Managing Rural Change and Competing Rationalities: Insights from Conflicting Rural Storylines and Local Policy Making in Ireland

Abstract

This paper assesses the actions of local policy makers and policy stakeholders in the rural arena by exploring the contested nature of rurality. Through an examination of two case studies in the west of Ireland, the paper argues that the persistence of conflicting rural storylines within the local policy arena has underpinned and framed the emergence of competing rationalities for local territorial development, which have impacted on landscape protection goals and economic and community development. The result is a disintegrated rather than a holistic approach to establishing local policy goals for rural sustainable development, suggesting the need for competing narratives to be explored, challenged and reworked within policy and local governance processes.

Keywords:

• Housing
• contested ruralities

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support for this research by the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences. I would also like to thank the three anonymous referees and the editors for their helpful comments.

Notes

1. For example, the Government's Decentralisation Programme for the Civil Service was announced in December 2003 by the Minister for Finance in the annual budget. This programme involves over 10,000 civil servants and eight Government Departments relocating from Dublin to 53 centres in 25 counties, many outside of designated gateways and hub urban centres identified in the NSS.

2. An Taisce is the Irish national trust with a focus on conservation of the built and natural environment. They are also a “prescribed” body in planning legalisation and take an active role in undertaking Third Party Appeals against development in rural areas. Keep Ireland Open is an organisation concerned with securing access to the Irish countryside.