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Rural innovation activities as a means for changing development perspectives – An assessment of more than two decades of promoting LEADER initiatives across the European Union

Since the 1990s the LEADER approach has very powerfully addressed the spirit of mobilising actors in the countryside through focusing on endogenous potential and activating local stakeholders across all sectors. Given the long-term experience and wealth of diverse development initiatives across the European Union (EU), the diversity of implementation is huge. Considering the limited fi nancial support as a Community Initiative (until 2006), a signifi cant extension and ‘upgrading’ of LEADER was intended by integrating it into the EU Rural Development Programmes (RDPs) since 2007. The shift from the character of a ‘pilot’ instrument at the start of LEADER to its ‘mainstreaming’ into the RDPs involved radical administrative changes and high expectations of increased impacts. The interest in LEADER practice and effectiveness led to many studies that in general apply a limited perspective of self-evaluation and refl ection on LEADER activities. Its main impact is seen in providing learning processes in rural regions and the effects on changes in local governance through extended involvement of local stakeholders and institutions. This paper provides a synthesis of European experiences and analyses of core changes, in particular by referring to the example of implementation in the Austrian context. The main lessons are based ...

Participation of disadvantaged groups and governance in the LEADER and PRODER programmes in Andalucía, Spain

The involvement of disadvantaged groups in European Union neo-endogenous rural development programmes, such as the LEADER programme, must be a high priority. In this paper we study the profiles of the beneficiaries of LEADER and PRODER, the main Spanish example of mainstreaming the LEADER method, in the NUTS 2 region of Andalucía, Spain in the period 2002-2008, and of the decision makers in the Local Action Groups (LAGs). Using quantitative information provided by the regional administration and a questionnaire survey of managers of the LAGs, we show that there has been continuing underrepresentation of previously disadvantaged groups and territories, so contributing to uneven and selective empowerment and governance that favours the emergence of a project class. The groups that have benefited the most from LEADER investments have been entrepreneurs and ‘town halls’, in this order. Interviewed LAG managers felt that many mistakes had been made in the application of LEADER: excessive bureaucracy and interventionism by the regional administration, loss of the original philosophy, low participation of disadvantaged groups and lack of strategic vision. As was noted by one of the LAG managers, “LEADER has been a victim of its own success; the universalisation of its method has led to the ...

Facilitating Agricultural Innovation Systems: a critical realist approach

The turn of agrarian sciences and agricultural extension from reductionist and transfer of technology, respectively, towards systemic approaches has transformed agricultural/rural development thinking in the last decades. Nevertheless, the emergence of Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) has to confront a number of gaps among which the expert – lay knowledge gap is of major importance. This paper aims at exploring such a gap as well as obstacles to participatory development from a critical realist point of view. Critical realism (CR) with its realist, differentiated and stratified ontology aims at interpreting the world in order to ultimately bring about transformation. CR allows for new insights on the nature of knowledge as well as on development research and practice. It thus provides useful guidelines concerning the emerging ‘intermediation’ functions within AIS.

Journal Metrics

Scimago Journal & Country Rank

 

 

 

 

  • Scopus SJR (2023): 0.29
  • Scopus CiteScore (2022): 2.0
  • WoS Journal Impact Factor (2023): 0.9
  • WoS Journal Citation Indicator (2023): 0.33
  • ISSN (electronic): 2063-0476
  • ISSN-L 1418-2106

 

Impressum

Publisher Name: Institute of Agricultural Economics Nonprofit Kft. (AKI)

Publisher Headquarters: Zsil utca 3-5, 1093-Budapest, Hungary

Name of Responsible Person for Publishing:        Dr. Pal Goda

Name of Responsible Person for Editing:             Dr. Attila Jambor

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The publication cost of the journal is supported by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

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