In the last years, and particularly since the publication of the famous Barca Report (Barca, 2009), the European Union (EU) is starting to acknowledge the importance of spatially targeted regional policies and to understand how crucial a territorial approach can be in order to achieve desirable...

Many studies have focused on spatial patterns in economic growth. For the case of Europe, these studies have indicated that growth is spatially dependent and that clustering as well as de-clustering are parts of economic development processes. The distribution dynamics approach has revealed...

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...