The interviews

Interviews form the cornerstone of my research. Face to face, open-ended interviews were more suitable than a questionnaire approach as they allowed me to investigate the

interviewees’ experience and opinion in depth. ‘Many important research questions in

politics can be answered only if we can learn how certain individuals or types of individuals think and act…Answering these types of questions requires elite interviewing rather than surveys of the general population’.30

In order to identify the key individuals within the LAG, I used the preliminary information, the documentation already collected and the early contacts with the LAG project managers. Then I proceeded to identify the main people involved in each partnership and also the possible external actors that are referred to as an elite whose knowledge and opinions that could help answer my research questions.

I selected the key interviewees on the basis that they represented a sector or a group in the rural policy field and on the varying roles and responsibilities they had in the LAG. I used a snowballing method,31 _{in which a few appropriate individuals are asked to recommend other} people who would be useful to speak to; they may even help to make contact, which was one way of overcoming issues of gaining access to key interviewees. As access was the start of building trust and ensuring that the interviewees speak openly and freely, I gave careful consideration to the most appropriate ways of making the first contact.

I asked them to name the key actors they thought were influential or whose behaviour they viewed as striking. Interviewing key actors allowed me to investigate the findings from different sources, for instance whether what people or organization claimed to do in a document or an interview was what I observed them doing in practice. Representatives from the different organisations that were taking an active part in each local partnership practice were therefore selected. Such people were identified among the partners themselves, staff members, employed persons in local associations, trade unions and in the local

30 _{Babb, J. (2012) Empirical Political Analysis. Harlow: Pearson Education, page 301.}

31 _{Oppenheim, A. N. (2000) Questionnaire Design, Interviewing and Attitude Measurement.} New Edition. London: Continuum.

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administration, local entrepreneurs involved as beneficiaries of the partnerships’ activities, other possible privileged witnesses and responsible persons involved in the partnership policies definition and implementation.

I elaborated an operational plan for the interviews after early contacts with the responsible persons whose support proved to be invaluable. I also devised a brief sheet describing the project, which I gave to people before agreeing to or in preparation for an interview.

I conducted at least six face-to-face interviews in each case study, beginning with those who were directly involved in the partnership initiation and workings.

The interviews took place in UK (Argyll and the Islands LAG and CWWW LAG) in December 2013 and in Italy (Delta 2000 LAG and Capo S. M. di Leuca LAG) in July 2014 at the time when the LEADER approach 2007-2013 programming period and its activities were about to end and the new 2014-2020 programming period was about to begin. The interviews were held at various locations that were selected by the interviewees: in their place of work, at their own houses, at a pub and sometimes on the sites of their projects (e.g. in a farm) with which they were dealing.

The interviews were conducted in a semi-structured way by using a list of topics and key questions suitable for use both in UK and in Italy to provide a basic list of common topics and designed to explore a wide range of relevant issues. I used interview prompt sheets to act as a guide and ensure key themes were covered, in order to aid comparison. To this end, the choice of the questions reflected the objectives of the research, the findings of the literature review and the data included in the preliminary explorations of the documents and related to the following key issues affecting the case study:

• Emergence of the partnership. This reconstruction was important to establish when and why the partnership was initiated, and what were the expectations and

perceptions underpinning the partnership. This enabled me to establish the

pathways, as well as the anxieties and resistance the partnership faced as it emerged from a specific context, and how the features of that context consequently

influenced events.

• Partnership composition, organization and operation. The aim would be to explore the partnership as a complex structure in terms of internal organization,

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conflicts, as well as where the different wills and interests intersected in an attempt to reach agreement and to express a common will.

• Main objectives, activities and achievements of the partnership. This would involve the reconstruction of the steps taken for the identification of objectives and the model of development pursued, the establishment of the actions carried out or planned in order to elaborate and approve the rural development programme as well as the activities and policies used to deliver this programme.

• Assessment/reflections, general conclusions and confidential information. This would involve assessing the main key strengths, opportunities and weaknesses of the partnerships (and which of them contributed to its success or failure), the outcomes associated in terms of business supported, jobs created, service provided, the opinion of the interviewee about how well the partnership was working, the level of representation expected and achieved, and the role expected and played by

partners.

The decision to use semi-structured interviews allowed me to trace the LAG interaction. It was also more appropriate given the wide difference in the knowledge level of the LAG members. Even if the list provided some structure to ensure that all relevant areas were covered, I had the flexibility to adapt the flow and the style of the interview. Therefore, I tended to change some questions when they were not applicable to some of the

interviewees, especially those ones concerning the emergence of the partnership when the interviewee was a new member. This gave me the advantage of facilitating comparison, and interviewees were able to emphasize issues they felt to be of particular importance. I also asked numerous unstructured questions with the aim of getting interesting responses to my initial questions. The interviews dealt with the interviewee perceptions of their roles, their responsibility and roles as partnership members and their participation in the decision- making processes. This enabled me to tailor the interview by including the experiences with which they were directly involved. Finally, the list of topics was designed to elicit a

description of ‘what led to what’ and their assessments/reflections.

The interviews gathered information in relation to the interviewee’s personal background, their previous experience; their general opinion on the local partnership approach for rural development; their personal motivation and expectations in working partnership and their views on the outcomes/achievements/benefits that they attributed to functioning of the

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local partnership. None of the interviewees seemed reticent, and all were very willing to describe their experiences and share their knowledge.

All of the interviews, which lasted between one and two hours each, were taped in full and transcribed into written texts. Some parts of the transcripts that contained little relevant information were condensed and summarized. The verbatim recording was particularly useful for my qualitative analysis as the language was examined closely. If the respondents had any misgivings, the assurance of confidentiality was sufficient as all the interviewees agreed to be recorded. The interviewees were also aware that they could refuse to answer any of my questions. At no point did any of the participants ask me to switch the tape off or to terminate the discussions prematurely, suggesting that their responses were not

significantly affected by being recorded.

When reporting my findings, I represented accurately what I observed or I was told during the interviews. In addition to taping the interviews, I also took notes on the context of the interview, how I felt about the research process and ideas for the development of future interviews and analysis. This provided a backup to the tape recorder and also allowed me to note other aspects of the interview which could not be taped or would not be captured on tape. Examples of this include visual actions such as facial expressions and some of the nuances of the speech that were not picked up by the tape recorder or when the pauses, stutters in speech and laughter as well as the intonation of the voice.