ABSTRACT
Rural governance has a crucial role in the ongoing evolution of rural development policies as they become more territorial and multisectoral within the context of global changes and relationships across spatial and national boundaries (as discussed in Chapter 1 and elaborated further in Chapter 4 of this book). This chapter explores answers to some important practical questions related to current and future rural development: why has the approach summed up in the OECD New Rural Paradigm (NRP) failed to deliver on the promise of a new way of doing rural development in the European Rural Policy arena? What are the limits of multilevel governance (MLG) as a trend for institutional organization and as an analytical framework? Why are the LEADER local action groups (LAGs) in Finland and Andalusia producing similar development results under rather different circumstances and governance environments?
