engleski

New Actors in Rural Development: The LEADER Approach and Projectification in Rural Croatia

LEADER has often been praised as a successful approach to rural development, although its implementation is not without scholarly critiques. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of how LEADER, now in its initial phase in Croatia, operates within the shifting local power relations in rural areas. We focus on questions concerning the social background of the new LEADER project class, financing, the influence of local politics and the trust and involvement of the local population. Since factors contributing to success and failure of EU programmes have often been attributed to their localization into a specific territorial context, among other things, we use a regional and typological approach in selecting 10 LAGs for conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews. The results indicate that, in relation to the local territorial context, the differentiation between the internal and external project classes might be useful as an analytical tool. Furthermore, we have confirmed that there might be pitfalls in using financial criteria as the only instrument of assessment for evaluation which disregards whether the projects implemented are inclusive and responsive to the needs of the whole of local populace - which runs contrary to the basic tenets of LEADER. Finally, the role of local politics has been specifically identified in two diametrical territorial contexts (rural periphery, and more dynamic developed areas).

LEADER; projectification; project class; rural development; actors; Croatia

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