The EU’s External Governance of Agriculture and Rural Development

Book excerpt: This book explores how the EU externally governs through agriculture and rural development and how this external governance shapes rural spaces in Georgia. Analysing two EU policy instruments – Geographical Indications and the LEADER rural development programme – the book develops a novel way of studying the consequences of EU external actions ‘on the ground’ by bringing in sociological, rural studies, and political geography concepts of rural space. In doing so, it analyses the often less visible processes at local levels and in rural areas and proposes how to improve analyses of EU external actions more generally. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of EU external policy, EU foreign policy, agricultural and rural development, post-Soviet politics, and, more broadly, to EU studies.