Governing Sustainable Tourism: European Networked Rural Villages

Most European countries have an Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System and multi-actor networking systems. But these remain often fragmented and irresponsive towards new challenges and opportunities emerging from the conflicts between the imperative for sustainability and the world’s increasing demand for resources. Increasingly, the internet unlocks power at the lower levels in hierarchies, redrawing a multitude of boundaries, shaping poly-inclusive patterns at the multi-level, multi-sectoral and multi-actor scales. This study tries at theorizing tourism development cooperation and knowledge transfer in rural and peripheral areas, using a social capital-based framework hinting at questions of governance and sustainability. The case of European Networked Rural Villages is used as exemplary illustration and testing ground of the analytic embedded governance model and policy recommendations for a branded, networked transnational stakeholders’ community.