| Summary: | With the emergence of the ‘new rural paradigm’, geographical contingency is the key to interpreting the current debates on the projectification of rural development. The investigated comparison between North Karelia (Finland) and South Tyrol (Italy) suggests that local institutional culture, land ownership, and cooperation are critical factors to be addressed when designing and implementing development policies such as LEADER. The empirical material indicates that this EU programme is better suited to North Karelia’s horizontal rural policy setting than that of South Tyrol. However, the overlapping division of labour between different actors, typical of the Finnish intermediate level (between the central and local governmental levels), prevents a unitary, strong, and politically accountable development strategy for the region; this results in a number of discrepancies between rural and regional policy as well as rural and agricultural policy.
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