ABSTRACT
Rural development policy discourse has shifted considerably during recent decades, increasingly supporting participatory models of governance and differentiated understandings of what constitutes ‘rural policy’. Drawing on classic texts, primarily dealing with the European experience, this chapter explores shifting narratives of ideal paradigms of rural development policy across exogenous and endogenous models, and eventually towards neo-endogenous approaches. We argue that while neo-endogenous development has offered exciting imaginations to understand power structures and the dynamic of networks in support of rural development and planning, it could be further advanced through adopting explicit reflexive lenses. Against this backdrop, we conclude by pointing to the role of hybrid research-practice networks, interdisciplinary methodologies and international comparative research for ensuring reflexivity and for testing the transferability of neo-endogenous thinking across different contexts and beyond the rural domain.
