ABSTRACT
The study of planning and policy-making in rural areas has tended to follow conventional lines of approach until quite recently. Although not atheor-etical in nature, there has been a lack of regard to the political processes involved in policy-making and decision-making and a crucial lack of interest in the context within which such processes occur. Rather, research has taken an inherently positivist and largely pragmatic road towards the study of rural policy. It is argued in this paper that concepts and theories of the state generated largely in urban and regional contexts, provide a very necessary backcloth for the study of policy in rural areas. Unless the form, function and mechanisms of the state are fully appreciated, research into policy-making and planning will be dogged by inherent but largely untested assumptions concerning why policies are made, and on whose behalf they are implemented.
