New rural governance in diffused power contexts

Coordinator:  Torsti Hyyryläinen
Time frame:  2007-2009
Places of the study:  University of Helsinki (Ruralia Institute), University of Tampere, University of Jyväskylä and University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Researchers: Päivi Pylkkänen and Marko Nousiainen
  

How the state, civil society and markets can work together effectively in an increasingly globalised context to contribute towards more sustainable development of rural places? Ten or twenty years ago, any discussion of this would have alluded to the concept of Integrated Rural Development (IRD). The concept of governance is widely used to address such questions, reflecting the changing role of the state and the greater propensity for public, private and voluntary sectors to work together. It is unlikely that sustainable rural development will be achieved through IRD in the sense either of the 1980s model of local coordination of sectoral programmes or in the sense of any template to direct the actions of the state and its partner agencies.

The literatures and empirical examples hold out the hope for Dis-integrated Rural Development by which the state exercises generative power to stimulate action, innovation, struggle and resistance, to release potentialities. This leads us into issues of power relations in rural societies. Through the arenas of the new rural governance, individuals and institutions may attempt to gain a greater capacity to act through coming together in new forms. There is a need to release potentialities and to innovate, and even to generate new struggles in different level of politics. The key issue is, how to mobilise actors to develop strategic agendas in diffused power contexts?

The objective of the study is to explore what processes and forms the new governance takes in the context of the Finnish and European Union rural development policy. Case studies will focus on local dynamics of LEADER-action groups and the role of evaluation in the governance of rural policies. The Finnish Rural Policy is established as a specific empirical focus of the study. Aspects of the UK rural development policies in turn provide a rich comparative context for the study. Finland is exceptional in being the only European country where the autonomous local partnerships, or Local Action Groups (LAGs), that lie at the core of the LEADER method, have been adopted fully in official rural policy. 

The objectives of the study are pursued through three studylines, each exploring a different aspect of the overarching theme of governance.

• In line A the main research question is: What kind of political space is a LAG? In this line, the main focus is to describe the Local Action Groups as a practice of governance and as a form of civic or political activism. The aim is to interpret, on one hand, how civic action is used as a technique of governance, and on the other what kind of opportunities for political action (e.g. representation) the Leader -work enables. This will allow us to regard the political aspects concerning governance networks of rural development.  Line A will be a case study of 1-3 LAGs with an ethnographic approach on the theme.

• The line B will critically examine to what extent evaluation as a knowledge generation resource is part of the rural policy governance in Finland?

• The line C will study Finnish rural policy network as new governance forum. In this studyline there is a cross-cutting question to A and B bringing a comparative strand to the research. It will deepen the analysis of political and evaluation process. It would look rural policies more fundamentally at differences in the interactions between civil society and the practices of contemporary governance. The comparative analysis will also highlight ‘taken-for-granted’ elements of the Finnish experience in broader EU context.