The RuDI project addresses the question of how to best assess impacts of rural development policies on all levels and across the great diversity of Europe's rural areas. The direct involvement of the concerned institutions and stakeholders in the research process will contribute to the development of policy and practice recommendations that are directly applicable to the work and decision making of relevant actors at EU, national and regional levels.

The specific objectives of RuDI are:

• To better comprehend the importance and role of rural development (RD) in Europe
• To provide a comparative analysis of the economic, social and environmental context for rural development
• To better understand policy design and delivery and their influence on performance
• To assess expenditure patterns and compare them with priorities
• To verify the intervention and impact logic of RD policies
• To identify emerging and potential effects of RD policy beyond the Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (CMEF) of indicators
• To elaborate an enhanced integrated methodology for evaluation
• To validate the methodology and findings through in-depth case studies
• To provide recommendations for better targeting and better monitoring and evaluation, in policy making

The RuDI project will be based on an up-to-date synthesis of relevant conceptual frameworks and theories of rural development, which will put the different spatial, social and institutional levels of rural structures and processes into context of socio-economic transformation with the EU and the broader context of global change processes.

Furthermore, it will analyse the different approaches of governance of rural development policies in terms of vertical and horizontal direction, and identify the strength and weaknesses of different governance approaches. In addition, it will review the CMEF regarding the logic of impact and identify additional modes of assessing the impacts of rural development policies. The findings from both perspectives will be verified through case studies elaborated using participatory and active research methods, wherever possible.

The research will enhance the understanding of the social, institutional and capacity building effects of the different components of rural development policies. It will identify weaknesses and factors that lead to failure in present rural development processes and also identify more effective policy and governance structures, learning from best practice.

An underlying principle of the study is to look at rural development policy making, delivery and impacts in a systematic and process oriented way, with regard to the explicit objectives and priorities defined in the new rural development Regulation (EAFRD) and EU Strategic Guidelines, and their coherence with wider notions and experience in effective rural development. It will use a range of quantitative and qualitative approaches. The timing of the study will allow for a thorough analysis of the process of the current rural development policy making in a wide variety of regional contexts.

As identified in the calls specification, the study findings will help to understand the contribution of rural development programmes to EU priorities and will be fed into the development of the next generation or rural development policies in order to improve targeting of measures and the use of resources.