For 40 years after the war, government in the UK supported, subsidised and promoted the expansion of agricultural production, to the exclusion of almost all other rural issues. Similar expansion of food production was encouraged across Western Europe. This 'productivist' era came to an end during the 1980s provoking a reassessment of the role of agriculture and of rural areas. Rural geographers have identified a post-productivist transition but have sought to explain the causes of change through the framework of regulation theory. The study rejects this approach as focusing its explanation on changes in accumulation imperatives within some agent-less process. It adopts a constructivist/discursive institutionalist framework which endogenizes agency and seeks to explain institutional change through exploring the role of ideas in responding to crises and critical junctures. The study proceeds through the construction of structured policy narratives over the period from the war to the present. The study contrasts the development of productivist regimes in the UK and the European Community and reveals significant differences in the policy institutions which have strongly influenced UK relations with the Community and the integration of UK agriculture within the Common Agricultural Policy. It is argued that responses to the crisis created by the end of the productivist regime reflected the contrast in rural policy institutions. The study identifies a paradigm shift in the Common Agricultural Policy enabling reform to be constructed within the context of the normative values which shaped its original design. The Thatcher government by contrast introduced a neo-liberal rural policy. Recently, New Labour has introduced a re-design of rural governance. It is argued that the Treasury was influential in its role as meta-governor in advocating alternative cognitive assumptions which denied the distinctiveness of rural economic and social needs. The outcome has been the disintegration of rural policy in England.

Thesis (M.Dev.) --University of Limpopo, 2011 / Planning is central to service delivery especially at the local government level being supported by both national and provincial spheres. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa established three spheres of government which must work together in both vertical and horizontal manner in order to achieve aligned government programmes through integrated planning. Planning at the local government level requires all relevant stakeholders to participate such that all programmes and projects of government are implemented for communities without creating “white elephants” of completed projects which may result in poor community service delivery. It is on this basis that this study evaluated the participation of sector departments in the integrated development planning process of Mopani District Municipality. Sector departments have been selected from various other role players due to the huge impact they have on development initiatives at local level. Government is moving away from uncoordinated planning which results in uncoordinated implementation and causes communities to vandalise infrastructure as they do not benefit from the planned services at the time of completing the project. Thus, these projects become government liabilities with huge financial implications and might be directly linked to the wastage of tax payer‟s money in the main. The objective of this study was to determine how sector departments participate in the IDP process of the Mopani district municipality. To that end, the study determined the impact of sector departments in producing a credible IDP for Mopani district municipality and also analysed the implementation of the IGR (Intergovernmental relations) framework Act. The study exposes the challenges facing municipalities in developing their integrated development plans. The integrated development plan of a municipality serves as a tool for public participation where all stakeholders have to participate in the local planning processes. This study found out that non-submission of sector plans is one of the threats that affect Mopani District Municipality‟s IDP negatively. Failure to submit sector plans by sector departments denies the District Municipality an opportunity to integrate and align programmes and plans respectively as there will be nothing to consider. It is clear that the participation of sector departments is of paramount importance in the development of a Municipal IDP. The absence of sector plans in an IDP is the best recipe for implementing scattered and uncoordinated development without supporting the local economic development nodes of either the district or the local municipalities. The study recommends that the issue of planning must find a proper cluster provincially so that both the Municipal Managers and the Heads of Sector Departments find a way of discussing this matter. For synchronization of plans, all the three spheres of government must cooperate and work together, as municipalities cannot on their own develop the underdeveloped areas without the support of both the national and provincial departments which bring financial aid through their programmes.