THE INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT IN THE LEADER PROGRAMME: THE CASE STUDIES OF NORTH KARELIA

• Main Authors: Fulvio Rizzo, South Tyrol (italy
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: karelia*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.169.7519; http://www.regional-studies-assoc.ac.uk/events/2009/apr-leuven/papers/Rizzo.pdf

The aim of this paper is to investigate how the EU LEADER Programme, as a policy to promote endogenous rural development, has met the institutional context of two regions of the European Union, North Karelia in Finland, and South Tyrol in Italy. In North Karelia, the backbone of the LEADER approach is rooted in the village movement and associational legacy; in a period characterized by an increasing withdrawal of the Finnish Welfare State from remote and sparsely populated areas, local movement is gaining a critical importance similar to when this social phenomenon emerged in the 1970s. The empirical material suggests that LEADER best fits North Karelia’s rural policy setting, traditionally characterized by horizontal and power-sharing organizations. At the same time, the fragmented nature of Finnish intermediate level (between central and local level of government) prevents a unitary, strong, and politically-accountable development strategy for the region; this results in some discrepancies between rural and regional policy, and between rural and agricultural policy. In the South Tyrol case study, the LEADER method is rooted in the binomial politics-agriculture; if on the one hand the vertical, top-down approach adopted by the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol has successfully implemented a strong and politically-accountable development strategy for the region, on the other hand the main risks of exogeneity are political favouritism, and a potential inhibition of endogenous development processes. 1.