| dc.description.abstract | This thesis argues that inattention to policy actors' meaning, fear of meaninglessness, individual interests and agendas can contribute to incomplete policy analysis and misguide our understanding of the dynamics and outcomes of policy processes. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Oslo, the study addresses how policymakers involved in food, seed security, and other development policies navigate policymaking in a landscape of paradoxes and find 'meaning' in their work. The main argument is developed by analysing an approach known as "Policy Coherence for Development (PCD)", regarded as a premise necessary for achieving the sustainable development goals in an integrated manner at all stages of domestic and international policymaking. I examine how actors navigate conflicts within and between political spheres and the effect of power relations and meaning on this work for coherence. By exploring the complexity of the roles of civil society actors, bureaucrats, and researchers and how they are constrained and liberated in their strive for meaning in a policy world of incoherencies, the study offers insights into how policy coherence attempts play out in practice. I build my argument around specific cases such as the 'food systems' approach, entailing cross-sectoral cooperation for sustainable food production, seed security policy and paradoxes between Norwegian policy on farmers' rights and Norway's demands on developing countries through free trade agreements. Through these cases, I shed light on how PCD has led to the development of initiatives that support the Norwegian "good state" branding in international contexts and make policy coherence initiatives seem meaningful for civil society actors to engage with, given their political attention. However, I argue that many of these initiatives tend to be fetishised by politicians and bureaucrats, allowing the government to uphold an image of giving political attention and resources to cross-sectoral coordination at the expense of implementing the policies. On the other hand, the study shows that addressing policy incoherence and paradoxes appears meaningless for other policy actors. These actors work to cover up internal tensions and portray their political sphere as harmonious, competing with other political spheres for resources and attention. They do not actively address paradoxes and incoherence between sectors because they face obstacles rooted in how neoliberal approaches redirect resources and attention away from environmental and social concerns toward economic ones. These analyses further illustrate that work for policy coherence does not happen in a vacuum but in a complex landscape of power inequalities between policy sectors. | eng |