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1Ā Ā Why rural renewal?
Challenges and context for governance
Introduction
Why a book on the governance of rural renewal? First, to address the focus on urban renewal, regeneration and development; second, to capture and examine some of the foremost case studies of rural renewal and its governance, and to compare these case studies cross-nationally; and third, and importantly, to address from a governance perspective the need for greater linkage between urban and rural renewal, in terms of lesson drawing and resource management, i.e. through partnerships, networks, resource management, targets or related government (often, most typically, national level) projects. This book focuses on the key debates and questions around the governance of rural renewal across comparative national case studies, but many of these debates are relevant for urban renewal as well ā particularly around resource management and distribution, meeting targets set out in projects and sustainability challenges around food, water, and ecology. Moreover, the patterns of governance design set out in each of the case studies bear resemblance to one another and also to a far broader set of partnership or network arrangements, both in design and delivery. These ideals underpin the design of governance in the case study areas, and several others, as well as in urban renewal settings and contexts. Evidently, these governance arrangements are responses to problems such as resource management or funding, but, equally, these issues cannot and do not exist in splendid isolation. Though several examples of renewal projects in urban contexts have proven to be too ambitious and large in scale ā see, for example, the Thames Gateway project (Shand, 2013) ā rural renewal programmes are confronted by the same governance issues. These challenges and their wider contexts are set out in the following sections.
Challenges and context
The challenges for rural renewal, then, are centred on the design and implementation of governance. As noted above, these governance delivery mechanisms ā such as, most typically, partnerships and networks ā are driven by the need to deliver renewal programmes which address a number of key problem areas. For example, rural renewal programmes set out to address a wide range of issues for improvement and cohesion, such as transport, water and food security, education, community engagement and participation and farming.
This book sets out to unite the ideas expounded by scholars concerned with the governance of urban regeneration with examples from rural case studies. The book aims to link the debates around best practice in the governance of regeneration in cities with best examples from rural case studies selected globally. The literature refers to debates around human geography, sustainability and development, or urbanisation, but from a public administration or political science perspective; there is relatively little written about the governance of rural regeneration projects and settings as case studies, neither nationally nor globally, or in a wider comparative context. There is some existing literature which compares across two nations, but virtually none with a wider cross-national comparative approach. There is also a lack of linkage between the academic debates and the practice agenda in this area, which this book seeks to address by dedicated sections in each chapter summarising both the relevant linkages between academic debate and practice, as well as a dedicated chapter on the relationship between theory and practice in the area of rural renewal.
The rationale for the book is to examine a range of case study examples of rural regeneration projects through the public administration lens, focusing on how governance arrangements in rural settings work. A key focus of the book will be the roles of communities, business and tiers of governance (local, regional, national and supra national) in terms of delivery and funding. By drawing on a range of global case studies, the book aims to identify best practice in governance, applicable to both academic conceptual debates and to practitioners engaged in the real-world governance of regeneration. While there are substantial political science, sociology and geography debates within the existing academic literature around food security, fair trade, urbanārural divides and supply chains, there is little on the way that governance in comparative global case study settings operates in achieving or underpinning rural renewal programmes.
Though existing literature in the governance and politics field (and related areas such as human geography) addresses some of these points in terms of rural renewal, there is no real national-level comparison across countries. While there is some highly detailed and excellent work at the national and sub-national level on the topic (Osborne et al., 2002, 2004; Long and Woods, 2011) and some comparative analysis at the national level from a governance perspective, this is not comparative in a global sense. Therefore, this book sets out to build on and contribute to the debates fostered by the existing literature in academic circles and in practice, but also seeks to build on this in two main ways: first, by broadening existing academic and practice debates on the governance of rural renewal to a cross-national comparative level, focused on communities, governments and businesses; and, second, by linking these debates in more depth to the much larger existing body of work on the governance of urban renewal. These key themes are underpinned by the theoretical approach of policy networks, drawing particularly on the notion of interpretivism put forward by Bevir (2004) and Bevir and Rhodes (2006; 2011), of which there is much deeper and more detailed discussion in the subsequent chapter. The key themes are examined in each of the case study areas, in Chapters 4ā7 and are applied in both comparative and praxis ā theory and practice ā contexts. The following sections discuss each chapter in more detail.
Chapter synopsis
1Ā Ā Why rural renewal? Challenges and context for governance
This chapter sets the context for the key debates and questions which concern the book in rural renewal initiatives globally, drawn both from the academic literatures and from the grey practice literature. This chapter examines the role of governance mechanisms and projects in a broad global context, before focusing on each of the national-level case studies.
2Ā Ā The urbanārural divide? Debates on rural renewal in theory and practice
This chapter summarises the academic literatures and the grey literatures, focusing on renewal and governance. The existing academic debates around the role of communities, governance mechanisms and local-regional rural renewal initiatives are examined, and contrasted with local, regional and national discussions of urban renewal. The chapter then moves on to summarise the relevant, historical and recent debates around governance as a framework or method from both academic and practice sources.
3Ā Ā Comparing rural renewal: Examining themes, actors and outcomes
This chapter examines and applies the key governance approaches and models to the case study areas, setting up a governance model which draws upon the frameworks of New Public Management and New Public Governance, and which can be applied and tested to the empirical national case study chapters. This represents one of the key contributions of the book, advancing the academic literature and the conceptual approaches of governance, each linked to practice.
4Ā Ā UK: Vale of Glamorgan
This chapter examines the Vale of Glamorgan rural renewal initiative, focusing on the role of communities in governance, agriculture and business, linked to conceptual and topical debates for both theory and practice, such as targets, progress and outcomes of projects, and coproduction.
5Ā Ā Australia: New South Wales
This chapter focuses on agricultural and communications rural renewal in the south-west area of New South Wales, looking at agricultural mechanisms of governance linked to small rural businesses, community-led initiatives and local, regional and national governance programmes.
6Ā Ā South Africa: Eastern Cape
This chapter focuses on communications and the rural economy in the Eastern Cape, examining the role of mining, community projects, and linkages between the community-rural business interfaces in the area, linked to local, regional and national governance programmes, targets and strategies.
7Ā Ā USA: North Dakota
This chapter examines the role of national, regional and local governance programmes and the progress, linked to targets, local businesses in the rural economy and particularly community organisations engaged in delivery and governance mechanisms in rural renewal in the area.
8Ā Ā Relating theory to practice: Praxis, comparison and lesson drawing in governing rural renewal
This chapter examines and summarises the key themes across both theory and practice, summarising the contribution to the literature and to governance theory, as well as summarising the contribution to practice made by the book, and how these two contributions interlink.
9Ā Ā Concluding Remarks: Opportunities, challenges and next steps
This concluding chapter begins by identifying good practice across the five national-level case studies, before then examining and revisiting the challenges posed by governance mechanisms in these empirical studies. Having made these conclusions, the chapter closes by identifying future comparative case studies within the rural renewal field.
Theory and practice
This book will be of interest to both academic and practitioner markets. While not a dedicated textbook, it would be a suitable and topical teaching resource for undergraduate, taught postgraduate and research students, as well as for scholars engaged in similar and related fields of study. The use of dedicated specific sections in each of the chapters ā in particular, the case study sections drawing on national-level empirical cases ā links research to teaching, and research to practice. This book would be a relevant resource for practitioners across the field such as NGOs, local and national levels of governments, planners, architects, farmers, community projects and small, medium and large businesses. The case studies are based on ongoing programmes and goals, which are purposefully anchored within the broader context of rural renewal. The case studies, therefore, have implications for broader rural renewal concerns in other national case study settings, such as: policy design and delivery; scope of the project and its funding; relations between partnerships or networks of actors engaged in delivery of the project; resource management and sustainability (transportation, supply chains, food and water) and ecology. The applied nature of the case studies in this book is therefore aimed at gathering findings which examine and map the governance process in terms of design and delivery. The theoretical focus of this (set out in more depth in the following section) is concerned with examining the relations between actors in governance and drawing upon relevant policy networks frameworks to evaluate the progress of projects in the case study areas in terms of the effectiveness of governance ā that is, the management of resources and whether targets are met. Evidently, these aspects of governance ā meeting the projectās aims, managing budgets and resources, and ensuring effective co-operation and communication between actors ā are not just theoretical concerns. These are key aspects of effective project governance for practitioners at several levels and from varying sectors. These actors, in the case study areas but also in terms of lesson drawing into other case studies of governing rural renewal, are drawn from the public services, from local and central government, from government created agencies, the voluntary sector and the private sector. The preponderance of networks and partnerships in urban renewal projects in large cities or other urban mega-regions, and the wider focus in governance and public management on partnership or network delivery (set out in the following chapter in more depth), is also represented in rural renewal settings. In order to examine and evaluate these governance mechanisms, the policy networks approach is adopted.
Approach and methodology
This research adopts the policy networks approach in underpinning key themes and literature debates, across both theory and practice. The policy networks approach provides (as is discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 in more detail) a theory, framework or method with which to evaluate and examine the partnerships and networks engaged in delivery in the case study areas. These governance arrangements are subject to issues such as communication, funding, co-ordination and power. Within the notion of power in and across the governance design in each of the case studies, policy networks focuses on relations within the network, distribution and (in)equalities of power, and the constructions and interpretations of individual roles by the actors in the network. This research draws upon the approach of Bevir, and Bevir and Rhodes, to examine the interaction between these actors in the network in terms of project design, delivery, power relations and interpretation of roles. This approach is set out in more detail in the subsequent literature review chapter and the methodology chapter, and then applied to the case studies and discussion.
Comparing across cases studies
As set out above, the four case studies come from differing national contexts both in terms of institutional design and of governance design. Additionally, the case studies are couched in the context of different histories, rituals and constructions of meanings around tradition, nationhood and politics. These are difficult to compare, even in a most different or most similar systems design context, as the role of meanings is highly important for communities; in each of the case study areas, the engagement and participation of communities in the governance and delivery of the rural renewal programmes is a desired target. However, the cases represent different geographic areas, each with their own history and identity in terms of politics, communities and (resultant) governance. The cases, therefore, represent a comparison across differing global examples. Previous work in this field tends to focus on more regional or national cases, or a focus by some scholars on communities (as will be discussed at length in the following chapter). In contrast to debates in the academic literature on urban renewal programmes, there is little comparison at the national level, from a governance perspective. Key thinkers and debates in the field of rural renewal have focused on principles of management or delivery, but not to a great extent in comparing across national case studies using governance frameworks and approaches. There is some excellent work in terms of communities and local focus (Gallent and Robinson, 2012) and also in terms of public management and policy making. This book differs from the above (and from those concerned with urban renewal) by offering a cross-national comparative focus, rather than a single country focus or a local, regional or national focus anchored in a single national case study. Additionally, the book seeks to further interdisciplinary study and linkages between these areas. The book sets out to compare across the four different cases, and then goes on to draw broader conclusions around further cases and the implications of the findings in the four cases of the UK, the USA, Australia and South Africa, both for governance actors engaged in rural renewal programmes in practice, and for the theoretical implications of applying the policy networks approach to cross-national case studies of rural renewal and its governance. The cases, and the related grey literature produced by the actors charged with delivery within them, are discussed in more depth in Chapter 3. The book, though anchored in governance literature and these key debates, as well as adopting as a conceptual framework the policy networks approach, stresses inter-disciplinarity. Of course, in practice, rural renewal projects do not recognise disciplinary boundaries. The key themes of the book, drawn out in each of the case study areas, reflect this.
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2 The urbanārural divide?
Debates on rural renewal in theory and practice
The first sections of this literature review focused chapter will build on the key themes and cases set out in the introductory chapter by placing the debates around rural renewal in the case studies in the broader governance context of the literature, initially focusing on unpacking the theoretical approaches and key discussions, before in the latter sections of the chapter then moving on to the more practice-focused grey literature, produced by the range of key actors engaged in the delivery of the projects across the four rural renewal case study areas. The initial sections will deal with the literature around governance and renewal ā in some aspects rural, in some urban. The chapter will then move on to discuss the main relevant governance frameworks and theoretical approaches, reviewing the governance literature, before moving on to a more specific discussion of the grey literature produced in the case study areas, which will be examined in this chapter and then expanded upon and applied in the four rural case study areas in Chapters 4 to 7. First, however, it is necessary to examine the key literatures and debates relating to the governance of renewal programmes, and in beginning to examine these debates, the role of terminology is increasingly important.
This book refers to rural renewal and regeneration programmes across four very distinct and varying areas (discussed in more depth in the institutional and comparative governance sections of the following chapter). The emphasis is on renewal because there is complexity around the meanings of terms such as regeneration or development. To be sure, the four rural renewal programmes examined in this book could equally be referred to as regeneration programmes, but, in some areas, this term has lost emphasis or meaning (for example, the term regeneration has little meaning in the French context). Moreover, despite being en vogue in a number of cases 10 years ag...
