Approaches to rural development

The prevalent formulation of rural development in post war Europe was a top-down approach where urban centres were considered as growth poles for the economic development of regions while rural localities were perceived as marginal, economic and culturally distant from the main centres of activity. From this perspective, most European

115 _{Marsh, D. and Smith, M. (2000) ‘Understanding Policy Networks: towards a Dialectical} Approach’, Political Studies, Vol. 48(1), pp. 4-21.

52

countries adopted a top-down approach to their rural areas with the aim to improve the agricultural production while encouraging labour and capital to leave.117

By the late 1970s there was a growing evidence the top-down approach had not worked as diversity among rural places and makes it very difficult to design and implement a rural policy at national level because it cannot take into account local needs at the same time. ‘Top-down development was criticized as dependent development, reliant on continued

subsidies and the policy decisions of distant agencies or boardrooms. It was seen as

‘distorted development’ which boosted single sectors, selected settlements and certain types of business (e.g. progressive farmers) but left others behind and neglected the non-economic aspects of rural life… It was a …destructive development, which erased the cultural and environmental differences of rural areas and was unresponsive to the local knowledge held within these localities, and dictated development devised by experts and planners from outside local rural areas’.118

Therefore, governance has to take into consideration the role of the sub-national governments while the central governments must ensure an overall coherence and

coordination across sectors to encourage the various systems at institutional and managerial level which formulate and implement rural policy and to ensure that local policies converge in a coherent strategy. This implies a political effort to overcome sectoral tendencies and the roles of different ministries or agencies in the field of rural development.

In this context, high level ‘special units’ have been created in several countries with an explicit jurisdiction over rural development issues. National and central authorities in the United Kingdom and Italy represent examples of institutional innovation in this field.119 _In the United Kingdom, the central authority of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has wider responsibilities over a broader set of areas including the environment, food and rural affairs. In Italy, a special inter-ministerial committee has been set up with the aim to coordinate several ministries in the field of agricultural policies, environment, infrastructures, economy, health and social security.

117 _{Shucksmith, M. (2012) Future directions in Rural Development? Dunfermline: Carnegie UK} Trust.

118 _{Shucksmith, M. (2012), page 11.}

119 _{OECD (2003c) The Future of Rural Policy. From sectoral to place-based policies in rural}

53

Countries have also devolved public responsibilities to sub-national government levels with the assumption that such transfers produce more efficiency at management level and create better conditions for economic development. These transfers respond to new expectations of citizens to participate more closely in the democratic decision-making processes.120 Thus, rural development should adopt a bottom-up approach (‘driven from within’ or called ‘endogenous’) which transfers the responsibility of rural areas development from the central and regional government to the local authorities and the communities. ‘This approach is

based on the assumptions that the specific resources of an area – natural, human and cultural – hold the key to its development’.121 _{Whereas top-down approach sees the rural} development through the promotion of the technical skills and the modernization of infrastructures (such as transport, communication facilities and industrial site) by

overcoming the differences and the distinctiveness of rural areas, the bottom-up approach sees the development through the mobilization of the local resources and territorial assets sees the development as well as the nurturing of locally distinctive human and

environmental capacities with the objective of retaining as much as possible of the benefit of the rural areas. ‘In contrast to the state-led management of top-down strategies, bottom-up

rural development is led by the local communities themselves. Communities are encouraged to assess the problems that they face, to identify appropriate solutions, and to design and implement regeneration projects. They usually have to apply to draw down public funds for projects, often as part of a competition’.122

By involving local governments in a bottom-up approach, the central government can exploit the area knowledge when defining policies, by encouraging transparency in choosing

priorities and financial costs.123

In this context, public and private actors join local territorial partnerships and pool

knowledge and resources and assume responsibility for the design and implementation of development strategies and rural areas are no longer seen as playing as passive but are able

120 _{Bryden, J. (1999) Policymaking for Predominately Rural Regions: Concept and Issues.} Paris: OECD Publications.

121 _{Shucksmith, M. (2012), page 11.} 122 _{Woods, M. (2005), page 149.}

123 _{Edwards, B. (1998) ‘Charting the discourse of community action: perspectives from} practice in rural Wales’, Journal of Rural Studies, Vol. 14(1), pp. 63–77.

54

to generate innovative processes and shape future development.124 _{A rural development} strategy is therefore developed around a shared vision of the territory where different and often conflicting actions for the development of the whole territory converge.

The public actors comprise local and regional authorities and give political support to local initiatives and provide necessary administrative competences and skills. The private actors include enterprises, community and voluntary organization, trade unions and cooperatives and ensure the necessary financial support to the project development. Here, regions are involved to identify and exploit the territorial potential of rural areas through the

communication between actors and institutions and help to inform and transform policies and processes at higher levels.

There is also a number of potential obstacles to effective partnerships, such as the

complexity and the rigidity of national and supranational policies with predefined objectives which do not always correspond to local needs. Other problems include the fact that

planning does not always have a partnership for implementation.125

Finally, within vertical relations between the supra-nationals and local levels, an important role is played by the regions, in terms of programme formulation and implementation, resources allocation among local communities, monitoring and evaluating of local projects, competence and resource negotiations of resources with supra-regional institutions.

2.7 Conclusions

This chapter has examined the key concepts of the rural development in terms of theories and approaches associated. More specifically, in the first part, through the support of the existing literature I examined what it is that defines rural and what it is that defines the rural development and how it can be promoted through an integrated strategy. In the second part I examined the theories associated to the policy-making process with a focus on the shift from the top-down to the bottom-up approach which transfers the responsibility of rural areas development from the central and regional government to the local authorities and the communities.

124 _{OECD (1990) Partnerships for Rural Development. Paris: OECD Publications.}

125 _{Bryden, J. (2005) ‘Horizontal Coordination at Local and Regional Levels’, paper presented} at the Mexican Ministry of Social Development and OECD International Conference

55

What emerged is that rural regions face significant challenges in comparison to metropolitan and even other regions. The decreasing economic importance of agriculture in terms of employment and production led to a general shift for the agricultural policies where ‘multi- functionality’ is recalled as objective for the redefinition of the sector. In other words, with these new challenges, rural policies should not be framed from an agrarian point of view only but a distinction must be made between the diversification of agriculture and the development of rural areas by considering objectives and a variety of alternatives and be more integrative and composed of a number and coordinated horizontal measures. In particular, these changes are represented by the creation of small and medium sized enterprises in the manufacturing and service sector owned and operated by rural

entrepreneurs, the growth of leisure industry proving services for tourism and resettlement for retired families with the recognition that rural areas have a value as repositories of long- term natural resources importance.

Problems are particularly evident in terms of employment opportunities in sectors that were once crucial components of rural economies: agriculture and the public sector. The increase of agricultural productivity over the last few decades now means that the commodity production includes relatively few farm producers and the concentration of production in few rural areas. However, despite these important challenges, rural regions are not necessarily synonymous with decline.

In this context, policy-makers realize that a policy for rural development is needed mainly because rural areas faces significant changes that undermine territorial cohesion and have an economic potential that could contribute to the well-being of rural people and to the overall regional and national development.

Finally, these new policy strategies contribute to important cultural changes because their place-based approach at the local level as has helped foster public-private partnerships and integrate into the development process and develop a culture of cooperation within central and local governments. The key elements of these shifts have been:

• decentralization of policy administration to those levels;

• increased use of public-private partnerships in the development and implementation of local and regional policies;

56

• coordination and communication mechanisms both at the central level and among local actors as well as across different tiers of government. 126

But while there is a growing interest among policy-makers in the place-based rural

development policies, there is a lack of research documenting including their results and the successes and failures. This is due to the difficulties in evaluating such policies especially in quantitative terms and to the difficulty of bringing together the variety of approaches that need to be considered within the integrated rural development policy because it includes regional economists, geographers, rural sociologists, statisticians, political scientists and researcher from other disciplines.

126 _{Barca, F. (2005) ‘Conclusions to Designing and Implementing Rural Development Policies’,} Mexican Ministry of Social Development and OECD International Conference ‘Designing and Implementing Rural Development Policy’. Oaxaca, 7-8 April, 2005.

57