Balancing between governing styles Participatory practices in rural Galicia Marlies Meijer Balancing between governing styles Participatory practices in rural Galicia This thesis is written as final assignment for the master Landscape Architecture and Planning, specialisation Spatial Planning at Wageningen University. LUP-80436 Supervision Adri van den Brink, Land Use Planning Dirk Roep, Rural Sociology Author Marlies Meijer (reg.nr. 850725567120) Wageningen, June 2010 Table of contents 1 Introduction 7 1.1 Positioning the researcher 8 1.1.1 What does spatial planning mean to me 8 1.1.2 Link with rural issues 9 1.2 Scope of research 10 1.3 Reading this thesis 10 2 Methodology 13 2.1 Social Constructivism 13 2.2 Strategies of inquiry 14 2.2.1 Grounded theory and ethnographic approach 14 2.2.2 Case study selection 16 2.2.3 Interview and observation styles 16 2.2.4 Serendepity 17 3 A short introduction to Spain and Galicia 19 3.1 Galicia – country of the Celts 19 3.2 Spain – civil war and Franco’s regime 23 3.3 After Franco – transition towards democracy 25 3.4 Becoming part of the EU – impact of regulations and subsidies 26 4 The meaning of property – land abandonment 27 5 The uxfor-policy 33 5.1 Uxfor, background and general information 33 5.2 Policy-makers 37 5.3 A deadlock in implementation of uxfor-policy 41 6 Three uxfors – local practices 45 6.1 Chantada 45 6.2 Fonsagarada 50 6.3 O Incio 54 6.4 Deadlock or continuation – different responses 58 7 Analysis – From paternalism to a participatory approach 61 7.1 From paternalism to (good) governance 62 7.1.1 Paternalism 62 7.1.2 Clientalism 63 7.1.3 Good governance / A new kind of policy-making 64 7.2 The participatory discourse 67 7.2.1 Social Capital 68 7.2.2 Endogenous development 70 7.2.3 Partnerships and participatory approaches. 72 8 Conclusion - Balancing between governing styles 75 8.1 Fast policy implementation 76 8.2 Expectations from society 76 8.3 Participatory approach and depopulation 77 8.4 Recommendations 78 8.4.1 Participatory practices 78 8.4.2 Future research 78 Literature Acknowledgements Summary Resumen Annex 1 – Interviewee scheme Annex 2 – Explanatory word list Annex 3 – Article: Planning realities in Galicia 1 Introduction This thesis is about many things. Mostly it is about Galicia and how government and citizens try to deal with new ways of policy-making and implementation. Galicia is a region in the north-west of Spain. I ended up there almost by coincidence, or by a sequence of many causes and effects. Therefore this thesis is also about the development of subjects of research and my personal quest for “how things work in Galicia”. Step by step I revealed the relations between Galicia’s (and Spain’s) history, the problems experienced at the countryside, the role governments and local actors played and their context. At the same time I got a better understanding of my personal interests and background as a student in spatial planning and rural sociology. The process of writing this thesis did not resemble a straight road, but more a curving mountain road, with new and different views at every curve. During every stage (writing the research proposal, the fieldwork and analysis of the results) new answers and questions arose, together with other ways of representing them. This report is the end product of that quest. In this chapter my starting position as a researcher is introduced (1.1), followed by the scope of this research (1.2) and set up for the next chapters (1.3). Balancing between multiple realities “Only when we travel, and meet strangers, do we recognise other ways of being human” (Patsy Healey in Collaborative Planning, after Latour). So here I am, travelling (or balancing) between land use planning and rural sociology, my Dutch planning knowledge and the Galician rural reality, between reading in Gallego, speaking in Castellano, writing in English and chatting in Dutch, between the Spanish working hours and my Dutch empty stomach. … Back in the Netherlands, I was aware of the Dutch context of my education so far. Most examples provided are Dutch, or could be placed in the planning Dutch context. I wanted to broaden my scope, go somewhere where policy making is less evident and face the effect of a different cultural context, but also to experience a real rural area. Now I find it hard to let the familiar Dutch context go and to explain what I exactly do study in the Netherlands (something like geography, people making plans and rural development) and what my research is about (even more vague). Multi-faceted policy, focused on the spatial environment, does not exist here, as it exists in the Netherlands. So I keep on balancing, and exploring and let myself be surprised every day by the Galician way of doing. (personal blog, posted on ruralsociologywageningen.wordpress.com, june 2009) 7 1.1 Positioning the researcher The beginning of this thesis does not lie at the moment I set foot to the ground of Galicia. During my whole education at Wageningen and maybe even before a bedrock was formed for the questions I asked myself, and others, in Galicia. In this section I would like to make this bedrock explicitly, in order to give more insight in the way I conducted this research and in the research results. There are many roads that led to doing my Master thesis research in a foreign country and maybe even Spain in particular. For example one could say my interest in Hispanic culture was augmented when I choose Spanish language as an optional subject at secondary school. But even then, I would not have chosen Spanish if I was not interested in travelling and maybe even studying abroad. For a student with core subjects like biology, physics and chemistry choosing Spanish was not that logical. On the other hand it could also have been coincidence. The Spanish course was new and many students choose it. Initially I wanted to do it only during one year, to master the basics. However after that year the study load seemed to be reasonable and I decided to continue. Moreover the second year included a 10-day excursion to Barcelona and I didn’t want to miss that. In the end I joined the Spanish course during three years and completed the exam. This example shows that small choices and coincidences could lead to bigger actions. These choices and actions tell something about me as a student and about what I did in Galicia. They tell something about the “glasses I was wearing” when I conducted my research. The next sections introduce the reader in the personal background of the writer and how this thesis came into being. The next chapters cannot be seen apart from this background. 1.1.1 What does spatial planning mean to me Having a BSc in spatial planning, and being at the final stage of a MSc in the same subject, it is clear that spatial planning covers the major part of my academic education. But spatial planning can be regarded in many ways. Some people see planning as lines and coloured dots on maps, which represent different kinds of land use or imply future developments like urban expansion or new roads. The lines and dots are mostly drawn somewhere for a reason. These reasons also give way to different forms of planning. A planner could for instance focus on the physical circumstances of a certain area, or pay attention to the opinion of stakeholders related to the new developments. A planner could use GIS-based tools for analysis or participatory methods. During my BSc I focused on this side of spatial planning, where landscape, land use changes and wishes of stakeholders play a central role. Most practical work was focused on developing a spatial plan for the future situation of a certain area. 8 Now I like to reflect on planning as a game that is played by governments, local stakeholders and all others involved. How these players play the game, try to influence each other and represent their stakes and realities is, I think, very interesting. The rules of the game are mostly provided by the central or decentralised governments, depending on the level of the matter regarded. Mostly, rules are designed for general circumstances and can be applied to specific situations in different ways. Some room for manoeuvring could emanate between intention and application. On the one hand this makes a flexible planning process and rules applicable for many situations possible. On the other hand might actors use this space for achieving their objectives, manipulate the planning process or bent the rules towards their interests. Whether this is a negative movement or how it should be dealt with in the planning game can be regarded in many ways, wherefore different schools of thought arise. Personally I am more interested in the motives of actors for spatial interventions instead of the creation of ideal type situations. My previous MSc thesis was about the relation between problems and solutions and how stakeholders deal with them. It turned out that there was not always a clear or chronological relation between problems and solutions. Conversely, stakeholders mostly seemed to be able to rationalise this relation in a chronological way (Holtslag and Meijer 2008). For this thesis I wanted to focus on participatory forms of policy- making and the relation between local citizens and governmental officials; in particularly in rural areas.