Social capital and rural development in Southern European regions: The case of EU-Funded LEADER projects

In the present article, 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 and participatory governance structures and thus relies heavily on local social capital. It has considerable appeal in rural areas of Southern Europe, which have been hit hard by the recent crises and are characterised by specific cultural and historical conditions and chronic structural problems that lead to underdevelopment. Despite the pressing needs that arose with the crises in Europe and the inspirational EU initiatives proposed (Europe 2020), 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 and exploiting LEADER funds. We argue that this must be remedied if we wish to enhance the effectiveness of LEADER. In Sections II and III we conduct an overview of policy reports and case studies to examine the role of social capital in the new rural paradigm and the LEADER approach. Then, in Section IV we use the lessons learnt from theoretical and empirical findings of case studies in Greek and Italian rural areas in Southern Europe to discuss alternative perspectives and measures of social capital that take into account both 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 to improve project design, implementation and evaluation.