Public policies for rural territorial development in Latin America: Balance and perspectives

Abstract

In the last two decades, the territorial approach was introduced and translated into the rural territorial development (RTD) policies and programmes in many Latin American countries. Based on a review of literature and meetings of experts, this article presents a balance of the achievements and limitations of RTD policies, and proposes guidelines for designing a new generation of territorial development policies. If the analysis reveals achievements in terms of dissemination of the territorial approach, and promotion of participatory processes, there are limitations in terms of intersectoriality and crossscale dimentions of the processes, and multidimensionality of the results. The guidelines for a new generation of territorial development policies highlight, among other things, the need to clarify and reach consensus on the (multiple) objectives of these policies, to consider the asymmetries of power relations in the territories and to have more flexibility and creativity in the intervention mechanisms. This new generation of policy opens up new research avenues in terms of understanding territorial dynamics and trajectories and power asymmetries, the interactions of the set of policies that affect these dynamics, and the methodological design of policy evaluation.