Review of 'Towards Sustainable Rural Regions in Europe: Exploring Inter-Relationships Between Rural Policies, Farming, Environment, Demographics, Regional Economies and Quality of Life Using System Dynamics, edited by John M. Bryden, Sophia Efstratoglou, Tibor Ferenczi, Tom Johnson, Karlheinz Knickel, Karen Refsgaard, and Kenneth J. Thomson. 2011. Series: Routledge Studies in Development and Society, No. 27. New York: Routledge. 359 + xxii. ISBN 978-0-415-88225-5, $125.

Abstract

The European Union (EU) has a long tradition of funding multinational research teams to comment critically on problematic regional conditions, underlying processes shaping them, and implications for appropriate public policy. John Bryden and his colleagues' book - which has twenty contributors besides its seven editors - is the outcome of one such study. It focuses on the complex range of interacting EU rural-support measures covering agricultural enterprises, environmental management, and the creation of a multifunctional landscape in which lifestyle-based immigration, recreation, and tourism are important elements. In particular, the researchers use dynamic systems modeling to explore how 11 highly diverse subnational regions across the EU are likely to evolve in the medium to long term - up to 2025 - given their resource bases, economic conditions, traditions and lifestyles, and the current portfolio of policy measures funded by the EU. The researchers also explore how a set of hypothetical modifications to current policies might affect rural development outcomes over the forecast period, with two aims in mind. The first is to demonstrate the significant diversity of effects that policy changes can have on regions with different economic structures, resources, and geographies. The second is to argue on the basis of those observations that optimal regional policy packages are likely to vary from one location to another, in terms of both quantity and quality of development outcomes. This, in turn, suggests the need for much more region-specific integrated policy packages informed by considerable local input, and perhaps greater local control in the allocation of expenditures, or subsidiarity as the Europeans term it.