Resilience%20and%20adaptation%20in%20the%20project%20state%20%20Guszt

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Resilience and adaptation in the project
stateGusztáv Nemes, Chris Highnemes_at_econ.core.
huc.high_at_open.ac.uk

• RE-INVENTING THE RURAL BETWEEN THE SOCIAL AND THE
  NATURAL
• XXIII European Society for Rural Sociology
  Congress Vaasa, Finland 17-21 August 2009

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Outline

• The New Rural Paradigm and the Project State
• Why it is not working?
• Hungarian Leader the veterinary horse
• Resilience and adaptation through reflexive
  agency

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The new rural paradigm (OECD 2006)

• A shift from subsidising declining sectors,
  areas, social groups, towards investment to
  develop an areas most productive activity
• Valorisation of local specificities
  resources
• Decentralised administration and management
• Embrace multi-level governance
• Bryden
  2007
• Paradox why does not work?

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The era of the Project State

• Counter-narrative to Welfare State
• Project state an institutional system that has
  arisen to deliver the New Rural Paradigm
• Project state reasons for failure

The nature of projectsand project management
Failure of multi-level governance
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Tyranny of projects- projects ruling actors

• Creating exclusion
• Impeding co-operation,

• management tools from business (logframe,SWOT,
  etc.)
• competition
• match funding
• Fixed support

Difficult to sustain results and dev. capacity
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Multi-level governance tend to fail for lack of

• genuine decentralisation (power, responsibility,
  capacity missing on lower levels)
• Partnership and real participation on every
  level(interest-harmonisation, animation, beliefe
  in the system)
• appropriate institutions, and communication(inter
  est representation, development capacity,
  continuity)
• effective social learning and evaluation(no
  improvement of development policies and
  institutions)

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What is behind failure/success multi-level
governance?

• Political culture, participative democracy
• Strength of civil society, social networks
• Existing development capacity
• Approach of the centre to decentralisation
• These vary greatly, BUT backward areas are likely
  to be weak in these too

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2007-13 LEADER HUNGARY

• Action research, supported by Norwegian Financial
  Mechanism Local development policies in a
  European project state - a systemic analysis of
  institutional bricolage 2009-2011
• Ex-ante evaluator of RDP
• LAG member
• Planning group mentoring (various LAGs)
• NAURAMA Alliance

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The veterinary horse
The Hungarian LEADER Programme
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Problems during planning

• Little time to set up LAGs
• Strong incentives to make them large (Ours - 60
  villages, 184 LAG members)
• Rural Development Training and Consultation
  Institute 400 employee, BUT control NOT help
• No training or professional support, no financial
  resources for local planning (5000 working hours)
• Planning to strict, standard, badly designed
  online!
• 4 month, with ever changing guidance
• Strong artificial competition between LAGs

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Problems during implementation

• Political aims dominate
• Administrative Procedure Act
• Lack of trust, human decisions,
• Insufficient central administration
• Divide and conquer, etc
• System should collaps but doesnt
• WHY?

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Resilience and adaptation

• Enthusiasm, energy
• Capacities
• Creative bricolage
• Mediation, translation
• Networking
• Social learning

Reflexive agency
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Reflexive agency the rural bites back I.

• From rabish picking to hightech
• Capacities andcreative bricolage

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Reflexive agency the rural bites back II.

• Spontaneous co-operation
• Lobbying on regional level
• Social learning

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Reflexive agency the rural bites back III.

• Co-operation for the fun of it
• Enthusiasm and networking

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Thank you for your attentionGusztáv Nemes,
Chris Highnemes_at_econ.core.huc.high_at_open.ac.uk