Andrew Cartwright

The return of the peasant: land reform in post-Communist Romania.

The land question in the formation of modern Romania halting the Bolsheviks - land reform and economic development between the wars laying the ground - post-war land distribution transforming private property - collectivizing techniques 1948-1962 rural developments during the golden age of multilateral socialism rewriting history - post-communist land reform short rulers and lost vinyards - implementing land reform in Mirsid moving boundaries - implementing land reform in Plaiesti conclusion - the return of the peasant.

Monitoring Committees in Cohesion Policy: Overseeing the Distribution of Structural Funds in Hungary and Slovakia

Abstract Under European Union (EU) law, Monitoring Committees (MCs) are charged with overseeing the implementation of Operational Programmes. Despite their potential to influence the process of fund disbursement, relatively little is known about the Committees’ operation and their impact in the new member states. This article is an empirical study of how three MCs actually work in Hungary and Slovakia. We find that whilst these bodies have relatively limited oversight capacities and are characterised by a primary concern with procedural compliance with EU requirements, nevertheless, they have an important role in providing significant opportunities for learning, information exchange, expert input and networking.

Trial and error: Policy experiments, failures and innovations in Central and Eastern Europe: Beyond Accession in Central and Eastern Europe

In the early part of the last decade, a new European Union funding programme was introduced for rural areas in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Originating in 1980s France, the LEADER programme was widely seen by the EU as a central policy tool for bottom-up innovation and growth, especially in areas struggling to adapt to out-migration and the decline of agricultural employment. Project funding was available for implementing local territorial development plans, which would be overseen by ‘Local Action Groups’ (LAGs) made up of representatives from businesses, civic groups and local authorities (Macken-Walsh 2009). The policy goals were ambitious: sustainable development, mitigating climate change, countering social exclusion and promoting economic revival in the countryside. Yet there was a problem which both confused and frustrated the implementing agencies: the actual amount of project funding available was relatively modest, particularly in the light of the scale of rural problems in the regions. Rather than helping maintain strained public services and creating widespread opportunities that could halt out-migration, the LAGs sponsored projects that appeared more modest and marginal, even eccentric, such as reviving local dance festivals, erecting public notice boards, establishing wildlife trails and publishing local recipe books. Despite the slightly bombastic rhetoric of the programme, in a number of areas of Central and Eastern Europe LAGs came to be understood locally as a kind of folk preservation society, familiar from socialist times, which would help preserve local cultural traditions but would be almost wholly irrelevant to more pressing questions of rural development. Thus LAGs were reinterpreted as something similar to old socialist era institutions that ran so-called ‘cultural houses’ – state sponsored village halls