This paper explores the impact of the European Union's LEADER policy within France. Considering, in turn, the territorial, developmental and, finally, political effects of LEADER, the paper demonstrates that LEADER schemes occupy an often highly complex position with respect to a series of internal French policy agendas linked to political decentralization, spatial planning and the gradual shift away from a long-dominant agrarian conceptualization of rural space. It is argued that while LEADER schemes present many of the necessary components for new forms of local rural governance, these remain largely constrained within an existing political, economic and administrative framework that offers only partial opportunities for genuine innovation in policy development. Critically, however, one of the principal LEADER effects within France has been to shift the local rural policy agenda away from solely economic development strategies, for many years the mainstay of non-agricultural rural policy, towards a more reflexive approach to issues of social cohesion and territorial composition.
