Building a conceptual framework for the role of trade and investment agreements in policy inertia with respect to regulating food environments

Abstract

This seminar presents our findings, describing how regulatory context and stakeholder influence, policy design, and mechanisms associated with TIA rules and provisions intersect in ways contributing to policy space outcomes. The new framework can provide a basis for rapidly assessing policy coherence between TIAs and food environment regulations in these domains. It can also be used to identify areas where further legal analysis would strengthen the development and defence of regulatory proposals. We discuss several strategies that can help protect policy space for food environment regulation, noting implications for future research in this area.