Governance in Rural Contexts: Toward the Formulation of a Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Introduction Some time ago several researchers noted the perplexing lag between the attention accorded the emergent phenomenon of governance in national and urban contexts and the same in rural contexts (e.g. Marsden and Murdoch, 1998; Goodwin, 1998). It was noted that if Jessop’s “conceptual trinity” of state, market and civil society (Jessop, 1995, p. 310) no longer reflected the realities of the distribution and the exercise of power, and the roster of players at the national and even glob...