Rural Development in Ljungby Municipality : A case study of the Swedish Rural Development Programme 2014-2022

Sammanfattning: It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a rural area in possesion of few active happenings must be in want of development. Or, at the very least, it is a widespread understanding that rural areas in Europe are often in need of rural development following decades of urbanisation and financial strain. The European Union has as a result launched the Rural Development Programme, a structured programme which is partly financed by the Eu but launched on a national level. In Sweden, the most recent Rural Development Programme started in 2014 and will end in 2022. Now, when this current programme period is nearing its end, there is a great chance of evaluating for the next programme period. There has also never been an in-depth evalution of the Swedish Rural Development Programme on a local Swedish level. Thus, the aim of this thesis was to study rural development by carrying out a case study in the municipality of Ljungby and studying how the Swedish Rural Development Programme has impacted the rural development in the rural areas of Ljungby municipality. Interviews and document studies were executed to collect data for the analysis, and through content analysis several themes arose. The importance of establishing service nodes, the tedious task of administering and how this affects the effectiveness in national agenices, as well as the lack of communication between actors who really ought to be collaborating are all part of the resulting themes.