ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on agricultural change, adjustments in manufacturing industries including multinational corporations and the recent emphasis on small and medium sized enterprises, which are developments that extend beyond manufacturing, and the increasing economic significance of service industries. Most evidently, until the Second World War stimulated a broadly-based interest in state intervention in national economies, agriculture had seen few government initiatives in periods of economic tranquillity or growth. With other sectors of the European economy, agro-processing operates in an environment in which corporate restructuring and market globalization are increasingly important. A key underlying theme of the new territorial spaces is the forging of links between economic globalization and specific localities. The chapter examines elements of national political-cultural traditions in economic performance; require much more research that contextualizes rural change processes in the context of their national power structures before trace out whether a distinctive national pattern makes a strong imprint on the economic landscapes of rural Europe.
