Social Capital and Rural Development in Southern European Regions: The Case of EU-funded LEADER Projects

The recent financial and economic crises have exposed the European Union (EU) to an increased risk of social exclusion and poverty which are now at the heart of its economic, employment and social agenda with explicit reference to rural and marginal areas (Europe 2020). The endogenous, territorial-based approach to development has gained increased relevance in recent years by suggesting new forms of social interactions and institutional arrangements that will enable rural actors to mobilise and cooperate to determine and pursue the means and ends of development. Social capital is of paramount importance because it helps build networks and trusting relations among local stakeholders in the public and private sphere. In this chapter, we wish to examine the role of social capital in regional, rural development in the South of Europe through the EU-funded LEADER programme. LEADER is inextricably connected to the endogenous approach that relies heavily on local social capital. It has considerable appeal in rural areas of Southern Europe, which have been hit hard by the crisis and are characterised by specific cultural and historical conditions and chronic structural problems. Yet we observe that funding and decision-making bodies at all levels have not explicitly and formally addressed and assessed the role of social dynamics and specifically of social capital in promoting rural development by exploiting LEADER funds. We argue that this must be remedied if we wish to enhance the effectiveness of these projects. We begin in Sections II and III with an overview of policy reports and case studies to examine the role of social capital in rural development and LEADER, particularly in areas of innovation, governance and marginalised groups. Then in Section IV we use the lessons learnt from case studies in Greek and Italian rural areas in Southern Europe to discuss alternative definitions and measures of social capital that take into account: economic and non-economic dimensions of local development; process-oriented evaluation methods; and context-specific characteristics of regions. In the final section we suggest ways to re-contextualise social capital in development programmes to improve their design, implementation and evaluation. To avoid the drawbacks of Putnam’s communitarian and deterministic purview, we adopt a synergistic view of social capital that highlights context-specific factors and multi-dimensional aspects of social capital.