Doris Marquardt Jr., Dipl., ing., Judith Möllers Sr., Dr., and Gertrud Buchenrieder Sr., Prof., Dr. Agricultural policy, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe, Theodor-Lieser-Str. 2, Halle, 06120, Germany
LEADER[1] is a funding instrument for rural development of the European Union (EU) since 1991. The instrument’s initiatives ought to have a bottom-up and a territorial notion to qualify. A precondition for stakeholders to participate in LEADER is thus the foundation of local action groups (LAGs), which usually consist of public-private-partnerships. LEADER co-finances competitively selected regional development concepts of LAGs. Collaboration of LAGs from different countries is explicitly supported. Partnerships and collaboration can be attributed as social networking and be very conducive to rural development.
This contribution is assessing the implementation process of LEADER in Romania. We analyse the social networks of LEADER initiatives to identify the key stakeholders and the potential beneficiaries. The results of the analysis of the interactions can be relevant for further steering of the implementation process. We analyse the networking between actors involved in LEADER at the local, regional, national and supranational level. The study draws upon a 2008-survey among 104 (potential) Romanian, German and Hungarian LAGs, 33 Romanian LEADER programme agencies, and 13 experts. These actor relations have been analysed in view of communication, the process of institutionalisation, flows of information, collaboration and support. The structures of the networks of two potential Romanian LAGs have been evaluated in a case study using the software UCINET[2], which allows evaluating network structures statistically.
It became apparent that the concept of LEADER is difficult to comprehend, regardless of whether we deal with local rural actors or programme agencies. Besides the results show that people do not know about the possibility to take advantage of LEADER because the agricultural administration is not effectively spreading information. It became apparent that people’s interest in LEADER is mainly awakened by face-to-face communication. Surprisingly, the network analysis pointed to foreign actors as important sources for raising the interest in LEADER. Three quarters of the LAGs emanate from so-called microregion-associations. These communal associations were originally founded in the context of accessing funds from EU pre-accession programmes. They have administrative capacities, but integration of private partners and pursuing a bottom-up and an integrated approach seem to be difficult for them. Bottom up approaches require next to human resources more social capital for building up organisational structures, founding formal partnerships and for motivating the communes and stakeholders to collaborate. Further burdens for decision-making on local level are the still high political influence of the councils on county level on regional development and that locals show a lack of initiative. The analysis has shown that (1) social networks among Romanian actors are usually not structured as to follow a real LEADER-like approach; (2) the networks among the programme agencies and their relations to the local stakeholders are not strong enough for an effective implementation of the programme; and (3) successful steps in the implementation process are often based on far ties to experienced actors in other countries, thus local LEADER initiatives can truly profit from EU-wide networking.
[1] LEADER means “Liaison entre actions de développement de l´économie rurale“.
[2] BORGATTI, S.P.; EVERETT, M.G. & Freeman, L.C. 2000