The challenges for the quality of life in rural areas in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, connected with structural economic and demographic changes, raise the question of how to find appropriate policy interventions in the specific situation of transitions countries. One approach to bring forward rural...

In the last funding periods there was steady increase in the number of LEADER-regions in Europe, and, at least in Germany, it is already evident that this gain will continue: for the 2014-2020 funding period there around 300 LAGs expected in comparison to 244 LAGs in the last period. For the new...

New governance structures, meant to empower local decision makers, are supported by some policies introduced by the European Commission. LEADER, from rural development policy, is among these approaches. Nevertheless, these new policies are implemented in very different multi-level governance...

Support for balanced regional development with participatory approaches has a long tradition in EU funding programmes for rural development. LEADER started 25 years ago and now has 2600 Local Action Groups (LAGs). These LAGs collaborate as a kind of a public-private partnership on the basis of...

One well established instrument of regional development policy for rural areas is the LEADER-approach, which was started more than 25 years ago. Whereby the representation is often discussed, in evaluations/research projects the participants themselves are less often asked than LAG-managers /...

Across the European Union, the so-called "Community-Led Local Development" (CLLD) is a well-established policy instrument. It began with LEADER in rural areas over 30 years ago and now comprises over 3000 Local Action Groups (LAGs) across the continent. LEADER is a place-based and participatory...

In rural development, the issue of female representation has become part of the agenda in Germany. To examine the topic of gender representation and the results arising from different programming strategies/approaches, we analyse empirical data from the evaluation of LEADER which forms part of...

The challenges for the quality of life in rural areas in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, connected with structural economic and demographic changes, raise the question of how to find appropriate policy interventions in the specific situation of transitions countries. One approach to bring forward rural...

In the last funding periods there was steady increase in the number of LEADER-regions in Europe, and, at least in Germany, it is already evident that this gain will continue: for the 2014-2020 funding period there around 300 LAGs expected in comparison to 244 LAGs in the last period. For the new...

New governance structures, meant to empower local decision makers, are supported by some policies introduced by the European Commission. LEADER, from rural development policy, is among these approaches. Nevertheless, these new policies are implemented in very different multi-level governance...