The EU LEADER Programme: Rural Development Laboratory

Christopher Ray

his and the following six papers represent an attempt to bring sociological and geographical insights to the analysis of a single, rural development initiative: the European Unions leader programme (an acronym of Liaisons Entre Actions de Dveloppement de lEconomie Rurale). The task given to each author was to reflect on the significance of leader in their respective regions or countries. What do the experiences of this single eu intervention an outcome of the policy of territorializing the Structural Funds tell us about rural development in each geopolitical and temporal context? The papers offer a range of thematic perspectives on leader and endogenous development and thereby contribute to the on-going theorization of the political economy of rural development in the (expanding) eu. The present paper rationalizes this academic project by introducing the background to leader and describing its general characteristics before presenting a set of four analytical frameworks which might serve to guide the study of leader above the level of locally specific, technical evaluations (see below). Introduction Across Europe, and indeed, advanced industrial countries in general, the welfare state model is being incrementally transformed. The privatization of state utilities, the commissioning of agencies to deliver services under contract to the state, the new emphasis on sub-state entities (that is, local administrations, communities and individuals) to take responsibility for their own well-being, and the consequent requirements to devise new modes of management by the centre are the characteristics of the emerging ethos (Rose 1995; Palfrey and Thomas 1996; May and Buck 1998; Marsden and Murdock 1998). The new political ethos is variously portrayed as a necessary response to the pervasiveness of liberal-democratic political institutions and market-oriented economics of the new world order (for example, Fukuyama 1995), or as a mass delusion by the myth of globalization leading states to bow to the primacy of the market and to relinquish collective gains (for example, Bourdieu 1998). Partly in opposition, and partly interrelated, to this state-centric view of the new ethos are the dynamics of political pluralism and local economic
Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA Sociologia Ruralis Vol. 40, No 2, April 2000 European Society for Rural Sociology ISSN 00380199

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opportunistic actions which register demands for enhanced local participation and new forms of solidarity. The emergent ethos of governance also involves supra-state actors such as the eu as increasingly important players in the affairs of member-states. Indeed, this ethos is mirrored in the mode of intervention employed by the eu itself. The use of the endogenous (bottom-up, participative, community) hypothesis of socioeconomic development is a manifestation of the new ethos and this issue of Sociologia Ruralis is devoted to an examination of one particular example of endogenous socio-economic development, introduced and part-sponsored by the eu: the leader Community Initiative. In 1988, the debate over the most appropriate style of Structural Policy intervention for the eu resulted in the adoption of a territorial, endogenous model for rural development. Responding to budgetary pressures, environmental and equity arguments to reform the Common Agricultural Policy, and the apparent failure of Structural Policy to bring about economic convergence between the regions of Europe, the eu announced a shift in the use of the Structural Funds away from the sectoral approach and towards interventions that targeted territories of particular socio-economic disadvantage. The document published by the Commission in 1988 the Future of Rural Society established the principles underlying the new approach. Rural areas could apply to be designated either as Objective 1 (lagging regions with a per capita gdp of 75 per cent or less of the eu average) or Objective 5b (fragile rural economies dominated by agriculture and in need of rural development assistance). Subsequently, a further type of rural area, Objective 6 (northern parts of Finland and Sweden), was added. The commitment by the European Commission to the closer targeting of rural development onto territories of particular need was reaffirmed at the Cork Conference: Rural development policy must be multi-disciplinary in concept and multi-sectoral in application, with a clear territorial dimension (Commission 1996, p. 2, emphasis added), and that:
Given the diversity of the Unions rural areas, rural development policy must follow the principle of subsidiarity. It must be as decentralised as possible and based on a partnership and co-operation between all levels concerned (local, regional, national and European). The emphasis must be on participation and a bottom-up approach which harnesses the creativity and solidarity of rural communities. Rural development must be local and communitydriven within a coherent European framework. (p. 3)

At the same time as the 1988 reform, the European Commission acquired the power to introduce its own pilot interventions, Community Initiatives, of which the rural development version was leader. Leader was introduced in 1991 for a three-year period and was extended in 1995 by an expanded, five-year version: leader ii. Leader was announced as a pilot to stimulate innovative approaches to rural development at the local level (territories of less than 100,000 population) through essentially small-scale actions. Existing or ad hoc local organizations (Local Action Group lag) could apply for leader funds by producing a business plan of proposed development actions based on the valorization of indigenous resources (tangible and intangible) and on the active participation by the public, voluntary and business sectors within the territory designated. The approval process involved negotiations between dgvi of the European Commission, the local organization

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and the designated intermediary representative of the national government. The number of organisations-territories throughout the eu approved under leader ii eventually totalled 887, plus a further 81 quasi-lags (see Table 2). The insignificance and significance of LEADER Two reasons could be advanced for not crediting leader with the importance suggested by the official rhetoric. First, if one looks at the amount of Structural Funds money committed to leader ii, then it would be tempting to dismiss it as of no great significance for rural development, even though leader ii was a major expansion on the scale of leader i. Table 1 shows that leader accounted for only 1.7 per cent of the total eu money alloTable 1: LEADER II and the structural funds, 19941999 cated to rural development for all structural funds* Leader* this period. leader is therefore, as was noted during an event Objective 1 and 6 areas 94,688 1,081 staged by dgvi, a very modern Objective 5b areas 6,877 674 programme . . . a programme virTotal 101,565 1,755 tually without money (Heino Objective 5a 5,438 von Meyer 1997). The position Total 107,003 is even more striking at the *millions ecus. Source: Ray (1998) after European national level (see Ray 1998). Commission (1997, p. 70) A second reason for not studying leader might be that, as an adoption of the endogenous (participative) approach to socio-economic development, it is not everywhere entirely novel. A number of countries can point to historical and contemporary examples of its introduction: whether emerging logically from recent history of political restructuring, such as the intercommunalit dynamic and re-invention of the pays in France (Ray 1997; Buller, this issue) or the interventions in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Ray 1996); or introduced to run contemporaneously with, and be complementary to, leader but available outside Objective 1, 5b and 6 areas (for example, Finland: Lehto and Rannikko 1999); or as national/regional reactions to leader but claiming more rigorous participative democratic credentials (Shucksmith, pers. comm; Esparcia, this issue). Yet the leader phenomenon has many features that make it a very significant intervention, requiring the attention of rural sociologists. First, as has already been noted, it is a modern form of intervention. Solutions to intractable problems of lagging rural areas were, apparently, to be devised with relatively little commitment of public money and looking to the private and voluntary sectors for matching contributions. To quote Von Meyer again, leader was to deal with rural problems using funds at almost homeopathic doses. Second, leader is in many ways a postmodern form of intervention. A child of the European Commission (dgvi), it had an apparent anarchic element pervading the design and implementation of development activity in localities. The hardening of State/regional bureaucratic control that emerged in the second phase of leader only partially tamed the essential anarchy of the intervention. This leads to the third significant feature: the metaphor of leader as a pan-eu laboratory of rural development. The new style of intervention adopted by the European Commission through leader involved the design of general guidelines for the use

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Table 2: Number of LAGs and quasi LAGs by member country*

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of funds by lags but within an ethos of much latitude for local discretion in implementation. This presents sociologists with unprecedented material Italy 185 France 168 for a comparative pan-eu study. Dgvi, through Germany 167 aeidl (an organization contracted to animate conSpain 131 tact between lags) has been engaged in a process United Kingdom 68 of extracting from lag experiences insights into Greece 54 best practice in rural development. The same base Portugal 48 of nearly 1,000 local experiments (see Table 2) is, Austria 40 Rep. of Ireland 37 however, also available for the sociological study of Finland 22 the dynamics of local rural development; it is the Belgium 18 very fact that leader is a single intervention interDenmark 12 preted in manifold national, regional and local sitSweden 12 uations throughout the eu that is of interest here. Netherlands 4 Luxembourg 2 These 1000 experiments were potentially available Total 968 to more than 40 million people, or 32 per cent of Source: leader Observatory, ''' disadvantaged rural Europe Objectives 1, 5b and *Figures may vary slightly from 6 (Ray 1998). those in following papers due to The fourth area of significance in the study of different measurement times. leader concerns the transferability of the approach to the ceecs preparing to join the eu. There is much interest among academics and policy officials from countries such as Hungary in the possibility of a leadertype of rural development intervention being available on their entry to the eu. An important task for rural sociologists is to analyze leader so as to be able to comment on its transferability to the countries in the next expansion of the eu. LEADER, endogenous development and rural sociology The official rhetoric of leader included the metaphor of a rural development laboratory. Each lag-territory was to search for innovative ideas that not only would assist socio-economic vibrancy in the locality but also serve a demonstrative function for other participating territories. Underlying the search for the secrets of how to animate innovation in disadvantaged rural areas was the endogenous development hypothesis. Theoretically applicable to any sub-national, geographical scale, the main components of the hypothesis are threefold (Ray 1997). First, it sets development activity within a territorial rather than sectoral framework, with the scale of territory being smaller than the national or regional level. Second, economic and other development activity are reoriented to maximize the retention of benefits within the local territory by valorizing and exploiting local resources physical and human. Third, development is contextualized by focusing on the needs, capacities and perspectives of local people; the development model assumes an ethical dimension by emphasizing the principle and process of local participation in the design and implementation of action and through the adoption of cultural, environmental and community values within a development intervention. The rhetoric offers the prospect of local areas assuming greater control of development by reorienting development around local resources and by setting up structures to sustain the local development momentum after the initial official intervention.

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Sociologists engaged in rural development research can, when presented with such rhetoric, respond with empirical investigations and theoretical reflections (including speculation) with the aim of contributing to the pursuit of a more equable state of affairs. However, as Giddens (1984) has remarked, sociology should primarily be concerned with what happens beyond the intentional actions of individuals in dayto-day life. His theory of structuration argues that human agency at individual and collective levels does indeed exist but that it will be mediated by structures in society which in turn feed back to individual/group sense of agency. The contribution of rural sociology is, therefore, to extend analysis beyond a literal reading of the rhetoric of official intervention design and actor participation (= apparent intention), as well as avoiding a simplistic, mechanical view of the policy process (see, for example, Ray 1999a). With this in mind, a set of four analytical frameworks can be proposed which, separately or in combination, might serve to guide the study of leader. 1. LEADER as a quasi-marketization of rural development Two authors in this issue explore this theory. Osti focuses on the lag as a partnership and considers how such entities fit within the triadic model of social order. The rhetoric of leader and endogenous development would suggest that lags are a manifestation of the principle of reciprocal relationships. Osti concludes, however, that although there is a shift away from the hierarchical principle, the direction of change is, in fact, towards quasi-markets. In these markets, territories are provided with an enhanced capacity as strategic agents but are also susceptible to control by local/regional economic and political interests. His theoretical ideas are grounded in a study of leader in Italy. Kovch develops this theoretical approach. Adopting a political economy approach, supplemented by actor network theory, he conceptualizes leader as a move from direct intervention (by the policy centre) towards a new indirect regime of market relations, in which redistribution is being pursued in an indirect and uncoordinated manner. The leader regime regulates actors through the creation/membership of lags and through the ideology of endogenous development. Kovchs geographical domain here is the Central and East European countries (ceec) looking to join the eu. His theoretical contribution leads him to advocate leader as a potentially positive, political force to break the bureaucratic and orthodox thinking that has a stranglehold on ceec rural development. 2. LEADER as the politicization/democratization of rural development The conceptualization of leader as a political project or rather, a space in which the component actors are understood to be working, explicitly or implicitly, towards political ends has a number of dimensions. Endogenous development interventions can be seen as, however tentative, experiments in participative democracy. This occurs implicitly, through the nature of the project process, and explicitly, through the creation of participative decision-taking structures in localities. This is to cast leader as an incipient radical new social movement. However, there is a danger of subscribing too readily to the rhetoric of participative development and Shucksmith explores this in the paper. The object of his

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concern is the way in which the communitarian assumptions of the endogenous approach privilege a territory as potentially homogenous and gloss over internal socio-economic and cultural inequality. He argues that leader-type programmes need to include pro-active action targeted at raising the social and cultural capital of individuals and of disadvantaged groups (either of which happen to be in the area, but not innately defined by the area). Shucksmith illustrates his ideas in relation to leader in the United Kingdom. Another dimension concerns that of interlocality. From the outset, leader included an imperative to create linkages between lags from different countries. This was animated through cultivating the exchange of information between lags across the eu and through the requirement for each lag to commit a part of its budget to the creation of collaborative projects with other lags on a transnational basis. Although this was rationalized as a technical means to broadcast ideas of best practice local rural development, it is also significant in another way. The cultivation of linkages between localities across Europe may be sowing the seeds of a heterogeneous rural development Europe. Although it is difficult to project this very speculative line into the future, there were tentative signs within leader of such an embryonic constituency in the making, a rural constituency not dominated by agricultural interests but by rural development territories engaged in a range of co-operative actions and lobbying functions. This may not be pure academic speculation: rhetoric of this type was abroad in a symposium event sponsored by dgvi in which representatives from some 800 leader groups plus civil servants from the countries involved were invited. Observing the event left little room for doubt that the symposium, and leader as an intervention, had an underlying political dimension. What is more, a territorialized rural development intervention provided the eu with a (modest) means by which to promote a positive impression of the eu in the localities and regions. The provision of material assistance to improve the wellbeing of people in localities, the availability of assistance to marginalized socio-cultural groups and the ethical value attached to an intervention that appeared to promote popular participation could all work to cultivate an Europeanization dynamic in localities and regions. This effect was potentially available despite any attempts by national governments and bureaucracies to mediate the nature of leader. The paper by Bruckmeier in this issue offers a case study of leader in Germany where the innovative rural development agenda has been increasingly set by the ecological/Green movement. The rise of the Green party as a significant political force in certain regions has politicized rural development into the radical discourse of sustainable development. In this context, leader appears almost as a reactionary force, i.e. offering a set of rather conventional ideas on development. Bruckmeier argues that a radically innovative rural development agenda tends to be stultified by any involvement in leader. The general focus for studies undertaken within this framework is how leadertype interventions bring rural development clearly into the political domain. Thus, for example, the potential to activate participative democracy noted above is viewed by some actors as a threat to the legitimate institutions of representative democracy. lags do not enjoy a directly-elected mandate for their activities and this has sometimes forced Local Authorities to treat leader with suspicion (Ray 1998).

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3. LEADER and endogenous development as discourse Sociologists can use an example of intervention such as leader as a lens through which to view aspects of the workings of the wider social, economic and political systems. Individual evaluations of the performance of lag actions are important but in themselves insufficient, especially as the usual imperative is to focus on measurable local outcomes, starting from a literal reading of policy objectives. Endogenous development, as the basis of leader, needs to be seen as not only a hypothesis but also as a discourse, one which involves a range of actors and contexts. First, there is the interpretation of endogenous development as effective intervention. In this, extralocal actors redesign their modus operandi so as more effectively to achieve their objectives; more effective, that is, than an explicitly exogenous (topdown, imposed) intervention. The effectiveness rationale may be driven by an imperative of financial stringency, as in the European Unions attempt to reduce the costs of the Common Agricultural Policy by switching some of its budget to territorially focused, rural development interventions. Alternatively, or additionally, it may be ideologically driven as in the political restructuring of states, as they move away from the welfare state model, or it may be part of a technical solution to wider politico-economic goals, as in its use by the eu to reduce socio-economic divergence between regions and thereby promote the European Single Market and political integration. Second, endogenous development may be advocated as a legitimacyseeking device. Organizations, whether regional, national or international, may seek to enhance the legitimacy of their agendas for change by arguing that endogenous development and the pursuit of their particular interests are mutually compatible. Thus, for example, a national environmental organization might seek to insert its extralocal objectives into endogenous development initiatives and thereby benefit from the legitimacy acquired from being ideologically and practically associated with local, popular participative activity. If the two scenarios just introduced portray the territorial unit of endogenous development as, in essence, a target of extra-local actors, there are other scenarios where the balance of intention comes from within the territory. For instance, endogenous development can be adopted as an opportunistic strategy. This occurs when, for example, the rhetoric of endogenous development is employed by local actors in order to win extralocal funds for the locality, perhaps leading to the creation of a new territory and organization for the purpose. The paper by Esparcia contributes a case study of the responses of the layers of the Spanish politico-administrative hierarchy to the introduction of leader. He argues that, in Spain, leader represented a new force of intervention: both in its ideology and as an identifiably eu introduction. More importantly, it brought into rural development a new source of funding. Each layer the Ministry of Agriculture, the Regions and the municipal (mayors/lags) therefore, responded differently, co-opting leader for its institutional and practical agendas. The dynamics of politico-administrative decentralization in Spain meant that the implementation of leader is deeply embroiled in regional and municipal politics. In France, too according to Buller in this issue leader has been partially coopted into national political agendas (not necessarily a negative point). The process of the decentralization of the politico-administration system had led to the creation

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of manifold territories wedded to the idea of endogenous, socio-economic development. In one sense, therefore, leader was seen simply as another source of funding feeding into the enhanced capacity of intercommunal and other structures to animate rural development. In another sense, however, leader had a more radical impact. It offered something new to the classic forms of rather instrumental intercommunality which had not hitherto been able to create the crucial projects. It has also been innovative in: contributing to the challenge to agricultural clientalism through action aimed at the re-insertion of agriculture into the local economy; and by extending the domain of endogenous development itself beyond the locality, for example, through projects that support the resettlement of marginalized people into rural areas. 4. LEADER and the potential for a humanistic/personalist form of development The final framework presented here encourages studies to look for the radical potential within the ideology and local practice of endogenous development. Notions of a humanistic form of development have emerged within the debate about evaluation methodology and leader (Ray 1999a). Many of those responsible for animating leader at the local level argue that the essence of endogenous/participative development lies not in tangible, immediate outputs but, rather, in the intangible processes set in motion. The ideas associated with this such as personal growth, solidarity, co-operation, cultural identity, local confidence are ambiguous and yet central to a humanistic definition of development. This also allows for the possibility of local, reciprocal behaviour within localities as discussed by Osti (this issue) and Ray (2000). A personalist perspective on development would recognize the significance of informal spaces within interventions such as leader. This refers to the often observed capacity of local practitioners to interpret any policy according to their ideological beliefs or local circumstances and thereby to have a material impact on policy implementation (Ray 1999b). It invites analysis to explore the realm of interpersonal relationships and the psychology of groups. References
Bourdieu, P. (1998) Acts of resistance: against the tyranny of the market (New York: The New Press) Commission of the European Communities (1996) The Cork Declaration: a living countryside Commission of the European Communities (1997) CAP 2000: rural development (Brussells: dgvi) Fuckuyama, F. (1995) Trust: the social virtues and creation of prosperity (New York: Free Press) Giddens, A. (1984) The constitution of society: outline of the theory of structuration (Cambridge: Polity) Leader Observatory (1999) Finalising leader 11 with success. Http://www.rural-europe.aeidl. be/rural-en/plr/1999.htm#ref01 (downloaded December 15, 1999) Lehto, E. and P. Rannikko (1999) Implementation of the eu leader 11 programme and the struggle for local power in Finland. Paper presented at the xviii Congress of the European Society for Rural Sociology, Lund, Sweden Marsden, T. and J. Murdoch (1998) The shifting nature of rural governance and community participation. Journal of Rural Studies. Special issue, 9 (4), pp. 411427 May, T. and M. Buck (1998) Power, professionalism and organisational transformation, Sociological Research Online 3 (2), pp. 117

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Van Meyer, H. (1997) Presentation to the leader Symposium, Brussels, November 1012. Palfrey, C. and P. Thomas (1996) Ethical issues in policy evaluation. Policy and Politics, 24 (3), pp. 27785 Ray, C. (1996) Local rural development in the Western Isles, Skye and Lochalsh and in Brittany. Unpublished PhD thesis, Welsh Institute of Rural Studies (Aberystwyth, University of Wales) Ray, C. (1997) Towards a theory of the dialectic of rural development. Sociologia Ruralis 27 (3) pp. 345362 Ray, C. (1998) New places and space for rural development in the European Union: an analysis of the UK LEADER 1 programme. Working Paper 34, Centre for Rural Economy, University of Newcastle upon Tyne Ray, C. (1999a) Reconsidering the evaluation of endogenous development: two qualitative approaches. Working Paper 39, Centre for Rural Economy, university of Newcastle upon Tyne Ray, C. (1999b) The reflexive practitioner and the policy process. Working Paper 40, Centre for Rural Economy, University of Newcastle upon Tyne Ray, C. (2000) Endogenous socioeconomic development and trustful relationships: partnerships, social capital and individual agency. Working Paper 45, Centre for Rural Economy, University of Newcastle upon Tyne Rose, C. (1995) The death of the social: refiguring the territory of government. Economy and Society. Special issue Christopher Ray Centre for Rural Economy University of Newcastle upon Tyne, uk