Bart Hoogeboom: A leader amongst lagging regions: Endogenous rural development in the Waldviertel (1975–2015)

The Waldviertel is one of the most well-known peripheral regions in Austria. The region took charge of its own development in the late 1970s when several young actors initiated innovative projects, for example the direct sale of 50.000 kilos of potatoes in Vienna. These initial projects turned into a thick institutional landscape of development agencies during the 1980s. This success was enabled by changes in regional and rural policy by the Kreisky government, especially its support programmes for mountain farmers and funding for endogenous development. When Austria joined the European Union in 1995 it was well prepared to become a frontrunner in the emerging field of rural development, a second pillar of the common agricultural policy (CAP) after 2000. Rural development needed to be bottom-up, place based and innovative. The Waldviertel was an exemplary region in this respect and exported its knowledge to other lagging regions such as Brandenburg.

In this presentation I will explore the tradition of endogenous development in the Waldviertel in comparison to regions in Belgium (Meetjesland) and the Netherlands (Noordoost-Fryslân). This will enable me to explore some of the institutional peculiarities of rural and regional policy in Austria and how they have affected the Waldviertel over the past decades.

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