The EU LEADER initiative has been running for 20 years and plays an important role in the development of European rural areas, however, in countries joining to the EU after 2004 it is still a relatively new phenomenon. In Hungary, for example, the LEADER+ programme was launched in 2005 with an...

Growing criticism of inefficient development aid demanded new planning instruments of donors, including international NGOs (INGOs). A reorientation from isolated project-planning towards holistic country concepts and the increasing rationality of a result-orientated planning process were seen as...

In the past decades the involvement of local experts in the planning and evaluation of development programs has steadily increased. Ownership of development planning is propagated as major aim of bilateral and international development co-operation. Yet, the quality and performance of many local...

Häufig wird erst bei der Schlußevaluierung von TZ-Projekten erkannt, daß das Nichterreichen von Teilzielen oder gar das Scheitern des gesamten Projektes auf die mangelnde Berücksichtigung sozialer und soziokultureller Voraussetzungen zurückzuführen sind. Es reicht nicht aus, technische,...

In der Vergangenheit verfolgte eine agrarpolitische Einflussnahme in erster Linie Mengen- und Qualitätsziele der Produktion. Die übrigen Leistungen des Sektors Landwirtschaft, z.B. umwelt- und raumbezogene Leistungen, wurden eher als selbstverständlich hingenommen. Mittlerweile tritt aber die...

Die Europäische Union betont die steigende Bedeutung der integrierten ländlichen Entwicklung (ILE). Maximilian Ortner zeigt, wie die Forstwirtschaft an dieser Entwicklung erfolgreich teilnehmen kann. Forstliche Musterprojekte für Trinkwasserwald, Holzmobilisierung, Holzabsatzsteigerung,...

Policy evaluation is an essential tool of government as it ensures that the objectives of policies and programmes are being met and that tax revenues are being well spent. In many instances, policy evaluation involves using standard counterfactual analysis to measure the impact of a programme on...

This paper develops a methodology to define functional rural areas in the EU. It seeks feedback on the method and the results. Functional rural areas cover all the territory outside functional urban areas. They are constructed in three steps. First, we define rural centres: they are the largest...

This article considers the relationship between centralised, exogenous institutions and the embedded, endogenous institutions of rural governance in Europe through an examination of the evaluation procedures of the European LEADER programme. LEADER is presented in the literature as progressive...