Abstract
The added value coming from involvement of stakeholders in changing attitudes and cultures towards a more sustainable-oriented society has been repeatedly emphasized in documents of the European Union. Those documents emphasize the advisability of creating a more inclusive system from the early planning stages and for the whole process with regard to the development of EU policies, involving the stakeholder as a referring partnership both at the national and regional levels. This paper focuses on a case study related to an Italian region where the local partnership has been involved during the setting up of the Rural Development Program 2014–2020 and where a participatory approach has been applied. In order to create an effective output coming from these open consultations, a participatory approach has been carried out using a dynamized Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats analysis (SWOT Analysis). The results presented here come from a specific thematic table where experts and stakeholders discussed a specific priority focused on innovation, training and advisory in rural areas. As expected, sustainable innovations and services as well as training courses need to be improved, while financial resources addressing those issues need to be increased.
Highlights
The European Commission regularly involves stakeholders when it develops policy and legislation to get support for different European priorities
The results presented here come from a specific thematic table around which experts, representatives of local institutions, associations, cooperatives, consortia, and representatives of universities and research centers discussed in order to identify the most important and urgent needs for the rural world as priority 1 is concerned
The principle from which the participatory approaches are based lies in the possibility given to policy makers to draw essential ideas, issues and potential actions to be implemented through the policy by listening to citizens/stakeholders/experts who are involved in the process
Summary
The European Commission regularly involves stakeholders when it develops policy and legislation to get support for different European priorities. The principle from which the participatory approaches are based lies in the possibility given to policy makers to draw essential ideas, issues and potential actions to be implemented through the policy by listening to citizens/stakeholders/experts who are involved in the process In this scenario, they have the chance to directly contribute to the planning design of a system of intervention that will impact them in the future. The analysis of Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) is probably the most common and widely recognized tool for conducting strategic planning, representing the early stages of a process [27]; it dates back to the ‘50s and ‘60s, since the efforts at Harvard Business School to analyze case studies [28] This framework has enjoyed outstanding popularity among both researchers and practitioners, since Kenneth Andrews in 1971 influenced the popularization of the idea that good strategy means ensuring fit between threats and opportunities coming from outside and internal characteristics of a firm (business policy). The matching of specific internal and external factors provides a strategic matrix: internal factors are within the control of a specific system (organization or program) under study, while the external factors are out of the system’s control, such as economic and political factors, new technologies and market competition
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