Regional and Local Responses to Restructuring in Peripheral Rural Areas in Finland

Abstract

This paper is an interpretation of Finnish rural locality studies in the RURE programme framework. Rural development is described as a series of historical layers of economic development and policies. Since World War II there have been in Finland three successive national 'policy projects' with different rural impacts: the settlement project; the project of the industrial welfare state; and the emerging project of 'new rural policy'. Each one has meant more intensive integration of rural and urban parts of society. The paper focuses on the two periods of transformation from one project to the next. During the first period the earlier rural forms of economy collapsed and development paths of rural communities became diversified. The State supported industrialisation of rural areas (regional policies), rationalisation of agriculture (structural policies and price subsidies) and welfare services. Rural people responded by migrating, by giving their support to political protest parties, and later by organising into village committees. During the second period new social groups have been expressing their conflicting interests towards the countryside. The State is trying to create the 'new rural policy' to channel the funds and experts from earlier agricultural policy into more comprehensive rural development work. The paper ends with a suggestion that it is not possible to talk about rural areas as a target of one policy. That is why the 'new rural policy' might be an impossible project.