The development of a comparative food policy research agenda has been hampered by the dependent variable problem of how to delineate the policy field. Through a concise literature review, we show that the existing literature has conceptualised food policy as policy outputs, institutional orders, or discursive constructs. Focusing on the policy outputs, we define food policy as a set of policy outputs adopted to address one or more food system activities (production, processing and packaging, distribution and retailing, and consumption) with the explicit aim of affecting food system outcomes in a desired direction. The paper develops a heuristic encompassing four dimensions along which food policy outputs may differ: (i) policy scope, (ii) targeting of policy efforts, (iii) type of policy instruments applied and how these are calibrated, and (iv) integration of the various components of the policy complex. These four dimensions can be applied to characterise individual food policies and compare across countries and time. Comparing and tracking the development of food policy along these dimensions would allow for addressing follow-up questions about impacts and what explains policy change.

中文翻译：

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克服食品政策研究中的因变量问题

比较食品政策研究议程的发展受到了如何界定政策领域的因变量问题的阻碍。通过简明的文献综述，我们表明现有文献已将食品政策概念化为政策输出、制度秩序或话语结构。着眼于政策产出，我们将食品政策定义为一系列政策产出，用于处理一项或多项食品系统活动（生产、加工和包装、分销和零售以及消费），其明确目标是影响食品系统的结果想要的方向。该文件开发了一种启发式方法，涵盖四个维度，粮食政策产出可能因这些维度而有所不同：(i) 政策范围，(ii) 政策努力的目标，(iii) 应用的政策工具类型以及如何校准这些工具，(iv) 整合政策综合体的各个组成部分。这四个维度可用于表征个别食品政策，并在不同国家和时间进行比较。沿着这些维度比较和跟踪食品政策的发展将有助于解决有关影响和解释政策变化的后续问题。