This book critically explores the social causes and consequences of emerging governance arrangements. In particular, the book moves beyond questions of empowerment in governance debates to consider how new kinds of power relations arise between the various actors involved.

1. Introduction: Governing the Rural Part I Managing New Forms of Governance 2. Trust and Control in Farmer-Government Partnerships: a Dutch Case Study 3. Delineations of Private and Public: Emerging Forms of Agri-Environmental Governance in Central and Eastern Europe 4. Governance and Innovations in the Nordic Periphery 5. Governing Rural Landscapes and Environments: the Strategic Role of Local Community and Global Corporate Partnerships 6. Initiating Network Governance Through Competition: Experiences from Eighteen German Regions 7. Reflexive Agency and Multi-Level Governance: Mediating Integrated Rural Development in Hungary Part II Contesting Government Strategies: State Policy and Local Agency 8. Neo-Liberalism, Neo-Mercantilism and Multifunctionality: Contested Political Discourses in European Post-Fordist Rural Governance 9. Transformation and Representation in Barangay Sibalew, The Philippines 10. Governance, Participation and Empowerment: a Non-Prescriptive Approach 11. Contested Forest: Logging the Main River Watershed in Western Newfoundland, Canada 12. Contesting Competition: Governance and Farmer Resistance in Australia 13. Individualism, Cooperation and Conservation in Scottish Farming Communities Part III Prospects for Democratic Governance 14. Leadership in Place: Elites, Institutions, and Agency in British Rural Community Governance 15. Democratising Governance in Australia's Regions: the Value of Regional Networks 16. Legitimacy, Deliberative Arenas and the New Rural Governance 17. Governing Bottom-Up in Rural Development: the Legitimacy Dilemma 18. Are Shadows Dark? Governance, Informal Institutions, and Corruption in Rural India Conclusion 19. Rural Governance and Power Relations: Theorising the Complexity of State-Citizen Interactions