RD-GOVERNANCE · The structures of civil society governance in promoting rural development (on the example of East Germany and Ukraine)
FP6 — Marie Curie Actions (Human Resources and Mobility)
- Duration
- 2005-04-01 → 2007-03-31
- EU contribution
- €140,083
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- IIF
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Results in brief
Final Activity Report Summary - RD-GOVERNANCE (The structures of civil society governance in promoting rural development (on the example of East Germany and Ukraine))
The main scientific achievement of the fellowship is the development of the novel theoretical understanding of civil society governance, according to which market, hierarchy, and civil society governance are regarded as the adjacent components of the governance continuum. The continuum is based on the criterion of the commonness of stakeholder interests, which is increasing along the sequence of market, hierarchy, and civil society governance. This theoretical approach allowed to generate a number of hypotheses concerning the relationship between the commonness of interests and the assignment of property rights to contractual parties. These hypotheses were mainly confirmed by results of the survey of 197 members of 13 rural cooperatives in the Kiev oblast in March 2006. Moreover, it has been established that the optimal distribution of responsibilities for supporting rural development among for-profit agricultural enterprises, public bodies, and the structures of civil society governance importantly depends on the extent of institutionalization of rural norms and values in a society. The results of the survey of 120 agricultural enterprises conducted in 2004 by IAMO and by the Research Institute for Agricultural Economics in Prague (VUZE) in the Czech Republic show that agricultural enterprise managers do engage in rural development activities to enhance the organisational legitimacy of their enterprises. These findings have two broad policy implications. First, effective governance of rural development activities requires that the commonness of stakeholder interests be appropriately reflected in the uniformity of property rights assigned to these stakeholders. Second, public bodies may promote the institutionalization of rural norms and values in order to motivate agricultural enterprise managers to seek organisational legitimacy by engaging in rural development-related activities. The results of the fellowship have been presented in 14 articles accepted for academic refereed journals, 7 articles being currently under revision in refereed journals, and 7 presentations at international conferences.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The development of rural areas is becoming an increasingly relevant political issue both in East Germany and Ukraine. The effectiveness of rural development policies can be maximised only when they are supported by strong bottom-up (grassroots) initiatives, represented by civil society organisations in rural areas. The idea of the project is to view various methods to promote rural development, involving the use of governments, markets, and civil society organisations, as governance structures differing in their appropriateness for various specific rural development problems.The project will be aimed at determining the comparative effectiveness of these governance structures for promoting rural development, with particular emphasis on the structural types o f civil society governance. The conceptual innovativeness of the project lies therefore in the integration between economics of rural development in transition and the theory of economic organisation.The specific objectives of research are1) theoretical analysis of civil society governance;2) evaluation of the potential of using the civil society governance for rural development purposes in each covered country;3) development of recommendations for action for the key stakeholders of rural development.The major methods to be used include: literature study, case studies of civil society governance in East Germany and Ukraine, surveys, development of spreadsheet tools. The applicant is currently a post-doctoral student at the Institute for Agricultural Economics, Kiev, Ukraine. The realisation of the proposed project at the Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe (IAMO) in Halle, Germany, will help the applicant to strengthen his competences and enhance his career perspectives, since the proposal is aimed at a highly politically relevant field of research. The topic of the project corresponds to research interests of both Institute for Agricultural Economics in Ukraine and IAMO.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- INSTITUTE OF AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE · HALLE (SAALE)CoordinatorGermany
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union