Impact and potential: A comparative review of European rural development practices

Rural development practices are found throughout Europe and cover a wide ra nge of different types of activity. At first sight there does not seem to b e much similarity between these different practices. This paper presents th e results of a comparative analysis of some 30 cases of rural development f rom the different tracts of European countryside studied in the first phase of the IMPACT research programme. The paper summarizes several of the comm unalities that were revealed in the analysis and goes on to consider differ ences that may be relevant to policy, especially in relation to the levels of socio-economic impact generated by rural development practices in terms of extra income and employment. By means of clustering sets of cases accord ing to regional and farm level impact data, a number of underlying factors in successful rural development and its translation into socio-economic imp acts are identified. Important factors relate the dissemination of activiti es by integrating new participants and repetition by others, the unleashing of synergy effects within clusters of compatible and mutually reinforcing rural development activities, and the construction of regional 'protected s paces' within the dominant technological regime that favour rural developme nt.