Action research and democracy

This contribution explores the relationship between research and learning democracy. Action research is seen as being compatible with the orientation of educational and social work research towards social justice and democracy. Nevertheless, the history of action research is characterized by a tension between democracy and social engineering. In the social-engineering approach, action research is conceptualized as a process of innovation aimed at a specific Bildungsideal. In a democratic approach action research is seen as research based on cooperation between research and practice. However, the notion of democratic action research as opposed to social engineering action research needs to be theorized. So called democratic action research involving the implementation by the researcher of democracy as a model and as a preset goal, reduces cooperation and participation into instruments to reach this goal, and becomes a type of social engineering in itself. We argue that the relationship between action research and democracy is in the acknowledgment of the political dimension of participation: ‘a democratic relationship in which both sides exercise power and shared control over decision-making as well as interpretation’. This implies an open research design and methodology able to understand democracy as a learning process and an ongoing experiment

Decentralized Rural Development Policies: Does it Make Sense? The Example of Diversification in Flanders

Changes in consumer preferences and demands, the process of globalisation, etc. together with the pressure of the United States to continue liberalisation of the farm sector in Europe, have caused the European Union to adapt its policy. There has been a shift in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) towards a more decentralised approach. In this paper, it is analysed if this approach is justified for rural development, by describing the case of on-farm diversification in Flanders. Using survey results, it is tested if the decision to do on-farm diversification depends not only on farm and farmer characteristics (e.g. age and gender of the farmer, his or her education, having a successor, arable surface, farm type and financial situation) but also on the location of the farm. By including a location variable in the regression, the explanatory power improves and the influence of some variables changes. This suggests that location is important when trying to alter the decision of a farmer to do on-farm diversification. Therefore policy should be decentralised to a level where location differences can be dealt with. This decentralisation is to a certain extent already taken up in the Rural Development Policy in Flanders where location specificities are taken into account for when on-farm diversification in different zones is stimulated. The results support the idea of strengthening bottom-up policies as proposed in the new Rural Development Policy 2007-2013 of the EU and this not only for on-farm diversification, but for all parts of rural development.On-farm diversification, local policy, decentralisation, farm location, farm strategy, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

The 'place' of multi-level governance? Defining the policy agenda for regional development in Western Flanders

The policy-making function of the principal agency for regional development is examined. Are institutional and governance forms for Regional Development as much a product of specific local and regional conditions (the 'place' of multi-level governance) as they are a part of the mechanisms that facilitate their reproduction- such as the state, economy, society and the widely interpreted term ‘globalization’? Following on from this, are multi-level policy priorities for regional development influenced more by the ‘business-led agenda’ and its ‘positional elites’ than the regional- local institutional capacities and by the local actors ‘outside of the game’