Raising collective agency is key to successful place-based development approaches. Existing policy arrangements have, however, been criticised, suggesting a need to effectuate more collaborative modes of governance. This paper shall contribute to a better understanding of how public support can best be arranged to raise collective agency for a more collaborative mode of governance in rural areas. The paper elaborates on findings of empirical investigations conducted within the EU FP7 project DERREG. It will be shown that differences in effectuating more collaborative modes of governance can partly be ascribed to different political dynamics, economic and demographic situations as well as the presence of a shared sense of place. To raise collective agency effectively requires a joint reconsideration and restructuring of the division of roles and tasks, including those of public administration. This can be supported by facilitating joint reflexivity among development actors and giving room for collaborative leadership and operational flexibility within policy arrangements.

This paper brings together different theoretical perspectives to propose an evaluation framework for policies which have the explicit aim to foster communities' involvement in the management of their natural environment in the context of sustainable rural development, such as the EU LEADER programme, Australia's Caring for Our Country, and UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. Previous policy evaluations have oversimplified the complex social-ecological systems on which these policies are intended to act, have lacked specification of the policy level they address and were predicated on the assumption that policies can be designed to produce predictable outcomes. Based on a concept of 'complex realities' we developed a framework to guide the evaluation of policy effectiveness in social-ecological systems. This comprehensive framework provides the conceptual and theoretical context in which individual evaluation exercises for policy review and future programme design can be embedded. It goes beyond existing frameworks by allowing the identification of factors that explain how and why a policy tool was effective. It provides a structure within which datasets from different sources, relevant stakeholders and relationships can be identified and analysed in a multi level and multi-scale context. However, we emphasise that policy makers and evaluators' mindsets would have to change to accept uncertainty and the validity of various stakeholders' perceptions and evaluations. Abstract: This paper brings together different theoretical perspectives to propose an evaluation framework for policies which have the explicit aim to foster communities' involvement in the management of their natural environment in the context of sustainable rural development, such as the EU LEADER programme, Australia's Caring for Our Country, and UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. Previous policy evaluations have over-simplified the complex social-ecological systems on which these policies are intended to act, have lacked specification of the policy level they address and were predicated on the assumption that policies can be designed to produce predictable outcomes. Based on a concept of 'complex realities' we developed a framework to guide the evaluation of policy effectiveness in social-ecological systems. This comprehensive framework provides the conceptual and theoretical context in which individual evaluation exercises for policy review and future programme design can be embedded. It goes beyond existing frameworks by allowing the identification of factors that explain how and why a policy tool was effective. It provides a structure within which datasets from different sources, relevant stakeholders and relationships can be identified and analysed in a multi-level and multi-scale context. However, we emphasise that policy makers and evaluators' mindsets would have to change to accept uncertainty and the validity of various stakeholders' perceptions and evaluations. 1How should rural policy be evaluated if it aims to foster community involvement in envi...

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The notion of “vulnerability” occupies a central role in academic literature, policymaking, humanitarian debates, and everyday discourses on migration and asylum. Its popularity has led some academics and practitioners to use “vulnerability” as a self-explanatory condition or phenomenon. However, a common and systematic understanding of the concept is still missing, and the moral and political meaning often ascribed to this notion may have (un)intended detrimental consequences for those migrants deemed vulnerable. Thus, this paper sets out to critically unpack and highlight the complexities hidden behind this notion in order to provide a conceptual analysis of vulnerability in the context of migration. We do so by (1) providing an overview of definitions of vulnerability across different fields of research, (2) identifying common conceptualizations or types of vulnerability and discussing their implications, and (3) highlighting possible negative societal and psychological consequences of its implementation in the context of migration. Finally, we propose (4) a new conceptual model for understanding vulnerability in the context of migration, showing how this notion can become a useful analytical tool in migration research.

Research on the governance of refugees has until recently remained conceptualized with the national perspective as a starting point. This article compares asylum governance at the local level between Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, focusing on the often sensitive and highly debated issue of reception and accommodation. The central idea is to determine convergences and divergences of local reception structures and efforts, and how they are linked to the governance levels situated above them. Despite municipalities having been greatly affected by, and having shaped in practice, reception and integration processes of asylum seekers and refugees, so far there has been little in terms of comparative research across countries in Europe. Our findings emerging from the comparison suggest that top-down implementations of asylum reception have created numerous problems and protest on the ground, especially when the local population and local stakeholders were not involved in the decision-making process. On the one hand, the case studies show that within each national setting, the local regimes and agencies can shape divergent reception outcomes in terms of integrative or disintegrative policies. On the other hand, converging developments in the local cases across national contexts, such as the impact of the local political climate, suggest the crucial impact of local reception regimes and agencies, notwithstanding varying regulatory frameworks and procedures. We thus underline the importance of local-to-local comparison, and not only national-to-national, when it comes to analysing refugee reception. Zusammenfassung: Forschungen zur Implementierung von Asylpolitik verbleiben meist auf der nationalen Betrachtungsebene. Dieser Artikel nimmt einen lokalen Fokus ein, um Aufnahmepolitiken von Asylsuchenden in Deutschland, Luxemburg und den Niederlanden zu vergleichen. Der Beitrag hat zum Ziel, konvergierende und divergierende Strategien, Praktiken und Effekte zu identifizieren und die Verbindungen zu den übergeordneten Politikebenen zu analysieren. Obgleich die kommunale Ebene ganz wesentlich die Aufnahme von Asylsuchenden verantwortet und individuelle Aufnahme-und Integrationspraktiken entwickelt, gibt es dazu bislang kaum länderübergreifende vergleichende Forschung. Die Befunde unserer vergleichenden Lokalforschung zeigen, dass die zentrale Steuerung der Aufnahme Asylsuchender auf kommunaler Ebene verschiedene Probleme und Protesthaltungen erzeugt hat, insbesondere wenn die Bevölkerung und die Entscheidungsträger vor Ort nicht in den Entscheidungsprozess einbezogen wurden. Es zeigt sich, dass innerhalb des identischen nationalen Rahmens Aufnahmepolitiken höchst unterschiedliche Resultate zeitigen können, z.B. durch die Implementierung integrativer oder partikularer Politikansätze. Andererseits weisen konvergierende Entwicklungen in unseren Fallbeispielen auf die Bedeutung lokaler Aushandlungsprozesse und Diskurse hin, die sich trotz unterschiedlicher nationaler Regulierungen und Rahmenbedingungen in vergleichbarer We...