Reconfiguring rural development in the UK: Objective 5b and the new rural governance

JoumalofRuraIStudies, Vol, 14, No. I, pp. 27-39, 1998 © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0743-0167/98 $19.(X) + 0.00

Pergamon PII: S0743-0167 (97)00045-4

Reconfiguring Rural Development in the UK: Objective 5b and the New Rural Governance Neil Ward and Kate McNicholas Department of Geography, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK

Abstract - - A new form of rural governance is emerging in more peripheral parts of the UK. As European Structural Fund monies come to play a greater role in financing development projects, so new ways of making decisions about rural development are being initiated. The rural development component of the Structural Funds (Objective 5b) requires that development objectives be prioritized by means of a 'programming approach' which brings together a wide range of actors in new institutional arrangements. This reconfiguration of rural development is examined in this paper using case study material from the Northern Uplands - the largest Objective 5b area in England. The paper concludes by drawing out a set of further research questions the Objective 5b programme raises regarding the tensions between centralization and localization, the role of rural communities in their own governance, and the new techniques and technologies of rural governance. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Introduction

The late 1990s are seeing significant changes in the design and implementation of rural development programmes in large parts of the UK's more peripheral rural regions. Primarily as a result of the increasing importance of the European Union (EU) Structural Funds, local, regional and national actors are being required to work in new ways to plan for and administer rural development programmes. What might be termed a new mode of local governance is being established which requires the building of new institutional forms and the forging of new relationships between various rural development actors. The term 'local governance' has recently been considered by Goodwin and Painter (1996) (see also Jessop, (1995)). They argue that the concept of 'governance' is broader than that of 'government' because it encapsulates not just the formal agencies of elected local political institutions, but also central government, a range of non-elected organisations of the state (at both central and local levels) as

well as institutional and individual actors from outside the formal political arena, such as voluntary organisations, private businesses and corporations, the mass media and, increasingly, supra-national institutions, such as the European Union (Goodwin and Painter, 1996, p. 636). The concept of governance, they argue, focuses attention on the relations between these various actors, with a shift from government to governance implying 'not only that these other influences exist but also that the character and fortunes of local areas are increasingly affected by them' (p. 636). This paper takes this broader notion of governance as its starting point for an examination of the administration of the Objective 5b component of the EU's Structural Funds in the UK. It also engages with a recent literature on governmentality - - the techniques and technologies of governance - informed by the writings of Foucault (1991) (see also Barry et al. (1996)). This literature is concerned with the question of how the state thinks about, or reflects upon, the legitimate scope of government. It focuses upon how the state 'problematizes' the social and economic world within its territory and

28

Neil Ward and Kate McNicholas

how these 'problematizations' are responded to; in other words, how the state first represents and then intervenes in the domains it seeks to govern. After first outlining the recent history of European rural development policy and its relationship to rural policy developments in the UK, the paper will examine the implications of a greater European role in rural development policy in the Northern Uplands Objective 5b area in northern England. In particular, it focuses on the arrangements for fostering community development in the region and shows how, through the use of new technologies of governance, rural communities (and rural regions) are being required to 'think themselves into existence' as a precursor to state intervention.

The European development

Structural

Funds

and

rural

The 1980s saw a set of significant structural transformations which altered the context for, and goals of, policy for Europe's rural areas. Traditionally, European rural policy has been equated with agricultural policy; the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) represented by far the most important measure in both political and budgetary terms. However, the arrival of food surpluses by the 1980s shifted the political emphasis from increasing food production to curbing it, at the same time as new concerns arose about protecting the rural environment from the excesses of intensive agricultural practices. It was in the context of the challenges for rural Europe posed by these shifts, that the European Commission sought to re-examine EU policies for rural areas, and in 1988 published a communication entitled The Future of Rural Society (Commission of the European Communities [CEC], 1988). One important outcome of the document was its advocacy of a strengthened rural development component of what was to become a reformed and much expanded package of Structural Funds. The overall justification for the Structural Funds was the strengthening of economic and social cohesion (i.e. reducing the gap between the most and least affluent regions of the member states). The funds ran, in their revised form, for an initial 'programming period' from 1989 to 1993. Their operation during this first phase was reviewed and the funds were further enlarged for a second period (1994-1999) such that they now account for about 30% of the EU's overall budget.* In The Future of Rural Society (CEC, 1988), the Commission laid out its new approach to the use of Structural Fund monies for rural development. They were to be targeted in a more spatially and themat-

icaily focused manner than had previously been the case and were to be more carefully directed towards specific problems and specific areas (see Bachtler and Michie, 1994; Bachtler and Michie, 1995; Wishlade, 1994). A set of 'objectives' were formulated to guide the distribution of funds, one of which, Objective 5b, was intended to target 'specific problems in more limited rural areas', involving 'a more flexible approach when identifying and tackling rural problems' (CEC, 1988, p. 61). Areas would be designated as qualifying for Objective 5b funding if they had: a below average level of economic development, employment dominated by the agricultural sector, and poor levels of agricultural incomes. Secondary criteria also included: problems of peripherality, depopulation, and a susceptibility to economic pressures in the face of further CAP reforms. A development plan was to be devised for each area designated under Objective 5b with details worked out through negotiation between the Commission, the national government and local bodies working in partnership. Actors and organizations from the target local area were to be given the opportunity to make an input into policy design under a new model termed 'local rural development' (Ray, 1996). The Commission, in The Future of Rural Society, argued that rural development policy: must...be geared to local requirements and initiatives, particularly at the level of small and medium-sized enterprises, and must place particular emphasis on making the most of local potential...Local rural development does not mean merely working along existing lines. It means making the most of all the advantages that a particular local area has: space and landscape beauty, high-quality agricultural and forestry products specific to the area, gastronomic specialities, cultural and craft traditions, architectural and artistic heritage, innovatory ideas, availability of labour, industries and services already existing, all to be exploited with regional capital and human resources, with what is lacking in the way of capital and co-ordination, consultancy and planning services brought in from outside (CEC, 1988, p. 48). This new approach to rural development has initiated the forging of new relationships between the sub-State and supra-State levels of government. In *Three Structural Funds have evolved from a modest initial European regional policy originally devised in the mid-1970s (see Preston, 1994). These are: the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) which funds projects such as employment creation through industrial investment, infrastructure improvements and general local economic development schemes; the European Social Fund (ESF) which is used to support training and job creation programmes; and the European Agricultural Guarantee and Guidance Funds (EAGGF) which help finance the 'modernization' of farming practices, the promotion of agricultural processing, marketing, farm tourism and environmental protection.

Reconfiguring Rural Development in the UK the British case, new links have had to be established between local authorities and the regional branches of the central State on the one hand, and the EU on the other. The institutions of the EU set the criteria for eligibility for Objective 5b designation and the European Commission has had the power to approve (or, by implication, to propose modifications or to reject) Objective 5b draft programming documents from the rural localities. At the same time, however, actors at the local level were seemingly to gain a greater input into the policy process. The Commission envisaged the creating of 'a network of rural development agencies (or agents) to play a stimulating, mobilizing and co-ordinating role' (CEC, 1988, p. 62), and argued that the involvement of local and regional authorities and other social, local and regional economic interest groups in the identification of problems and the quest for solutions limits the number of errors of diagnosis that are all too common when planning is carried out from the outside (p. 62). Thus these new and substantial funds for rural development were to be administered by an approach which stressed the building of new links between different levels of government - - from local authorities, through regions and national governments, to the Commission in Brussels. In addition, the approach required that dialogue and partnerships be developed in localities between different sectors and groups of actors, including local government, business interests, rural development and training agencies and voluntary and community groups.

Rural policy and rural communities in the UK

In parallel with the emergence of this new approach to European rural development, British rural policy had similarly arrived at something of a cross-roads by the late 1980s. Pressures from within the UK to seek reform of the CAP mounted at the same time as an acute development boom, particularly concentrated in southern England, accentuated the pressures for the release of rural land for development. A dominant discourse of 'protecting' a 'threatened' countryside emerged as a host of policy contraditions came to light in the rural sphere and calls were increasingly made for a new strategy for the countryside. The government responded to these concerns with publication in October 1995 of the English White Paper titled Rural England: A Nation Committed to a Living Countryside (DoE/MAFF, 1995) along with similar papers for Scotland and Wales (see Lowe (1996) for a discussion).

29

The rural, rather than narrowly agricultural, focus of the exercise required that the government come to grips with the particular circumstances, opportunities and problems of people who live and work in rural areas. Indeed, the extent to which the White Papers covered issues of rural community development was notable and broadly welcomed by many rural community and voluntary groups (Action with Communities in Rural England, 1996; National Council for Voluntary Organisations, 1996). All three rural White Papers share a specific vision of rural communities with a strong emphasis on 'selfhelp'. The English White Paper, for example, states that: Self-help and independence are traditional strengths of rural communities. People in the countryside have always needed to take responsibility for looking after themselves and each other. They do not expect the Government to solve all their problems for them and they know that it is they who are generally best placed to identify their own needs and the solutions to them. In any case local decision-making is likely to be more responsive to local circumstances than uniform plans. Improving quality of life in the countryside starts with local people and local initiative (DoE/MAFF, 1995, p. 16). As a result, the English White Paper proposes a much more active role for parish councils in the management of local affairs, both through the delegation of some responsibilities from district and county councils and also through the taking on of new responsibilities (in the areas of crime prevention and community transport, for example). At the same time, the government's role is seen as 'to listen to what people in the countryside have to say' (DoE/MAFF, 1995, p. 10) and 'to work in partnership with local people rather than imposing top-down solutions' (p. 16). Recent policy statements from both the British government and the European Commission therefore appear in harmony insofar as they proclaim the virtue of 'bottom-up' models of rural development which 'empower' local communities to define their own needs and prioritize development schemes and projects. Differences in the 'British' and 'European' approaches are discernible, however. These arise, in part, as a result of the specific nature of the two state actors - - one a long-established unitary nationstate which has experienced two decades of neo-liberal political governance, the other a supranational inter-governmental body and neo-federal state in the making. For example, in the British case, the preoccupation with 'community' in rural policy and its associated emphasis on 'self-help' and voluntary community work represents, according to Murdoch (1997), a shift in the contours of state action - - a new mode of governmentality (following

30

Neil Ward and Kate McNicholas

Foucauit, 1991; Rose, 1993, 1996a,b). This shift is part of wider retreat of the welfare state and the seeming erosion of concern for governing through some notion of a 'national society'. In the European case, rural policy has to be seen in the context of the European integration project and state- and institution-building. In this sense, Objective 5b serves as an interventionist, distributive mechanism administered through a centralized bureaucracy as an emerging supra-national, neo-federal state seeks to 'increase its say' in a wider range of policy areas. Despite the differences in these two discourses - the British retreat from welfarism and and 'state intervention' and the European interventionist project of integration and state-building - - we can see that the emphasis on localness, community, empowerment and partnership are common to both. In the next section we turn to a discussion of these linked notions and the relationship between community, governance and governmentality.

Community and rural governance The emphasis in recent policy pronouncements upon self-help and active citizenship within rural communities resonates, we would argue, with what many have seen as the essential characteristics of British rural community life. Sociological and anthropoligical studies in Britain have identified sets of characteristics that are sometimes claimed to distinguish rural communities from their urban counterparts. Williams (1956) and Frankenburg (1966), for example, both identified strong kinship networks, consensual social relations, an emphasis on face-to-face interactions and small geographical scales of community life as particularly distinctive to rural communities. As early as the 1950s, however, rural sociologists were interested in the impacts on rural communities of social and demographic changes that have since come to receive a great deal more attention. Williams (1956), for example, saw the mobility of middle-class in-comers as a threat to the structure of rural community life. As an example, he pointed to the changing nature of village organizations, which were moving away from informal meetings towards a more structured and formal approach. He saw the Women's Institute as typical of this trend. By the 1960s, it was being suggested that in-comers may be having a more deep-rooted impact upon the make up of rural communities (Pahl, 1965). The middleclass influx into the countryside occurred in part because of a desire for a particular form of community - - a parody of the traditional forms of community - - one that Lowe et al. (1995) have

called a 'civilized retreat'. When such idealized communities were not necessarily found, middleclass in-comers tried to create them, demanding the co-operation of working-class locals. In an era of globalization with its associated economic, social and ontological insecurities (Giddens, 1990), several commentators have suggested that the strong desire for stability and security and the associated return to localism have resulted in a redefinition of community, often along more exclusionary lines, as those that have the means to do so 'seek to retreat from the modern world by selectively excluding its influence' (Murdoch and Day, 1997). The type of community that middle-class in-comers wished to be part of, with its village associations and mutual responsibilities, is a forerunner of the present emphasis on self-help and active citizenship in rural policy. The belief that rural communities are somehow self-supporting remains popular - demonstrated, for example, in the language of 'facilitating', 'supporting', 'consulting' and 'empowering' that can be found in the British rural White Papers (and underpinned by the English rural White Paper's claim that 'self-help and independence are traditional strengths of rural communities' (p. 16)). The British government is not alone in propounding the advantages of community-led development for rural areas, and other organizations also subscribe to this notion of rural communities as particularly predisposed towards self-help. Both Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE) and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) have endorsed the government's support for voluntary work, stressing both its historical significance for the sustainability of rural communities, and the sheer amount of personal effort that continues to be exerted (ACRE, 1996; NCVO, 1996), with ACRE also referring to the particular 'culture of coping' (p. 69) to be found in rural areas. These organizations, while approving of the English White Paper's community focus, also stressed the need to strengthen formal community support in rural areas, arguing (in the NCVO's case) that these are weaker than in urban areas. The National Federation of Women's Institutes (NFWI) sums up the link between rural community characteristics and issues of governance in its response to the English rural White Paper when it claims 'our experience of the positive aspects of country life, such as a strong community spirit, self-sufficiency and an ability to adapt to change, suggest that people living in rural areas should not and need not be marginalised in decisions about their future' (NFWI, 1996, p. 165). The recent re-emergence of the term 'community' amongst politicians and commentators has taken on

Reconfiguring Rural Development in the UK a new salience through the vocabulary of community care, community policing, community workers and so on (see Crow and Allan, 1994). For Rose (1996a), an exponent of the Foucauldian governmentality approach, the notion of 'community' has come to involve a 'new way of demarcating a sector for government' (p. 332), with 'community' coming to replace 'society' as the very object of government intervention. In short, the emphasis on community is bound up with a new mode of governmentality - - a new way in which the state reflects upon the legitimate scope for, and objects of, state action.

31

ment to examine how the British agricultural sector was 'brought into being' through the collection of statistics as a precursor to a highly interventionist state agricultural policy. The population, their circumstances and 'problems' had to become 'knowable' and to be reconfigured as a sector to facilitate state action. In the sections that follow, the arrangements for Objective 5b policy in the UK are outlined and the 'mentality' of Objective 5b is examined from the perspective of governmentality.

Objective 5b and the Northern Uplands Governmentality, for Rose, consists of 'the deliberations, strategies, tactics and devices employed by authorities for making up and acting upon a population and its constituents to ensure good and avert evil' (Rose, 1996a, p. 328). Scholars have discerned periodic shifts in the prevailing mode of governmentality, particularly around the mid-19th century with the emergence of so-called 'managed liberalism' - a mode of governmentality in which the state became 'a centre that could programme - - shape, guide, channel, direct, control - - events and persons distant from it' (Rose, 1996b, p. 40). Under this mode, people and activities were to be governed through invoking social norms - - that is to say, governed through society. More recently, Rose believes that, in response to the failure of government to achieve its objectives, we have seen the emergence of a range of rationalities and techniques that seek to govern without governing society. The subjects of government come to be seen in new ways, with people conceived of as individuals who are to be active in their own government (see also Kearns (1992) and Kearns (1995) discussion of the notion of 'active citizenship'). Burchell (1996, p. 27) refers to this process as the autonomization of society. Under advanced liberalism, 'individuals are to be governed through their freedom, but neither as isolated atoms of classical political economy, nor as citizens of society, but as members of heterogeneous communities of allegiance, as 'community' emerges as a new way of conceptualising and administering moral relations among persons' (Rose, 1996b, p. 41). The new governmentalities that can be identified around the notion of 'community' replace old forms of governing which concerned the welfare of a 'national society'. New governmentalities seek ways of governing by instrumentalizing the self-governing properties of individuals and communities. But for the state to 'act upon' a particular individual, population or territory, it first needs to 'render visible' that which is to be acted upon. It needs to develop knowledge about the subjects of government. Murdoch and Ward (1997) have used such an argu-

Under the first round of spatial designations after the 1988 reforms of the Structural Funds, DyfedGwynedd-Powys in Wales, the Scottish Highlands and Islands, Dumfries and Galloway and parts of Devon and Cornwall were designated as Objective 5b areas in the UK. In early 1994, further designations were secured for a second programming period and I 1 rural areas in the UK now qualify for Objective 5b fimds for the period 1994-1999 (see Fig. 1

~.'I

¢

.,d

t

Figure 1. Map of the Objective 5b areas of the UK.

32

Neil Ward and Kate McNicholas

and Table 1). In addition, the Scottish Highlands and Islands became redesignated as an Objective 1 region. The English Objective 5b areas are in East Anglia (covering parts of the Fens, central rural Norfolk, rural east Suffolk and Lowestoft), the South West (which covers all of Cornwall, much of north and west Devon, West Somerset and the Isles of Scilly), the Northern Uplands (see below), the Marches (in the West Midlands), Lincolnshire and, finally, the Midlands Uplands (comprising parts of western Derbyshire and north-eastern Staffordshire). The Welsh area is known simply as 'Rural Wales' and the Scottish areas are Rural Stirling and Upland Tayside, North and West Grampian and the Borders. Together these 11 Objective 5b areas cover almost 70,000 square kilometres, contain more than 2.8 million people and are eligible for about £680 million of Structural Fund monies over the 6-year period from 1994 to 1999. For individual grant applications to attract funding under Objective 5b, rural development projects must include one or more of a number of specific objectives. These include support and assistance for businesses, agricultural and fishery diversification, the development of tourism and cultural activities, and the conservation and enhancement of the environment. The strategic programme for each Objective 5b area is drawn up in the form of a Single Programming Document by central government through its Government Regional Offices (or the Scottish or Welsh Office). A group of local 'partners', including local authorities and local rural development organizations, are invited to comment on the draft document. In turn, implementation of the programme involves government departments and statutory agencies, the European Commission and 'a wide range of local organisations, including local authorities, TECs [Training and Enterprise Councils], higher and further education sectors,

environmental bodies and the private and voluntary sectors' (DoE/MAFF, 1995, p. 44). Grants paid from the Structural Funds under Objective 5b can only cover part of the costs of a project, normally up to half, with the remainder having to be found by the applicant. Often this is achieved through securing 'matching funds' from other domestic sources including the Rural Development Commission programmes, local authorities and the private sector. These funding arrangements therefore require co-operation between different actors and agencies within Objective 5b areas. In January 1994, the Northern Uplands (covering parts of rural Cumbria, Lancashire, Northumberland, County Durham, North Yorkshire and Humberside) attained Objective 5b status, thus qualifying for some 108 million ECU (around £90 million) over 6 years. The Northern Uplands (Fig. 2) represents a very large and diverse rural region compared to England's other five designated areas. It is centred on the northern part of the Pennines, but embraces the Lake District, the Forest of Bowland and some lowland and coastal parts of Northumberland, North Yorkshire and Humberside. The designated area covers 14,286 square kilometres and has a resident population of 374,000 (Government Office for the North East [GONE], 1994, p. 7). The rural economy of the region has traditionally been dominated by agriculture, forestry and extractive industries, although latterly the impact of tourism has become increasingly important in some areas. Despite the diversity of the economy and character of the Northern Uplands, the Single Programming Document (SPD) for the area is required to draw together the main problems and challenges for the area as a whole. The SPD for the Northern Uplands in its analysis of the region's fortunes concludes that

Table 1. The Objective 5b regions of the UK Region Rural Stirling and Upland Tayside North and West Grampian Borders Dumfries and Galloway East Anglia Lincolnshire Marches Midlands Uplands Northern Uplands South West Rural Wales Total UK Objective 5b regions Source: SPDs, Conversion £1 = 1.2 ECU.

Area (square km)

Population

Funds [million ECU (£m)]

6900 4193 4714 6400 2410 3094 3200 1000 14,286 7350 14,271 67,818

71,000 149 000 103 881 147 800 230 770 190 878 148 000 41 305 374 000 775 304 623 828 2,855,765

25 (21) 40 (33) 30 (25) 47 (39) 60 (50) 53 (44) 41 (34) 12 (10) 108 (90) 219 (183) 184 (153) 819 (682)

Reconfiguring Rural Development in the U K

33

Objective 5b ..... ti

County boundary

•

---.. TYNE & WEAR I~on Tyne qSundedand

~Wi9~o.

Durhame

DURHAM , 'j

~ CLEVELAND

....!i~ii!!i!,

,

NORTH

.....

," - "

~.

- i

, ~'--~.,'_'-'~

"

HUMBERSlDE

"a

LANCASHIRE ,

WEST YORKSHIRE

~ •

"

,.

~- - - 7_,

25 ' Kilometres J

0

Figure2. Map of the Northern Uplands Objective 5b area. it is 'an area characterised by harsh climate, remoteness, rurality, indifferent communications and difficulties of access to the labour market' (GONE, 1994, p. 22), and suffers economically as a result of declining employment in agriculture, coal mining and defence-related industries. Two strategic goals are identified for the region in the SPD: the creation of a sustainable economy, and the creation of sustainable communities. Flowing from these goals, four priorities were established: (i) economic development and diversification, (it) tourism, (iii) community development, and (iv) environmental enhancement and conservation.*

Tranches of money from each of the Structural Funds to meet each priority were allocated, based on the perception of relative needs as stated in the SPD. Table 2 illustrates the weighting of funding across the four priorities for the Northern Uplands area. Overall, almost 44% (£35.9 million) of funds were allocated to economic development and diversification, 20% (£16.6 million) to environmental enhancement and conservation, 19% (£15.4 million) to tourism and 15% (£12.1 million) to community development. Additional monies are also allocated to 'technical assistance' which covers the administration, evaluation, information and publicity measures for the programme.

*These priorities for the Northern Uplands region are very similar to those in the other Objective 5b regions. For example, the priorities for the other English Objective 5b areas are as follows; East Anglia, (i) business development; (it) agricultural and fisheries diversification; (iii) the development of human resources; (iv) the development of tourism and culture; and (v) research and development and technology transfer; The Marches, (i) business development and diversification, (it) local communities and countryside, (iii) tourism and related activities, and (iv) farm related development; the South West, (i) SME and business development, (it) tourism, (iii) agriculture, (iv) community regeneration, (v) environmental management; Lincolnshire, (i) agricultural diversification and development, (it) tourism, (iii) business development, (iv) human resources and communities; the Midlands Uplands, (i) promoting growth and diversification of the rural economy, (it) community economic development.

The Northern Uplands SPD acknowledges that 'the problems of the economy and the environment of the Northern Uplands cannot be divorced from the development of its communities' (GONE, 1994, p. 33). Indeed, the claim that 'economic development can only be based on strong, vibrant communities' (p. 80) provides the main justification for those monies given over to community development. The main community development problem is seen as being the 'outmigration of the young as a result of the lack of employment opportunities, low wages and the lack of affordable housing' (p. 33). Because of the emphasis on 'community' in contemporary governance highlighted above, it is worth turning to the SPD's treatment of community development in the Northern Uplands in more detail.

34

Neil Ward and Kate McNicholas

The strategic goal of creating sustainable communities spawns a set of measures under each of the four priorities in the SPD. The ECU 15.92 million (approximately £12 million) given over to the community development priority forms the smallest of the four priorities in money terms but still represents unprecedented funds for rural community development in the region. The SPD sets out the main elements of the Northern Uplands community development strategy for the period 1994-1999 as: • making the case for the revitalisation of rural communities as an important end in its own right, and as an integral part of economic development; • identifying and addressing the social problems facing rural communities; • forging partnerships between the organisations with an interest in community development which are operating, or could be operating, in the Northern Uplands; • looking for synergy from the various programmes operating in the Northern Uplands, and looking to ensure that the 5b programme makes a genuinely additional contribution. (GONE, 1994, p. 81). To qualify for funds for community development, the SPD states that individual projects that come forward for support 'should, where relevant, be identified as part of the process of "village appraisal or similar studies" (GONE, 1994, p. 81). These studies assess the economic, social and training needs of individual villages or groups of communities in the designated area. A set of physical indicators are set out against which performance of the programme's community development priority is to be assessed. These are that: 100 village appraisals are to be carried out; 30 community facilities are to be enhanced and established; and 280 training places per annum are to be provided (GONE, 1994, p. 81).

New governmentalities and new forms of rural governance

For the tranche of public funds flowing from Objective 5b to be of lasting benefit, new economic, social and administrative linkages are required in the rural north such that a shifting pattern of governance can be identified. This is the case for the programme in general (with its emphasis on partnerships and local consultation), but is particularly so for the community development priority. For the programme as a whole, a host of different actors in the Northern Uplands region have had to come together to assist in the production of the SPD. In doing so, they have been required to spell out the needs, problems and potential for the region. Although the Government Office for the North East had lead responsbility for producing the SPD, it benefitted from input from district and county councils, two other Government Regional Offices, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Rural Development Commission and business groups. Thus through a complex process of consultation and negotiation, the SPD document was produced and the locality and its problems came to be 'rendered visible' (as a precursor to state intervention in the form of the distribution of development funds). A detailed regional analysis in the SPD captured, in statistical form, the shape and structure of the Northern Uplands - - a spatial unit that prior to its designation under Objective 5b did not exist. These partnership arrangements have extended beyond the mere drawing up of the SPD and now also help guide the implementation of the programme. EU policy requires that the distribution of funds be overseen by a Programme Monitoring Committee comprising the various partners in the regions and representatives of central government and the European Commission. For the Northern Uplands region this requirement spawned a large

'I~ble 2. The weightingof Objective 5b funding for the four priorities in the Northern Uplands ERDF

1. Economic development and diversification 2. Tourism 3. Community development 4. Environmental enhancement and conservation 5. Technical assistance Source: GONE, 1994, p. 28. *mecu = million ECU.

EAGGF

ESF

%

mecu*

%

mecu

%

mecu

47.5 22.5 12.5 15 2.5

30.78 14.58 8.09 9.72 1.62

25 15 20 37.5 2.5

6.75 4.05 5.40 10.12 0.68

60 10 15 0.5 2.5

9.72 1.62 2.42 2.02 0.41

Reconfiguring Rural Development in the UK and unwieldy body. Unique amongst the British Objective 5b areas, the Northern Uplands areas covers territory administered by three Government Regional Offices (for the North East, the North West and Yorkshire and Humberside), and no less than six county councils. Therefore, in order to improve monitoring of the Programme and render proceedings more responsive to local concerns and interests, part of the work of the Programme Monitoring Committee was devolved in 1996 to newly created Local Implementation Plan groups (LIP groups) at the sub-regional level. Although originally envisaged as operating as pairs of counties working together in LIP groups (North Yorkshire and Humberside, Cumbria and Lancashire, and Northumberland and County Durham), monitoring the programme has, in some cases, in effect been devolved to the individual county level with, for example, the partners for County Durham and Northumberland meeting separately with only nominal representation on each others LIP group meetings. These meetings allow the various partners an opportunity to comment on bids for Objective 5b funds and to make recommendations to the government office on which proposals best fit with the strategic objectives of the Programme and should be funded. Decisions on funding have been subject to final ratification by the relevant sectoral departments in London.* It is the SPD that therefore provides the 'template' for the Northern Uplands region, defining what the most pressing problems are and prioritizing what should be done to address them. More astute applicants for Objective 5b monies will tailor their project proposals to fit the various development requirements spelt out in the SPD. Thus, from the above account of the administration of the Objective 5b programme, it can be seen how a large and diverse rural region, and a multi-dimensional strategy for its socio-economic development, becomes encapsulated in a single document of 180 pages. This document then structures the nature of development projects in the area. At a smaller scale, the level of individual rural communities, the Objec*These complex arrangements for decisions about funding have not been above criticism. For example, one representative from the Association of County Councils complained to the House of Commons Environment Committee about the slowness and bureaucracy of the whole process, adding that accountability 'to a dozen partners and then three or four tiers of decision-making' was deterring some groups from applying for funds (House of Commons Environment Committee, 1996, p. xlv). The Secretary of State for the Environment explained to the Committee, however, that 'all decisions on Objective 5b are being referred to Whitehall because the project is new and there is no established framework of precedent which would ensure consistency in judgement' (p. xlvi).

35

tive 5b programme generates a similar process of representation through document production as a result of the emphasis on linking applications for Objective 5b funding for community development with community needs identified in village appraisals. Village appraisal reports also help render communities and their development needs visible and thus able to be acted upon. Of course, this 'action' may involve no more than seeking to 'instrumentalize' a community's 'self-governing properties'. Village appraisals have become an increasingly important element of rural community development in recent years. Moseley estimated that appraisals have been conducted in at least 1500 rural communities in Britain since the early 1970s, but a set of policy developments in the 1990s have prompted a marked growth in the number of appraisals being carried out. Implementation of Local Agenda 21 schemes in the aftermath of the Rio Summit on sustainable development often incorporates some form of appraisal or audit as a means of fostering community participation, and in the field of town and country planning, local authorities are increasingly accepting that 'local communities can and should be encouraged to play an active role in crystallising opinion and in galvanising people to take appropriate action themselves' (Moseley et al., 1996, p. 310). Similarly, the English rural White Paper argued that 'mechanisms such as village appraisals and local housing need surveys can help communities define their priorities, identify what they can do to meet them and target limited resources effectively' (DoE/MAFF, 1995, p. 17). Appraisals serve as a stocktaking exercise. They are usually audits of the resources and services available to communities and are combined with social surveys of the communities' needs and aspirations with a view to identifying desirable and potential improvements in local facilities and amenities and thus the life of the community. Typically, appraisals are managed and conducted, if not initiated, by members of the local community such as, for example, those active on parish councils. Questionnaires are delivered to every household and responses are analysed to help prioritize plans for community development and physical planning in the village. The growing interest in such exercises on the part of a number of statutory agencies has been accounted for by three factors: First is the information that they provide on local needs, resources and priorities; professionally organised social surveys on a comparable scale would be prohibitively expensive. Second is their stimulus to self-help, be it in the form of community transport provision, good neighbour schemes or practical environmental action on whatever. Third is the legitimation that they confer on

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Neil Ward and Kate McNicholas

policy decisions which in part reflect them (Moseley etal., 1996, p. 312). It is the Rural Community Councils who, in recent years, have been most active in promoting the utility of village appraisals for rural communities, not least because of the perceived value of the appraisal process as a means of community development in itself. Appraisals can, it is argued, enhance the skills, awareness and confidence of the members of the community involved (Lumb, 1990; Roome, 1990). However, while Rural Community Council staff may suggest that rural community activists consider embarking upon a village appraisal and can subsequently offer advice and guidance on how the exercise might best be carried out, such staff are keen to stress that the impetus for an appraisal has to come from within the community. Village appraisal committees are then usually established to manage the exercise, design questionnaires, co-opt volunteers and so on. The emphasis placed in the Northern Uplands SPD on linking applications for Objective 5b funds for community development to village appraisal exercises has proved to be an important spur to many rural communities in the region and a host of appraisals have been embarked upon since the region was formally designated as an Objective 5b area. The Community Council of Northumberland, for example, expects around 35 appraisals to be completed by the end of 1997 and has established a small research unit to advise village appraisal committees and assist in the analysis of questionnaire data. A recent study by Moseley and colleagues (1996) examined the output of 44 village appraisals carried out in Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire between 1990 and 1994 to assess the extent to which recommendations and action points contained in the appraisal reports had subsequently been implemented and to identify those factors which either enable or constrain successful implementation. The counties studied do not fall within Objective 5b areas and may exhibit a different complexion of community concerns compared with the more peripheral location of the Northern Uplands. (The dominant and most widespread concern, according to the study, was an 'anti-development' interest in restraining speculative housing development). However, the study's conclusions provide some useful pointers to the nature and output of the village appraisal process. It suggests that: First, more than anything else, dynamic and motivated individuals are crucial if things are to happen; second, if careful and early attention is not paid to how follow up may best be achieved, then relatively little may result;

third, it is important that there is enthusiastic endorsement of the proposals contained in the appraisal reports by both the parish council and the wide community; fourth, realism as regards political realities and financial resources is crucial (Moseley et al., 1996, p. 324). In general, the carrying out of village appraisals may help galvanize the local people involved to go on and do other things, with participants reporting to the researchers, for example, that 'a new community identity has been created' through the process of carrying out a village appraisal (Moseley et al., 1996, p. 325). There is some evidence from the Northern Uplands that local community activism has indeed been stimulated by the appraisal process. For example, one village appraisal committee, upon successful completion of its appraisal, decided that rather than dissolving itself with its task complete, it would instead become a village action group to help press for implementation of the recommendations made in the appraisal report. We have seen in this section how the Objective 5b Programme, when viewed from the perspective of those theorists interested in the techniques and technologies of governance, provides a good example of an emerging, 'advanced liberal' mode of governmentality with its emphasis on governing through communities rather than a more universal and welfarist notion of a society. The new institutional networks and procedures that have been put in place as a result of the Europeanization of rural development policy for Britain's more peripheral rural regions in many ways resonate with the British government's approach as outlined in the rural White Papers by seeking to empower rural communities and individuals by 'instrumentalizing' their self-governing properties. In keeping with the line of analysis developed by governmentality theorists such as Rose (1993, 1996a,b), we can see how, prior to 'acting upon' a population or locality, the state has first to render the population or locality and its problems visible and calculable. Thus the Single Programming Document helps to bring into being the Northern Uplands as a 'problem-region' (or at least a region in need of assistance through funds targeted at specific development objectives). Similarly, and serving as an excellent example of how the self-governing properties of individuals or communities can come to be instrumentalized through such an approach, rural communities are themselves encouraged to appraise their own development needs and potential and so prioritize what might be achieved under conditions of finite resources. It is in the interplay between, on the one hand, the style and strategic approach of the EU to local rural development, filtered through national government and regional concerns (in the form of SPDs) and, on the other, the expression of community aspirations

Reconfiguring Rural Development in the UK from the bottom up through village appraisals, that new development initiatives in the Northern Uplands are being forged.

Discussion

The preceding sections have documented two trends: the rising importance of Objective 5b of the EU's Structural Funds in the financing of rural development initiatives in the UK; and the increasing emphasis, at the European, national and local levels, on the role of rural communities, particularly through voluntary efforts and 'self-help' schemes, in providing the initiative and impetus for the development of rural localities. The coincidence of these two trends has important implications for social science research into rural governance. Not only is the nature of rural development policy being reconfigured, but so too are the institutional and administrative arrangements for policy design and delivery. New forms of decision-making involve a complex network of actors extending well beyond the traditional conduits of local policy - - local authorities - - and include a host of non- or quasistate bodies at the local, national and supra-national levels (John, 1996). These innovative networks have emerged as part of the shift from local government to local governance more generally within the UK (Jessop, 1995; Goodwin and Painter, 1996). The process has been compounded by the rising importance of EU Structural Fund monies in British regions and in some rural localities. Indeed, it was partly in response to the administrative requirements for distributing Structural Fund monies that the British government established its Government Regional Offices (GRO) in April 1994, the continental ideal of a 'Europe of the regions' having no formal institutional expression in England prior to then. Now the GROs are coming to be important players in the implementation of rural development policy. A strong regional role is likely to continue with the Labour government's proposals to establish regional development agencies in England. The new rural governance is also in keeping with recent British government concerns, as expressed in the rural White Papers, to foster self-help and active citizenship in rural communities. As such it confirms the account offered by Foucauldian governmentality theorists of a move to an advanced liberal mode of governing through communities rather than through some notion of a unified 'society'. Ironically, however, while the shift to advanced liberalism has been equated by commentators with a retreat in state intervention and spending (i.e. Murdoch's

37

charge (1997) that governing through rural communities represents the government's efforts to 'cover its tracks as it creeps away from its responsibilities'), the coincidence of this shift with European redistributive efforts to promote cohesion through enhanced Structural Funds has meant that, for some more peripheral rural regions at least, significant new monies for development schemes are becoming available. In the light of these new institutional arrangements and new monies, it is instructive to question the distribution of power within the networks of rural governance. It would appear that, initially at least, the arrangements for Objective 5b follow established trends within the British state, namely the concentration of power in Whitehall (see Jenkins, 1995) despite a rhetoric of decentralization and empowerment of individuals and communities. From the perspective of local communities, the requirement that applicants for Objective 5b funds fit their proposals into the measures laid down in the Single Programming Documents, obtain matching funds, and then negotiate a complex set of bureaucratic decision-making procedures has proved a deterrent to many rural groups. This was a common complaint expressed to the House of Commons Environment Committee inquiry into rural policy which also found that the metropolitan-based GROs, as important gatekeepers in the Objective 5b funding process, are too urban-orientated, lack an appreciation of rural development issues, and so are conceptually as well as geographically far removed from rural realities. For rural community groups, this problem is compounded when GROs are obliged to refer Objective 5b funding decisions to Whitehall for the perusal of Ministers. A central concern here involves the seeming contradiction between the project of European integration and the rising purchase of the concept of subsidiarity. The Structural Funds are by no means the only policy area where the tension is apparent (for example, see Ward et al. (1995) for a discussion of EU environmental policy in this light), but localitybased studies of the Objective 5b process offer the potential for further examination of these issues through the prism of regional and rural development policy. As we have seen, recent EU policy statements have emphasized themes of partnership, local involvement and democratic accountability and yet, perhaps paradoxically, regions such as the Northern Uplands find not only the European Commission in Brussels having an increasing strategic influence upon the scale and direction of its rural development initiatives but also Whitehall having the final say over which individual projects are approved for funding (see John, 1996).

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The new perspectives generated by the governmentality approach and its application to a more Europeanized system of rural development in the UK can help in understanding the rise of 'community' in local governance. Through the process of SPD formulation at the regional level, and the village appraisal process at the local level, new 'spaces for action' are being created. Both the 'Northern Uplands region' and individual rural communities are being required to 'think themselves into existence' using particular methodologies as a precursor to rural development funding. In the case of village appraisals, the appraisal report helps construe what the community is, and what it can become. The process provides an excellent example of governing through communities in ways which 'activate' the community. From these new perspectives, new research questions emerge that have particular pertinence for the study of local rural development initiatives. The first of these is the question of how the notion of 'community' is constructed, by state agencies. Second is the related question of whether particular constructions of 'rural communities' in specific localities involve not only different representations of rurality (Halfacree, 1993; Murdoch and Pratt, 1993) but also particular ideas about who counts as part of 'the rural community' and what counts as the community interest. For as Murdoch and Day (1997) have pointed out, communities can be as much about exclusion as inclusion (see also Young, 1990). The drawing up of regional Single Programming Documents or village appraisal reports provide a useful empirical starting point for addressing these questions. These technologies of the new rural governance capture and inscribe rural areas and rural communities in statistical and documentary form, first rendering them visible, defining and ordering their 'problems' and thus rendering them governable. Acknowledgements - - The authors would like to thank

Philip Lowe, Jonathan Murdoch and the staff of Newcastle University's Centre for Rural Economy for their helpful comments on a draft of this paper.

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