Leadership and the governance of rural communities

Abstract

Globally researchers are paying increasing attention to questions of local leadership and the governance of rural communities. However, the two bodies of scholarship have largely developed in isolation from each other and there has been a subsequent dearth of research into the relationship between leadership and governance in rural communities. Drawing upon the local leadership and governmentality literatures, this paper seeks to shed light on the leadership of places through an examination of the experience of a small town in South Australia. The paper argues there is a strong interaction between governance and leadership, with leaders sometimes taking an oppositional role to government and in other instances serving to mediate relations across spatial scales. The paper brings into question the nature of leadership in rural communities in advanced economies, the ways in which leaders interpret their roles and their relationship with the processes of governmentality.