-Row in New Jersey helped harvest 1.2 million pounds of produce in 2015 (America’s Grow-a-Row 2016).

When food businesses make donations, they may be motivated by financial considerations as well as charity. Businesses can receive a tax break for some of the value of donated food, and they are spared the salvage cost of disposing of unsellable food. As a result, certain types of foods enter the PPFAS, such as failed product experiments and mislabeled items. In addition to this financial benefit, corporations also promote their image as responsible community members when they donate food and money to the PPFAS, another motivation to participate (Fisher 2017).

Many other actors are engaged in the processes to aggregate and distribute these donations. While the food that moves through this system may lack exchange value, it takes a considerable amount of volunteer labor to appreciate its use value. Volunteers move food into the system, through aggregation and distribution nodes, and from the local food distribution organization to consumers. Volunteers coordinate food orders and delivery or pick-up at food banks, solicit and transport donations from food companies and from food drives, and pack bags or cook meals and pass these out. A 2014 study from Feeding America found that more than 1.95 million Americans had volunteered at a meal or grocery program in the past year (Weinfeld et al. 2014). In addition to the volunteers who make the community food nodes possible, volunteers are essential to the regional food bank nodes. Volunteers provided approximately 121,426 donated hours through about 48,000 volunteer visits to the CFBNJ (2017a).

The expectation of such service work has been broadly woven into society, suggesting another aspect of this mode of governance. Schools, honor societies, religious institutions, corporations, and voluntary organizations such as scouting programs engage children, youth, and adults in service activities. For example, at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, the Rutgers Against Hunger (RAH) initiative coordinates a variety of activities that expand the flow of food and money into the PPFAS. Students, faculty, and staff donate food in RAH-provided green bins located across campus. Individuals are motivated to participate in the PPFAS by these organizations and the explicitly or implicitly stated value of “service.”

Many other actors and rationalities also contribute to the PPFAS. Paid staff at nonprofit organizations and in government agencies work for charitable reasons, as well as a paycheck, and many contribute their time and money to these efforts well beyond their paid work obligations. Minimizing food waste is also a strong motivator for many in the PPFAS, from individual volunteers to large nonprofit “food rescue” organizations who see an unacceptable contradiction in food thrown away while others are hungry. Clients of food pantries and soup kitchens also participate in the system as volunteers, donors, and service recipients.

Limits

Despite the energy, effort, and amount of food that flow through the PPFAS, the food assistance system has been criticized for its failure to achieve its most basic objective: alleviating hunger. Over time, researchers have highlighted the inadequacy of the food provided in terms of nutrition, the insufficiency of the amount of food provided, the inappropriateness of foods in terms of individuals’ cultural and/or dietary needs or preferences, and the inaccessibility of the programs to clients given hours, location, and so on (Bazerghi, McKay, and Dunn 2016; McIntyre et al. 2015; Poppendieck 1999; Tarasuk et al. 2014; Verpy, Smith, and Reicks 2003). Other critiques address the inappropriateness of the system as a solution to hunger, given its inefficiency, instability, and the indignity of what some clients find to be a stigmatizing experience (Fisher 2017; Poppendieck 1999).

Several critics of the PPFAS connect these failings to neoliberal trends toward devolution and privatization of responsibility for social welfare (McEntee and Naumova 2012; Parson 2014; Riches 2002; Warshawsky 2010). Indeed, the PPFAS emerged in a context of and is shaped by neoliberal logics. Changing political economy, social welfare dismantling and devolution, deindustrialization, globalization, and a trend toward neoliberal policymaking provided the initial setting for the PPFAS to take root and expand in the 1970s and 1980s. With the political shift represented by the Reagan election, the antihunger community began to move its attention away from the state-run Food Stamp Program (the precursor to the current SNAP) and toward a public–private system built on market logics and private willingness to help the poor (Daponte and Bade 2006). The 1982 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act created TEFAP, which helped farmers by stabilizing prices and encouraged expansion of private antihunger initiatives by providing food and administrative funding for its distribution. TEFAP follows “shadow state logics,” as food banks and pantries must follow government regulations, and regional food banks provide training for local food organizations to ensure that they distribute food within federal and/or state guidelines. These food distributors have become increasingly professionalized in response to these requirements and neoliberal trends toward the valorization of “business-like” practices in all organizations (Warshawsky 2010).

In addition to TEFAP, privatization of responsibility for social welfare is also apparent in the relationship between the government and the private businesses that participate in the food assistance network. Companies can receive a federal tax deduction to recoup production costs and some of the fair market value of donated food, and some states offer additional state-level incentives for food recovery (Fisher 2017; Xie and Balkus 2016). The federal government encourages such food disposal with the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act of 1996, which absolves those who donate food from any liability should the product cause harm to the recipient. The PPFAS depends on these market logics to access food to distribute from private individuals and businesses, but these market logics alone are not sufficient to explain the PPFAS.

Self-Reflexive Governance

Although encouraged by public funds, food banks, pantries, and soup kitchens could not subsist without volunteer labor and private donations. These contributions imbue the system with flexibility that enables food-distributing organizations to provide (some) food and services in ways that are not dictated by the federal and state governmental programs or neoliberal logics. We argue that the flexibility of the networked PPFAS structure and the engagement of so many participants for different reasons challenge the vision that the PPFAS operates solely through neoliberal logics. The PPFAS is highly porous and enables many people to work together to provide food, goods, and services to people who need them. These actors work together, and they have changed what the PPFAS is, how it is organized, and what it seeks to achieve.

We see at least three elements of PPFAS governance that expand beyond what a strictly neoliberal or shadow state interpretation might suggest: (1) improvements to what the system provides, (2) expanded social welfare benefits, and (3) programs to address poverty and economic restructuring.

Improving Food and Health

Many food banks, food pantries, and meal programs are attempting to improve and expand what they provide to clients. A major area of improvement has been the quality of the food they distribute, to make it healthier, fresher, and more desirable to clients. Since the PPFAS is a complex and nuanced system with many food entry points and distribution nodes, changing the quality of food can be done at multiple points in the system.

The USDA has reconsidered the standards it uses in purchasing commodities for the TEFAP program, prioritizing healthier and more desirable foods (Fisher 2017). To expand access to fresh produce, PPFAS participants have built relationships throughout its variegated food supply chains. Both of the New Jersey food banks discussed earlier have expanded their efforts to add fresh produce into the PPFAS food supply, despite the logistical challenges associated with perishable foods, especially those close to expiration. Some of New Brunswick’s food pantries have added gardens to increase their flow of fresh produce and to allow clients to grow their own food (Fisher 2017; Ralph W. Voorhees Public Service Fellows 2015; Vitiello et al. 2014). Elijah’s Promise, which runs a meal program, pulls in fresh produce by purchasing from a community farmers market, accepting gleaned produce, and hosting a community-supported agriculture pick-up location.

Food pantries, soup kitchens, and food banks have increased their capacity to distribute fresh and frozen food by changing food aggregation and distribution networks, and investing in refrigeration and freezer capacity. Cash and equipment donations and grants have made refrigerated and frozen storage possible for many. PPFAS participants also try to decrease the flow of less desirable foods. For example, one school-based pantry in New Brunswick developed a list of suggested foods to donate. Many of the pantries in New Brunswick prefer to distribute few, if any, desserts, sugary drinks, or sugary snacks. But this, too, is challenging, as food distributors often fear that if they turn away a donation, the donor may not return in the future (Ralph W. Voorhees Public Service Fellows 2015).

Some food providers also offer goods and services to promote other elements of individual and community well-being, such as nonfood items (clothing, toiletries, baby products, laundry detergent) and housing services, behavioral and physical health care, education, job training, case management, and small business development. For many organizations, these programs and services emerged out of the unmet needs they observed in the process of distributing food. For example, former students at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School created a program to use their medical training to provide health care services to guests at Elijah’s Promise’s meal program (Jimenez et al. 2008).

Through these activities, the PPFAS has evolved into a system in which localized discretion constitutes a reservoir of resistance to “higher-scale” neoliberal processes of austerity. Because it incorporates vast amounts of privately donated food, money, and other goods and labor throughout the system, it has a greater capacity to offer a variety of programs and services than if the food pantries and soup kitchens relied solely on governmental food programs.

Social Welfare Benefits

Non-neoliberal logics are also apparent as food banks and meal and grocery programs advocate for and help expand the state social welfare benefits that remain. Nationally, about 25% of meal and grocery programs offer support for clients to apply for SNAP benefits, and many more offer referrals and information on how to access the program (Weinfeld et al. 2014). Also, 40% of food distribution organizations offer access to apply for at least one other federal social welfare program (Weinfeld et al. 2014). In New Brunswick, the CFBNJ conducts SNAP outreach events (CFBNJ 2017b).

Furthermore, some PPFAS institutions, notably regional food banks, may act as advocates for increased governmental funding and programs to address food security and poverty, the underlying issues of why their clients need food in the first place. In New Brunswick, many of the food pantries and soup kitchens, along with partner PPFAS institutions, work together in the Feeding New Brunswick Network coalition on issues of common concern.

Programs That Address Poverty and Economic Restructuring

PPFAS organizations also develop their own programs to address the reasons their clients access the system, especially in the context of economic restructuring. Some food organizations have developed education, job training and placement programs, and food business development incubators to increase human capital, job creation, and income potential for those they serve. Elijah’s Promise operates a community cafe (formally soup kitchen) and a culinary job training program, and partnered with community organizations to support small food business development (Ralph W. Voorhees Public Service Fellows 2015). The CFBNJ (2017b) also operates a culinary training program.

Neoliberal or Democratic Futures

Participants have shifted the PPFAS to improve food quality, and they have bundled services to reduce poverty. Perhaps equally important, many different communities have become involved in doing the work of social welfare through their participation in this social welfare governance system. Although it is tempting to dismiss this involvement as a shift in governmentality that moves the burden of social welfare to unpaid volunteers, the involvement of so many people in doing this work suggests a potential for other interpretations, intentional public engagement and civic education, and more democratic future outcomes.

Within the PPFAS, we observe early emerging processes that suggest self-reflexive learning as participants seek to better achieve their objective of feeding people and also to modify that objective to achieve other social welfare outcomes. The incorporation of so many people in this system has the potential to expand consciousness and to create new shared understandings about the lived experience and underlying causes of poverty and food insecurity. Following Healey (2012) and Hankins (2017), with intention, this could lead to broader transformations in political culture and broader public engagement in setting social welfare policy.

Social Welfare Governance

One of the central questions we asked is what the organization of the PPFAS can tell us about the organization of social welfare governance. Although we cannot predict how this mode of governance will continue to evolve, it is clear that shadow state and neoliberal conceptualizations illuminate some aspects of the mode of governance but do not capture it in its entirety (DeVerteuil 2012). Jessop’s conception of governance as heterarchical networks that operate through “tangled hierarchies” along with Scharpf’s (1994) conceptualization of governance that operates within the shadow of hierarchy better capture the PPFAS as we have come to understand it.

While some literature focuses on the PPFAS as an example of real-world neoliberalism, we see a multiactor, multinodal, multiscalar system that is constantly reshaped by the collective engagement of the governmental and nongovernmental participants who constitute it. It retains some aspects of the traditional forms of more hierarchical governance, through large governmental public food programs, even as it introduces new organizational relationships and processes. We find that it also operates in the shadow of the private national nonprofit Feeding America, suggesting the dramatically expanded role of the private sector in managing social welfare governance.

Despite the outsized roles of these governmental and nongovernmental actors, the volunteers and organizations that collect and distribute food and run related programs are not merely implementing a federal or state government’s or even a national nonprofit’s vision for providing food. These actors together participate in social welfare governance, and their participation reconstructs the system through their actions within it. This can result in haphazard and fragmented programming related to the types and amounts of food and the volunteer and staff capacity that make the food flow through the system at any point in time. But it also has enabled self-reflexive learning and modifications to the PPFAS objects of governance, as seen in efforts to improve food quality and expand programming that goes beyond the boundaries of providing food.

Although the PPFAS is quite durable (partly because there are powerful invested actors, such as Feeding America, large food corporations, and even institutionalized volunteer networks), spaces for experimentation and innovation are located within the system. The PPFAS may seem like the quintessential example of privatized governance with its attendant movement of decision making outside of the public sphere, but the vast individual and collective participation could be evidence of a leading edge of a reconstitution of public governance. Volunteers come from across society and span ages, religious backgrounds, class, occupation, and political affiliations. The PPFAS presents opportunities to build connections between people, for them to learn about how other people experience the world and why, and to collectively decide what to do about the challenges that underlie poverty. Each food donation and each volunteer hour present an opportunity to learn about food insecurity and the experience and underlying reasons for poverty, as well as to take collective responsibility for social welfare governance.

This is all the more important as the PPFAS becomes the social welfare provider of last resort. For those who are not adequately served by the logics of the neoliberal system, the PPFAS provides a fragmented and uneven safety net. The existence and dramatic expansion of the PPFAS in response to growing demand since the 1970s suggest limits to neoliberal governance. Although we see the potential for self-reflexive learning within the PPFAS, we hesitate to draw conclusions about the implications of this style of governance for democracy or social equity. The systematization of volunteerism that engages people from children through aging adults in donating food, goods, money, and labor suggests an expansion of civic connectedness, but we could also view it as a governance system that disciplines people to provide for needs that are not met through the existing political economic system. Their participation alone does not ensure democratic process or equitable outcomes.

Furthermore, the system distributes social benefits unevenly as different groups have different capacity to provide food and other social welfare services, as well as different rules for who can access them. While in many instances, this results in an expansion of benefits beyond those accessible through governmental programs, those benefits vary, and it is unclear whether the transformations in some parts of the system will spread across the whole due to differential capacity and interest. The responsibility for providing food and related services is also unevenly shared, with some people in some places taking disproportionate responsibility for those in need.

Jessop ([2003] 2014) suggests that networked governance is the space within which the relations between state, market, and society are negotiated. He stresses the importance of participation and self-reflexive governance. Finding ways to expand democratic participation in the PPFAS could strengthen the system’s self-reflexive aspects. Jessop observes that one of the challenges in self-reflexive governance is a disconnect between the people who make the decisions about services and the experience of those who receive them. These challenges could be reduced in this instance by engaging more of the people who receive PPFAS services in the processes of governing the system. In addition, as more people participate in the PPFAS, intentionally engaging them in democratic governance and education about the daily experience of poverty and its complex underlying reasons may translate into more responsive and effective public policy. Healey (2012) suggests that small efforts, microactions, can lead to changes in political culture that allow for more substantial changes. It may be that the engagement of so many people in doing the work of social governance may offer untapped opportunities to strengthen democracy and address sociospatial equality in as yet unrealized ways.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Feeding New Brunswick Network, New Brunswick Community Food Alliance, Cara Cuite, Bob Lake, Elvin Wyly, and three anonymous reviewers.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The New Brunswick Food Assessment that inspired this paper was funded by a grant from by Johnson & Johnson Corporation. This paper was written independently of that project.

Notes

Author Biographies

Amy Rosenthal is a doctoral candidate in planning and public policy at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. She holds a masters in food studies from New York University.

Kathe Newman is an associate professor in the Urban Planning and Policy Development Program at the Bloustein School and director of the Ralph W. Voorhees Center for Civic Engagement. She holds a PhD in political science from the Graduate School and University Center at the City University of New York.

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