Leadership and Local Power in European Rural Development
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Leadership and Local Power in European Rural Development

Imre Kovách, Keith Halfacree, Keith Halfacree

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Leadership and Local Power in European Rural Development

Imre Kovách, Keith Halfacree, Keith Halfacree

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About This Book

Contemporary processes of economic, social, political and cultural restructuring are having profound impacts on the form and function of rural areas within the countries of the European Union and beyond. Furthermore, rural development policies and programmes at EU and national levels have been critical in shaping the responses of different rural areas across Europe to these wider processes of restructuring. Contrasting empirical studies of ten European countries, this volume provides a comprehensive analysis of the restructuring processes and the various national, regional and local rural development programmes. Adopting a different national perspective in each chapter, it focuses particularly on issues of power and leadership in the evolution and administration of these programmes. Five broad issues are examined in each case: socio-economic changes in rural areas, the administrative context in which rural development and political activities take place, the sociological context, the political control of rural development, and the use of different discourses of rurality in shaping the development process.

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Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2017
ISBN
9781351922579
Subtopic
Sociology
Edition
1

Chapter One
Introduction: A Comparative European Perspective

Keith Halfacree, Imre Kovách and Rachel Woodward

Rural Restructuring and the Reconfiguration of Power Relations

It is a truism that contemporary processes of economic, social, political and cultural restructuring, many of which are global in origin, are having pronounced impacts on the form and function of rural areas across Europe. Whilst these processes may be broadly similar in origin, their outcomes are highly differentiated across space. This diversity of outcomes reflects local, regional and national responses to the challenge of restructuring, visible in the differential geographical impact of economic and social changes, the policies that have been developed to meet these challenges and the ways in which different national traditions have responded to processes of restructuring. The challenges of restructuring are particularly problematic for Europe’s rural areas, given the scale of changes in modes of agricultural production and the specific problems economic and social trends have raised for rural localities. Indeed, the importance of both agricultural and rural development policy initiatives within the European Union (EU) is indicative of the significance and specificity of the problems of rural restructuring. A point of departure for this volume is the recognition both of the significance of pan-European economic and social changes, and of the significance of such changes for rural areas. Its starting-point is the tension between diversity and homogeneity, between local responses and global processes.
These broad processes of economic and social change in Europe’s rural areas have consequences for local configurations of power, and for local political responses to these broad processes. The study of these configurations and responses is important. These economic and social changes have produced pronounced inequalities across space which in turn have prompted responses (and perceptions) at national and EU levels of the need for economic and social intervention or development. (Marsden, 1998 and 1999; Bell and Lowe, 1998; Starosta et al., 1999). One policy challenge across the EU is the production of a coherent ‘Europe of the Regions’ which strikes a balance between the specificity of local conditions and experiences, and normative desires for economic prosperity and stability across Europe (Woods, 1998). Moreover, with the retreat from the top-down (exogenous) model of development at national and EU levels (for political, pragmatic and ideological reasons), local responses have gained in significance. As Granberg and Kovách (1998) and Tovey (1998) argue, local actors play a key role in determining responses to restructuring, and the identification of such actors and their roles constitutes a specific research question in European rural studies. Furthermore, certain policy shifts (such as the adoption by the EU of the model of endogenous rural development) have accorded greater (and ever-increasing) significance to the work of local actors and the operation of local networks of power (Murdoch and Marsden, 1994; Shucksmith, 2000). Quite simply, the local is of increasing significance in EU development programmes; LEADER, for example, is viewed as a template for future EU development policy programmes (Ray, 2000). With this institutional emphasis on endogenous development comes an imperative to investigate the influences on local political configurations, power relations and the way they shape local responses to global processes (de Haan and van der Ploeg, 1994; Ray, 1999a, 1999b; Goverde et al., 2000). Who controls and who benefits from changing power relations as a consequence of development initiatives (Bruckmeier, 2000; Buller, 2000; Kovách, 2000; Osti, 2000; Ray, 2000)? Finally, the study of local configurations of rural power and local responses to restructuring are of wider interest because of what they tell us about cultural issues such as the construction of national and regional identities (Woods, 1997). These identities are influenced across Europe by rural images and constructs; it is pertinent, therefore, to see how these identities are developed and mobilised at the local level within a rural context (Halfacree, 1993; Halfacree, 1995; Hoggart et al., 1995; Pratt, 1996; Frouws, 1998). This volume therefore constitutes a contribution to a growing body of research on local responses, local actors, questions of leadership, power, autonomy and control in the evolution of responses to wider economic and social restructuring across rural Europe. Its purpose is to examine the diversity of these local political responses with specific reference to the implications of these responses for local configurations of power in rural areas.
The contributions to this edited volume have been guided by the following observations. First, many of the economic processes of restructuring affect all European countries; these include the move towards post-productivism and associated changes in agriculture, reform of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and consequences of negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). There are also common social trends in operation, including age- and class-selective in- and out-migration between urban and rural areas and processes of urbanisation (Halfacree, 1994; Boyle and Halfacree, 1998; Shucksmith and Chapman, 1998). Different contributors have chosen to focus on different processes of change, reflecting both national situations and the disciplinary backgrounds of individual contributors. Second, following from this, these outcomes of change will be shaped by national differences in the structure of national, regional and local governance, the location of political control of rural development and agriculture within administrative and governmental systems, the availability and use of EU financial assistance under the Structural Funds and Community Initiatives (including LEADER) by governments within member states, and so on. Again, contributors focus on what is important in national contexts and the factors which speak to their individual academic and political concerns. Third, this volume recognises the importance of cultural factors in shaping political responses to rural restructuring. These include differences in the meaning of ‘rural’ and national cultural constructions of rurality (as well as normative definitions of rural) and how the rural is imagined, produced, represented and conceptualised in different cultural contexts across Europe (Cloke and Little, 1996; Ray, 1998). Contributors to this volume all recognise the ways in which constructions of the rural in different national contexts shape political responses to rural restructuring, and how local power finds expression through the dominance of certain constructions of rurality over others. Underpinning many of the contributions to this volume is the observation that the ways in which rural problems are defined and solutions developed owes as much to cultural conceptions of what the rural is and should be, as to the economic context in which such problems appear or the policy mechanisms developed for their solution.

A Framework for Comparative Study

This volume is structured around individual national contributions, with the choice of countries for comparison dictated by membership of the group behind the production of this volume. The group comprised members of a Working Group on Leadership and Local Power, which was brought together under the EU’s COST Action A12 on Rural Innovation (COST being an initiative for collaborative research endeavour). The Working Group had participants from established EU member states (Germany, France, Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands and Spain), more recent EU members (Finland and Austria), one aspirant EU member (Hungary) and one non-EU member (Norway). Each chapter has been written by a leading academic, working in disciplines ranging from rural sociology, to geography and demography, to political science. All comment on their own national contexts.
A challenge in producing this volume was to bring together the diversity of experience and disciplinary outlook. All contributors were given a brief to examine a set of questions with reference to their own national contexts. The first of these was: who sets the agenda in the evolution of rural development policy at the national level, and how indeed is ‘rural’ defined within different national contexts? The purpose of this question was to tease out how national agendas are set within their national administrative and historical contexts. The second question concerned the extent to which established and emerging social divisions or social groups affect the evolution and administration of rural development policies and programmes in different European countries. How are these divisions manifest or given a material reality? This includes consideration of the roles of new and old elites, the (often conflicting) priorities of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, ‘locals’ and ‘newcomers’, issues such as regionalism and questions of gender relations. The third question was: who controls and who benefits from rural development policies at local, regional and national levels? Are the benefits uniform, or confined to specific groups? If uneven, is this politically endorsed or alternatively perceived as unfair? The fourth question concerned any consistency in emerging patterns of leadership and local power within rural Europe, and was aimed at teasing out any common features of elites which have emerging during processes of rural restructuring. In addressing these questions, the chapters have been written to a broadly similar brief given to each individual contributor. Each sets out the social and economic context for rural areas in the countries under question. The administrative context is introduced, to give the unfamiliar reader a grasp of the structures in which administrative decisions relating to rural development and rural politics are made. The political control of rural development is addressed, often with reference to case studies of specific national and regional programmes for rural development. Finally, the evidence for different discourses or cultural constructions of rurality is assessed where appropriate.

The Chapters

The volume opens with an analysis by Chris Curtin and Tony Varley of changing configurations of power and leadership in rural Ireland. Drawing on an analysis of recent policy changes, they examine the rupture to old established patterns of rural leadership in Ireland. This change is conceptualised in terms which distinguish between ‘power over’ and ‘power to’. They argue that the prominent pattern of rural leadership in the Irish past, and the local power structures which this reflected and reproduced, was rooted in ‘power over’ relationships of domination and subordination. The separation of this pattern from more recently emerging patterns of leadership associated with a partnership approach is a consequence not of the disappearance of the ‘power over’ dimension, but rather a reconfiguring of the relationship between the dimensions of ‘power over’ and ‘power to’.
This is followed by a discussion by Henri Goverde and Henk de Haan of the politics of rural development in the Netherlands. In the most densely populated country in Europe, the authors argue that discussions of the politics of rural development should be situated within the context of national debates over the definition of rural. These debates entail the possible elimination of rural-urban differences, yet are coupled with what the authors term a ‘rural renaissance’, a re-orientation of the significance of the rural in Dutch society and the assertion of the cultural value of rural areas. The review of administrative structures and control over rural development policy and planning in the Netherlands focuses on how constructions of the rural in policy discourse can be read from national rural planning documentation. The paper then goes on to explore rural discourses in the Netherlands with reference to two specific instances where images and realities of rural life have been drawn into conflict through the activities of different social groups. These conflicts are understood by the authors as competing conceptualisations of rurality – in one case a social conflict between recent and more established residents of a particular village, and in the other an institutional conflict over the precedence which should be granted to either housing development or environmental protection. The authors conclude that both continuity and fragmentation mark the valorisation of the rural in Dutch social and political life.
In a review of the UK experience, Keith Halfacree and Rachel Woodward examine the socioeconomic, administrative and cultural contexts in which rural development programmes have taken place. Reviewing changes to the socioeconomic structure of the UK, they highlight counter-urbanisation as the most significant socioeconomic force affecting rural localities. A review of the administrative structures influencing rural development in England precedes an examination of the broad features of both European and national rural development programmes, with particular emphasis on the consequences of these programmes for changing local power relations. The chapter concludes with a review of recent scholarship on discourses of rurality, showing the dominance of the notion of the rural idyll which reflects deep-seated cultural ideas about what the countryside is, and who it is for.
The situation and outlook for an aspirant EU member, Hungary, is considered by Imre Kovách. The transition from socialism prompted wide-ranging reforms across the Hungarian economy, with radical reforms of the agricultural system. More recently, and in anticipation of Hungary’s accession to the EU, a regional/rural development system has been introduced to promote economic development and to work towards the reduction in regional disparities across Hungary. The chapter describes this new system, paying particular attention to the restratification of Hungarian rural society which has brought both the emergence of new rural elites and the exclusion of poorer social groups. The new actors in the rural development system are considered with particular reference to the changing configurations of power which have accompanied this process. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the relationships between contemporary processes of rural restructuring and the historical and contemporary construction of images of rurality.
Rural restructuring, power distribution and leadership at national, regional and local levels in France are examined by Nicole Mathieu and Philippe Gajewski. The authors identify two characteristics defining (rural) France, these being a national self-representation of France as a peasant society despite the small minority actually engaged in agriculture, and a French tradition of decentralised administration through the communes. These two features above all else have shaped the character of rural restructuring in France. The chapter focuses on the influence of debates on the meaning of rurality within policy discourses on development, and on the influences in social and agricultural spheres of emerging policy networks and new social movements in development policy. The authors go on to explore a theorisation of the relationship between local/rural development policies and empowerment, introducing the idea of a rural ‘observatory’.
Lutz Laschewski, Parto Teherani-Krönner and Titus Bahner look at rural restructuring in the context of the different experiences of the former West and East Germany in the years following reunification in 1990. Following this, one set of institutions (on the West German model) was put in place across Germany, but operating to different effects in East and West. The authors argue that the post-unification framework of regional and agricultural policies is currently under pressure because of regional heterogeneity and the power of states within the federal system. There is a well-established system of regional development funding and programmes. European funding has been integrated within this system, and the financial effects have been significant for East Germany. The popular Village Renewal scheme East Germany is also discussed. The chapter goes on to examine the impacts of social changes on rural life, including those on the social composition of the rural population, and the concept of the ‘regionalised village’ in West Germany. This contrasts with the post-war reconstruction of rural East Germany, the experience of which is examined through an assessment of the effect of agricultural industrialisation under East German socialism, and its consequences for local power and gender relations. The final section discusses how rurality as a concept is subsumed within policy discourses on regionality, how cultural and social forces give the rural its meanings, and the regional differences evident in this. The chapter concludes by discussing local power and participation, the retreat from local democracy and mechanisms for regulating rural conflicts, contrasting the experiences of East and West Germany.
Rural restructuring and the effects of rural development policies in Spain are examined by Fernando Garrido, José Mauleón and Eduardo Moyano. The past two decades of rural restructuring have witnessed political changes including democratisation, with administrative decentralisation and EU accession; cultural changes, including a new emphasis on the local and on the environment; and economic changes, including the emergence of new non-farming actors in rural areas. Under a decentralised system of government, regional governments have power over agriculture and rural development within their territories, whilst central government liaises with the EU. Rural areas have seen industrialisation and the out-migration of younger people in the 1980s but more recently there has been a reversal of these trends coupled with a revaluation of rural areas. ...

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