Institute for Rural Development Research in Frankfurt/Main

Assessing the impact of rural development policies (including Leader)

The RuDI project will provide a thorough analysis of the design, delivery and impact of EU Rural Development Policy (incl. LEADER). Focus is on the question how to best assess the impacts of rural development policies – on all levels and across the great diversity of Europe’s rural areas. RuDI will increase our understanding of the processes and structures underlying the formulation, implementation and impacts of the latest European rural development policies. This study focuses on priority setting, design, targeting and delivery processes of the 2007 to 2013 programming period, taking account of the diversity of European agricultural and rural systems and contexts. It will look beyond the evaluation framework provided by the EU to offer a wider and deeper analysis of effects including an examination of key institutional, social and capacity building implications and opportunities in rural development policy.

The positive and negative effects of rural development policies on institutional, social, economic and environmental level will be identified and described in a set of carefully selected and framed case studies. The impact assessment will also include those impacts that have not been anticipated. Different types and characteristics of territory, interrelations with RD programme priorities and measures, and ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ impacts will be considered. The comparative cross-national analysis of the case studies will provide a better understanding of driving forces in policy design, the strengths and weaknesses of different delivery and governance models, the positive and negative impacts of RD policies and, most importantly, a more convincing conceptual and methodological framework for evaluating RD policy.

The project combines quantitative and qualitative approaches starting with a critical review of the state-of-the-art in RD theory and the conceptual frameworks and approaches used in RD policy evaluation. The case studies will be representative of the structural differences that can be found in the characteristics of rural areas across the EU. The Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (CMEF) and the underlying intervention and impact logics will be critically examined.

Consultations with RD policy actors and evaluators will ensure that the analyses are closely coordinated with the demands and possibilities of practitioners.

The RuDI study will be concluded with recommendations for a more appropriate RD policy design, delivery, impact monitoring and assessment. The direct involvement of the concerned institutions and stakeholders in the research process will ensure that the policy and practice recommendations are directly applicable to the work and decision making of relevant actors at EU, national and regional levels.

RuDI is coordinated by the Institute for Rural Development Research at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main. Research partners are: Countryside and Community Research Institute, University of Gloucestershire; National Institute of Agricultural Economics, Roma; Rural Sociology Group, Wageningen University; Department of Agricultural Economics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki; Federal Institute for Less Favoured and Mountainous areas, Vienna; Chair of Agricultural Economics, Policy and Law, Ljubljana University, Ljubljana; Nordic Centre for Spatial Development, Stockholm; Centre for Ecological Engineering, Tartu; and Research Institute of Agricultural Economics, Prague.

For more information see the project website: www.rudi-europe.net

Contact persons at the IfLS: Simone Schiller