LOCAL DEVELOPMENT AND DEMOCRATIZATION OF RURAL TERRITORY

Abstract

Current criteria to separate urban from rural areas have been put in check because of the increasing incidence of typically urban activities in the rural milieu, especially those of the industrial and service sectors. As a consequence of this changing, the focus on the territory or the local has acquired importance and gave rise to new prospects for local development. The local is not defined on the basis of physical characters, but on all the specific social, economic and cultural relations, which differentiate each local from the others. In this paper we present the major policies and tendencies that we believe support the local on the premises for tactics and actions of rural development. Within the forces driving this process, emphasis is placed on globalization, which intensifies socio-economic integration among countries; decentralization of public administration; approaches and mechanisms for natural resource management; and organization of social actors, which assures the democratization to local development initiatives. Lastly, proposals are presented to incorporate those attributes and tendencies in rural development programs.