Neil Ward

Setting the next agenda? British and French approaches to the second pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy

Abstract The paper examines the key new discretionary features of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after the Agenda 2000 reforms. These include the possibilities for reallocating a proportion of farmers’ direct payments and the implementation of the Rural Development Regulation, hailed by the European Commission as the new ‘second pillar’ to the CAP. The paper compares and contrasts the ways in which Britain and France are taking a lead in using these features, according to their distinctive national agricultural agendas and rural priorities, and considers the implications for the future development of European policy.

Coproducing Flood Risk Knowledge: Redistributing Expertise in Critical ‘Participatory Modelling’

This paper suggests that computer simulation modelling can offer opportunities for redistributing expertise between science and affected publics in relation to environmental problems. However, in order for scientific modelling to contribute to the coproduction of new knowledge claims about environmental processes, scientists need to reposition themselves with respect to their modelling practices. In the paper we examine a process in which two hydrological modellers became part of an extended research collective generating new knowledge about flooding in a small rural town in the UK. This process emerged in a project trialling a novel participatory research apparatus—competency groups—aiming to harness the energy generated in public controversy and enable other than scientific expertise to contribute to environmental knowledge. Analysing the process repositioning the scientists in terms of a dynamic of ‘dissociation’ and ‘attachment’, we map the ways in which prevailing alignments of expertise were unravelled and new connections assembled, in relation to the matter of concern. We show how the redistribution of knowledge and skills in the extended research collective resulted in a new computer model, embodying the coproduced flood risk knowledge.

England and the 'New Regionalism'

It could be argued that there are currently two parallel developments in Europe: the increasing political importance of the regional level and the proliferation of regionally-based initiatives in economic promotion and development (DANSON et al., 2000). Both have important consequences for the distribution of the institutionalized capacity which has been established to take and in ̄ uence decisions with regard to the long term future and development of a particular locality: in short, for the patterns of regional governance. It is widely recognized and stressed in the publications of the European Commission and of the UNIDO that institutions and governance are the critical factors in the determination of the potential and success of Europe’s regions. Within the UK in particular, the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies, and the creation of regional development agencies on the already crowded economic development landscape of England highlight the need to put these initiatives into some context and, given the primary role of the EU in shaping that landscape, to draw on experience from across Europe. Two aspects are central to many such discussions: the question of governance ± how does the ongoing process of institution-building aVect the ways in which the regions and localities are governed, including questions of democracy, participation, regional self-determination, public± private partnerships and accountability; and the consequences of new modes of governance and institutional change for regional development strategies and policies, particularly in the context of large-scale industrial restructuring and city-region and urban regeneration. Yet, in many cases there has been an underdeveloped debate about the role of the institutions of the new r̀egions’ and about the processes of r̀egionalism’ . This article by John Tomaney and Neil Ward presents a critical analysis of the underpinnings to such themes and contributes to the evolving literature.

Reconfiguring rural development in the UK: Objective 5b and the new rural governance

Abstract A new form of rural governance is emerging in more peripheral parts of the UK. As European Structural Fund monies come to play a greater role in financing development projects, so new ways of making decisions about rural development are being initiated. The rural development component of the Structural Funds (Objective 5b) requires that development objectives be prioritized by means of a ‘programming approach’ which brings together a wide range of actors in new institutional arrangements. This reconfiguration of rural development is examined in this paper using case study material from the Northern Uplands — the largest Objective 5b area in England. The paper concludes by drawing out a set of further research questions the Objective 5b programme raises regarding the tensions between centralization and localization, the role of rural communities in their own governance, and the new techniques and technologies of rural governance.

Virus-crisis-institutional Change: the Foot and Mouth Actor Network and the Governance of Rural Affairs in the UK

This paper adopts an actor-network theory approach in order to follow the associations of actors involved in the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) epidemic in the UK. We follow the chains of translation through three key stages: from virus to disease; from disease to crises in agriculture, the rural economy and rural policy; and from those crises to the institutional change that occurred with the demise of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the arrival of the new Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs. What emerges from this approach is that the UK Governments initial attempts to combat FMD caused a rural economy crisis not through mismanagement but through a more fundamental mis-problematization of the situation. By viewing rural areas through an agricultural lens, Government actors failed to appreciate the presence of other actors in the countryside, a failure that resulted in massive social and economic impacts outside of the agricultural sector.

Shifting values in agriculture: the farm family and pollution regulation1

Abstract It has long been acknowledged that the notion of family continuity of farm occupation through succession is one of the central tenets of the ethos of ‘family’ farming, but recent evidence suggests that it is being called into question by family members. Farming practices are being pursued in a rapidly changing world, an important feature of which is a greater level of public and political concern for protecting the rural environment. This paper examines a range of new influences affecting farming practice and environmental consciousness and the implications these have for farming values, particularly that of family succession. Using evidence from a study of dairy farm families and pollution regulation in Devon in South West England, it suggests that rural social change is providing new routes through which environmental values can flow through farm households, influencing the ways farmers understand the environmental implications of their practices, and the ways they and their families think about their long-term futures.

Policy Framing and Learning the Lessons from the UK's Foot and Mouth Disease Crisis

The 2001 foot and mouth disease (FMD) epidemic cost over £8 billion and wreaked havoc upon the British countryside. The paper examines the institutional response to the crisis and the subsequent inquiries. Drawing on the ‘garbage-can model’ of organisational choice and ideas of ‘policy framing’, it argues that the institutional response to FMD was tightly focused on agricultural interests. Subsequently, a compartmentalised approach to lesson learning has been partial in its coverage. The result is that important lessons, of a more holistic and integrated nature, have been overlooked despite the replacement of the Ministry of Agriculture with a new Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Rural Restructuring and the Regulation of Farm Pollution

In this paper the emergence during the 1980s of a water pollution problem associated with intensive livestock production is examined. Farm pollution is socially constructed and is shaped by rural social change. Rural areas are experiencing social and economic restructuring with a resultant shift in emphasis from production to consumption concerns. ‘New’ people are living in the countryside, with ideas about how its resources should be managed that often differ from those with traditional production interests. At the same time, the debates surrounding the privatisation of the water industry opened up the issue of water pollution in the countryside to greater critical scrutiny. It is in this context that pollution from farm ‘wastes’ (termed here ‘farm pollution’) has gone from being a ‘nonproblem’ in the 1970s to an issue of greater public and political concern and regulatory activity since the late 1980s. Based on evidence from a study of dairy farming in Devon, it is argued in this paper that the farm pollution problem and its regulation are as much a function of social change in the countryside as of environmental change in rivers.

Europeanizing rural development? Implementing the CAP's second pillar in England

The paper examines the implementation in England of the Rural Development Regulation (RDR), established in 1999 as the ‘Second Pillar’ to the Common Agricultural Policy. The paper argues that the limited UK allocation of European funds hampered the RDRs initial introduction. However, discretionary national funding decisions have meant that a radical approach to financing the RDR has been adopted in the UK. In England, implementation of the Regulation has strengthened a process of Europeanization, but this currently risks being at the cost of distorting sub‐national priorities to spread rural development support beyond the farm gate.

Regional policy, CAP reform and rural development in Britain: The challenge for New Labour

December 1997 saw the Government publish its proposals for the establishment of Regional Development Agencies in England which, inter alia, will incorporate the rural regeneration work of the Rural Development Commission. These institutional changes come at a crucial time for rural policy with reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and European Structural Funds also on the agenda. This paper critically examines the prospects for an invigorated relationship between rural policy and regional development and makes a number of suggestions for further institutional reforms to improve the co-ordination of public policy for rural areas at the regional, national and European levels.