Explaining indeterminacy: Conflicting path dependencies and the reform of the World Food Programme

Conventional explanations attempt to account for the probabilistic determinacy of historical developments. They seek to demonstrate why one outcome occurred instead of another. However, what if all historical outcomes are, to a certain extent, indeterminate? What if they are always chosen for contingent reasons from a range of equally possible outcomes? This paper proposes an alternative to the conventional understanding of explanation that acknowledges historical indeterminacy. This alternative framework can solve an important empirical puzzle: the indeterminacy of a significant institutional outcome in the history of the United Nations (UN) system. After many years of protracted inter-institutional conflict, in 1992, member states agreed to loosen the ties between the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). This enabled the WFP to rise to become the world’s largest humanitarian organization. The paper will demonstrate that this reform decision was a critical juncture, a fork pointing toward different possible futures: it was indeterminate. The paper will explain this indeterminacy as resulting from two conflicting path dependencies stemming from the WFP’s foundation in 1962. Building on this case study and the tradition of historical institutionalist scholarship, the paper outlines a broader, possibility-centered research agenda.