Leader policy practices and landscapes in the light of the agency-structure debate: Evidence from leader local action groups in Italy and in Finland

Abstract

This article investigates LEADER policy practices and landscapes within very different regions of the European Union: North Karelia, Finland, and South Tyrol, Italy. The qualitative analysis of this geo-institutional comparison is carried out in the light of the agency-structure debate. Such theoretical framework contributes to investigate policies on the basis of their causal/contextual conjunctures; at the same time, it cautions from the contemporary common approach to identify 'best' policy practices. In the Joensuun Seudun LEADER Local Action Group, policy processes of social engagement are encompassed by the dominating structures of 'village', and 'subpolitics'. In the Local Action Group Wipptal instead, the data suggest that the dominating structural dimensions are 'politics' and 'agriculture'. Against the background of a re-territorialized rural development, policy implementation is a unique geographical process, which cannot be left aside neither from its contextual conjunctures, nor from a broad theoretical framework.