Social innovation is attracting increasing attention in research and policy, heightened by continuing austerity across Europe. Therefore, this paper examines earlier research into community-led local development (CLLD) initiatives in rural areas of Europe to develop our understanding of the meaning and scope of rural social innovation. We draw on a Schumpeterian view where innovations emerge from new combinations of resources that bring about positive changes and create value in society. A Schumpeterian social innovation framework is derived as the basis for re-analysing data from previous evaluations of LEADER policy in five different national contexts. This elicits a clearer understanding of social innovation in a rural development context, identifying different processes and outcomes that create social value. As the CLLD agenda and the demand for innovation in Europe gather pace, our aspirations are to inform future research and other initiatives on how to integrate social innovation into the design and evaluation of new rural development policies and programmes.

Networking is an inherent part of the European Union (EU) programme Liaison entre actions de développement de l'économie rurale 1 (LEADER): through supporting local partnerships, EU-wide cooperation and information exchange, LEADER aims at strengthening the socioeconomic development of rural regions and improving local governance. Employing Social Network Analysis, we assess how key LEADER features, such as the bottom-up and the participatory approach, are implemented in a new EU Member State. Focusing on the relevance of social networks for LEADER in Romania, we find that the complexity of the programme, weak administrative networks, political influence, and heritage of the socialist era inhibit the smooth introduction of the LEADER instrument. Clearly, founding formal partnerships and better governance remain generally challenging. While bottom-up regional networks can more easily establish social capital, initiatives steered by the communal administration are more competitive in the selection for funding, but tend to neglect participation.

The introduction of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union was an important step for Bulgaria and Romania. However, their administrative capacity for managing CAP instruments is still evolving, and they face challenges in delivering services that are crucial for implementing the CAP measures. This article, based on semi-structured interviews among key actors, explores administrative obstacles. The analysis is structured according to the two complementary concepts of accountability and administrative capacity. The findings show that the main accountability problems are related to a complex administrative structure and to the large number of smallholders, which necessitates greater administrative efforts than in established member states. Moreover, due to a lack of representative farmers’ associations, farmers, and particularly small farmers, have no clear means to voice their concerns. The main problems concerning administrative capacity are related to deficient data collection and processing, over-centralized decision-making, and limited coordination among agencies. Points for practitioners To improve the delivery of services in new member states such as Bulgaria and Romania, the CAP should pay greater attention to the specific conditions of transition countries, such as their high share of smallholders. It should be determined whether some responsibilities could be devolved to lower administration levels, e.g. by decentralizing decision-making authorities. Moreover, integrated agricultural offices should be established to house front office agencies in the same buildings, a more comprehensive and tailored system of human resource management should be developed, and the outreach of farmers’ associations should be further advanced and facilitated.

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