IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jworld/v3y2022i4p53-956d976504.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

European Rural Demographic Strategies: Foreshadowing Post-Lisbon Rural Development Policy?

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Dax

    (Federal Institute of Agricultural Economics, Rural and Mountain Research, 1030 Vienna, Austria)

  • Andrew Copus

    (Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies, Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland, 80100 Joensuu, Finland)

Abstract

The European Commission’s Long-term Vision for Rural Areas, published in June 2021 and building on a previous report on the Impact of Demographic Change and a Green Paper on Ageing, underlines the importance of population trends as a key issue for EU rural policy. The increasing concern about demographic issues, especially in rural Europe, has been accompanied, and in some cases preceded, by the publication of national population strategies. This renewed interest within the European policy community probably has roots in politics rather than new research or fresh evidence. Rural depopulation is not a new phenomenon, nor is it a new research topic. Nevertheless, to better understand this renewed interest, it is instructive to review recent scholarship and consider whether there is any evidence that the processes and systems of rural and regional (demographic) development are delivering new kinds of challenges, requiring refreshed policy approaches. Having established this context, we present a comparative review of a selection of national strategies, identifying shifting perspectives on goals, the instruments proposed, and implied intervention logics. Arguably, cumulative evidence points to an incremental shift of the policy discourse away from neoliberal, Lisbon-inspired visions of rural competitiveness and cost-effectiveness and towards a quest for rural well-being, rights to basic services, and more (spatially) inclusive rural development. This increasing emphasis on qualitative change may be symptomatic of a wider shift in the zeitgeist of rural policy, reflecting a number of globalised trends, including an awareness of the potentials and limitations associated with changing patterns of inter and intra-regional mobility.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Dax & Andrew Copus, 2022. "European Rural Demographic Strategies: Foreshadowing Post-Lisbon Rural Development Policy?," World, MDPI, vol. 3(4), pages 1-19, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jworld:v:3:y:2022:i:4:p:53-956:d:976504
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/3/4/53/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/3/4/53/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pinilla Vicente & Sáez Luis Antonio, 2021. "What Do Public Policies Teach us About Rural Depopulation: The Case Study of Spain," European Countryside, Sciendo, vol. 13(2), pages 330-351, June.
    2. Sato, Yasuhiro & Yamamoto, Kazuhiro, 2005. "Population concentration, urbanization, and demographic transition," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 45-61, July.
    3. Wolff, Manuel & Haase, Annegret & Leibert, Tim, 2020. "Mehr als Schrumpfung und Wachstum? Trends der demographischen Raumentwicklung in Deutschland nach 2011," UFZ Discussion Papers 1/2020, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Division of Social Sciences (ÖKUS).
    4. Patrick Küpper & Stefan Kundolf & Tobias Mettenberger & Gesine Tuitjer, 2018. "Rural regeneration strategies for declining regions: trade-off between novelty and practicability," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2), pages 229-255, February.
    5. Mike Danson & Kathryn A. Burnett, 2021. "Current Scottish Land Reform and Reclaiming the Commons: Building Community Resilience," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 21(3), pages 280-297, July.
    6. Artur da Rosa Pires & Martina Pertoldi & John Edwards & Fatime Barbara Hegyi, 2014. "Smart Specialisation and Innovation in Rural Areas," JRC Research Reports JRC90000, Joint Research Centre.
    7. Justin B. Hollander & Jeremy Németh, 2011. "The bounds of smart decline: a foundational theory for planning shrinking cities," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 349-367, June.
    8. David L. Rigby & Christoph Roesler & Dieter Kogler & Ron Boschma & Pierre-Alexandre Balland, 2022. "Do EU regions benefit from Smart Specialisation principles?," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(12), pages 2058-2073, December.
    9. Viñas Carmen Delgado, 2019. "Depopulation Processes in European Rural Areas: A Case Study of Cantabria (Spain)," European Countryside, Sciendo, vol. 11(3), pages 341-369, September.
    10. Hendrik P. van Dalen & Kène Henkens, 2011. "Who fears and who welcomes population decline?," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 25(13), pages 437-464.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mar Ortega-Reig & Carsten Schürmann & Adrian Ferrandis Martínez & Andrew Copus, 2023. "Measuring Access to Services of General Interest as a Diagnostic Tool to Identify Well-Being Disparities between Rural Areas in Europe," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-30, May.
    2. Florian Ahlmeyer & Kati Volgmann, 2023. "What Can We Expect for the Development of Rural Areas in Europe?—Trends of the Last Decade and Their Opportunities for Rural Regeneration," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-17, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nalin Wu & Erling Li & Yihan Su & Li Li & Li Wang, 2022. "Social Capital, Crop Specialization and Rural Industry Development—Taking the Grape Industry in Ningling County of China as an Example," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-22, July.
    2. Anna Wichowska, 2021. "Economic Aspects of Shrinking Cities in Poland in the Context of Regional Sustainable Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-12, March.
    3. Wenshi Yang & Fan Chen & Qianqian Wei & Zhenwei Peng, 2024. "Relationships between Resident Activities and Physical Space in Shrinking Cities in China—The Case of Chaoyang City," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-18, April.
    4. Michel Beine & Frédéric Docquier & Maurice Schiff, 2013. "International migration, transfer of norms and home country fertility," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 46(4), pages 1406-1430, November.
    5. Jukka Teras & Viktor Salenius & Laura Fagerlund & Lina Stanionyte, 2018. "Smart Specialisation in Sparsely Populated European Arctic Regions," JRC Research Reports JRC114273, Joint Research Centre.
    6. George, Justine, 2016. "An Assessment of Inclusiveness in the Urban Agglomeration of Kochi City: The need for a change in approach of urban planning," MPRA Paper 90149, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Bruno Chiarini & Antonella D'Agostino & Elisabetta Marzano & Andrea Regoli, 2017. "Housing Environmental Risk in Urban Areas: Cross Country Comparison and Policy Implications," CESifo Working Paper Series 6822, CESifo.
    8. Prener, Chris & Braswell, Taylor & Monti, Daniel J., 2018. "St. Louis's "Urban Prairie": Vacant Land and the Potential for Revitalization," SocArXiv bc7eh, Center for Open Science.
    9. Julie Fry, 2014. "Migration and Macroeconomic Performance in New Zealand: Theory and Evidence," Treasury Working Paper Series 14/10, New Zealand Treasury.
    10. Hendrik P. van Dalen & Kène Henkens, 2021. "When is fertility too low or too high? Population policy preferences of demographers around the world," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 75(2), pages 289-303, May.
    11. Davis, Colin & Hashimoto, Ken-ichi & Tabata, Ken, 2022. "Demographic structure, knowledge diffusion, and endogenous productivity growth," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    12. Nick Parr, 2023. "An Alternative Perspective on the Changing Relationships between Fertility and Replacement Level in European Countries," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 49(2), pages 255-278, June.
    13. Kashnitsky, Ilya & de Beer, Joop & van Wissen, Leo, 2017. "Decomposition of regional convergence in population aging across Europe," OSF Preprints ykqbv, Center for Open Science.
    14. Iñigo Calvo-Sotomayor & Ekhi Atutxa & Ricardo Aguado, 2020. "Who Is Afraid of Population Aging? Myths, Challenges and an Open Question from the Civil Economy Perspective," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(15), pages 1-17, July.
    15. Ruiying Liu, 2022. "Long-Term Development Perspectives in the Slow Crisis of Shrinkage: Strategies of Coping and Exiting," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-30, August.
    16. Iwona Kantor-Pietraga, 2021. "Does One Decade of Urban Policy for the Shrinking City Make Visible Progress in Urban Re-Urbanization? A Case Study of Bytom, Poland," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-17, April.
    17. Tadashi Morita & Yasuhiro Sato & Kazuhiro Yamamoto, 2020. "Demographics and competition for capital in political economy," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 27(4), pages 865-889, August.
    18. Takahashi, Takaaki, 2022. "On the economic geography of an aging society," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    19. Ge Wang & Juan Yang & Dinghua Ou & Yalan Xiong & Ouping Deng & Qiquan Li, 2019. "Temporal-Spatial Variations and Regional Disparities in Land-Use Efficiency, and the Response to Demographic Transition," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(17), pages 1-22, August.
    20. Yang Li & Frank Neffke, 2022. "Relatedness in regional development: in search of the right specification," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 2208, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Apr 2022.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jworld:v:3:y:2022:i:4:p:53-956:d:976504. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.