The rural development trilemma

Rural public policies are important and contested in many countries. Politicians and administrations often have high ambitions for both spatial policies (e.g. maintaining demography, local work, businesses etc.) technological development (modernisation, increased productivity etc.), while production tend to be limited by markets (as in the case of agricultural productions) or resources (as in e.g. fisheries and forestry). In this paper we demonstrate that rural policies may be hampered by a specific type of wicked policy problem: inbuilt contradictions between policy measures in the form of what may be described as a rural development trilemma. A trilemma is a situation where there are three goals but the fulfilment of (any) two goals contradicts the third.

We present and discuss the concept of a rural development trilemma. Empirically we analyse and compare the developments of the agricultural policy and the fishery policy of Norway over the last 50 years. The sectors are very different, but both sectors are important in terms of rural development and the two policy fields run into a similar trilemma. This comparative study constitutes a plausibility probe of the notion – and usefulness – of a rural development trilemma in the field of rural public policy.