Innovation in rural development in Puglia, Italy: critical issues and potentialities starting from empirical evidence

Abstract

Innovation in rural development in Puglia, Italy: critical issues and potentialities starting from empirical evidenceSince the 1990s, innovation has been recognised as having a key role in the development and competitiveness of European rural territories. In particular, in the LEADER approach, innovation is seen in social and cultural terms rather than as a technological issue, but it has been interpreted by national and, above all, local policies almost exclusively in the latter sense. Especially at local level, often a 'productivist' approach emerges that in many cases reveals deeply-rooted conservativeness in the planning and implementation of programmes. Puglia, a NUTS 2 region in southern Italy, acknowledges the key role of innovation in rural development and invested a bigger share of funding in Axes III and IV of Pillar 2 of the Common Agricultural Policy in the 2007-2013 programming cycle than did the other Italian regions. This study examines the regional case in two interconnected stages to identify fi rstly the interpretation of innovation from the programmatic and operative points of view, and secondly, the needs and critical issues in terms of innovation in governance on the local scale through interviews with stakeholders from a representative LAG named 'Terra dei Messapi'. It reveals not only a marked disparity in the way innovation was interpreted, but also the limitations and critical issues in planning and in regional and local governance, which prove unable to embrace innovation affecting social and institutional processes and, more generally, processes related to the context.

Information and Communication Infrastructures and New Business Models in Rural Areas: The Case of Molise Region in Italy

“…In the new BMs, induced by the use of ICT, the dimensions of proximity are reshaped and have very different relevance in the design and development of the models and they are related to the innovations. Following this approach, the relevance of ICT in BM is not just linked to support the developing and managing business processes (Veit et al 2014), but it is also linked to the creation and animation of the network itself (Navarro et al, 2018, Labianca et al 2016) and the new proximity. ICT reshapes the geographical proximity completely.…”

La Cooperación Interterritorial Transnacional en el Enfoque Leader. Los Casos de Finlandia y España.

“…Si miramos estos dos aspectos juntos, ha habido una amplia literatura de investigación sobre LEADER desde la publicación del número temático sobre esta iniciativa de la Revista Sociologia Ruralis en el año 2000. Investigaciones más recientes sobre LEADER han explorado, entre otras cuestiones, las dimensiones de la innovación (entre otros, Dargan, L. y Shucksmith, M., 2008;Labianca, M. et al, 2016); el capital social y humano (entre otros, Marquardt, D. et.al 2011) y cuestiones relativas al poder y la democracia (Thuesen, A. 2009).…”

Economic culture of Local Action Group (LAG) communities from peripheral regions. Evidence from Poland

“…In their functioning, they implement the main principles set out by the LEADER Programme, such as: area-based, bottom-up, public-private partnership, innovation, integration, networking, and co-operation (https://enrd.ec.europa.eu/leader-clld_en ). The LEADER approach is seen as a paradigm shift oriented towards the social and cultural construction of the territories' institutional capacities (Labianca et al, 2016), whose application has had a significant impact on the governance of predominantly rural European regions. Such an approach is based on the creation of a sense of identity and responsibility of residents for their local area (Chmieliński, 2011, p. 121).…”