Towards Future Oriented Collaborative Policy Development for Rural Areas and People

Miloš UlmanPavel ŠimekJan MasnerPavel KogutTuula LöyttyPatrick CrehanKarel CharvátAntoni OlivaStein Runar BergheimMilan KalašDenis KolokolTommaso Sabbatini

DOI 10.7160/aol.2020.120110
No 1/2020, March
pp. 111-124

Ulman, M., Šimek, P., Masner, J., Kogut, P., Löytty, T., Crehan, P., Charvát, K., Oliva, A., Bergheim, S. R., Kalaš, M., Kolokol, D. and Sabbatini, T. (2020) “Towards Future Oriented Collaborative Policy Development for Rural Areas and People", AGRIS on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 111-124. ISSN 1804-1930. DOI 10.7160/aol.2020.120110.

Abstract

Rural areas in Europe are at risk due to depopulation, failing generation renewal, and a multitude of influences ranging from market-based, regulatory, to societal and climate changes. As a result, current rural policy is no longer keeping pace with these changes. We propose an advanced rural policy development framework in order to deliver more accurate foresight for rural regions, contributing to new and enhanced policy interventions. The proposed framework combines new quantitative and qualitative epistemological approaches, previously unused unstructured data with traditional research information, grassroot perspective with expert knowledge, current situation analysis with forward looking activities. We argue that by using the proposed methods, policy teams will be able to enhance the effectiveness of their policy making processes, while rural stakeholders will be given the opportunity to become valuable policy influencers and solution co-creators. The ability to quickly experiment and understand the impact of a variety of policy solutions will result in saved time and costs. The framework is part of an ongoing experimental verification and testing in twelve pilot regions across Europe and Israel.

Keywords

Rural areas, policy, European Union, foresight, text mining, system dynamics modelling.

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