The disempowerment of empowerment: How stakeholding clogs up rural decision-making

Curry, Nigel

Abstract

In the context of a growth in both participatory democracy and responsible participation, rural decision-making in England has become increasingly complex over the past 30 years, fuelled by national polices relating to regionalism, citizenship and relocalisation. A survey of 'agents of rural governance' (ARGs) in the county of Gloucestershire, England, charts their recent growth, reasons for formation and perceived jurisdiction as well as examining complexities of decision-making relating to partnerships, networks and finance. The survey suggests that policies designed to 'empower' rural people can be seen to have clogged up rural decision-making processes sufficiently to have, effectively, disempowered many of them. The paper identifies and exemplifies six different types of 'clogging up' that impact upon rural decision-making: crowding, knotting, clouding, meandering, subverting and impoverishing. Whilst governmental proposals have been introduced in an attempt to rationalise this decision-making complexity, particularly through the Haskins Review and the English National Rural Strategy, other policy strands have conspired to make such decision-making essentially laissez faire. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2009
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 8, 2019
• Journal: Space and Polity
• Print ISSN: 1356-2576
• Electronic ISSN: 1470-1235
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 13
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 213-232
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13562570903454309
• Keywords: rural community participation, governmentality, rural decison-making
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/989917
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562570903454309
• Related Public URLs: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/carfax/13562576.html
• Additional Information: Additional Information : This is an electronic version of an article published in Curry, Nigel (2009) The disempowerment of empowerment: How stakeholding clogs up rural decision-making. Space and Polity, 13 (3). pp. 213-232. Space and Polity is available online at: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/13562570903454309