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The European Commission's Long-term Vision for Rural Areas, published in June 2021 and building on a previous report on the Impact of Demographic Change and a Green Paper on Ageing, underlines the importance of population trends as a key issue for EU rural policy. The increasing concern about demographic issues, especially in rural Europe, has been accompanied, and in some cases preceded, by the publication of national population strategies. This renewed interest within the European policy community probably has roots in politics rather than new research or fresh evidence. Rural depopulation is not a new phenomenon, nor is it a new research topic. Nevertheless, to better understand this renewed interest, it is instructive to review recent scholarship and consider whether there is any evidence that the processes and systems of rural and regional (demographic) development are delivering new kinds of challenges, requiring refreshed policy approaches. Having established this context, we present a comparative review of a selection of national strategies, identifying shifting perspectives on goals, the instruments proposed, and implied intervention logics. Arguably, cumulative evidence points to an incremental shift of the policy discourse away from neoliberal, Lisbon-inspired visions of rural competitiveness and cost-effectiveness and towards a quest for rural well-being, rights to basic services, and more (spatially) inclusive rural development. This increasing emphasis on qualitative change may be symptomatic of a wider shift in the zeitgeist of rural policy, reflecting a number of globalised trends, including an awareness of the potentials and limitations associated with changing patterns of inter and intra-regional mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural areas in the Nordic countries often face challenges such as demographic change and the closure of public services. To address this situation, some rural communities have developed solutions which can be characterised as social innovation. This paper analyses 18 such community-driven social innovation projects across the Nordic countries and seeks to examine the importance of different actors in the initiation and implementation phases of such projects. Based on qualitative analysis, focusing on the different stages of community-driven social innovation, the paper assesses the importance of different actors in developing each of the projects. The analysis demonstrates the relative importance of community members, civil society organisations, the local public sector, the private sector, and regional and national authorities, in terms of their respective involvements in the initiation and implementation processes for these projects. The key findings from this paper emphasise the differences between initiation and implementation for each of these community-driven social innovation projects. The initiation phase is highly dependent upon community members, civil society organisations and the local public sector, whereas it is primarily civil society organisations which dominate the implementation phase. Central to initiating and sustaining community-driven projects is the capacity of local actors to develop ideas, to find resources and to manage decision-making. • Community-driven social innovation (SI) can be characterised by new models of collaboration across spaces and beyond the community level. • Functional networks, upskilling in a supportive environment and community members banding together are crucial for SI. • There is a shift in the involvement of actors from the initiation phase to the implementation phase in the SI process. • Central to initiating and sustaining SI is the capacity of local actors to develop ideas, collect resources, and manage decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]