Europe, secteurs économiques et développement rural

One of the key bets laid by the 1988 reform of the structural funds was to incite actors from diffferent branches of the economy to work more closely together through the territo- rialisation of sectoral logics. However, given the strength of the policy networks involved, the actual integration of EU- funded projects has been relatively low. This article seeks to explain this state of affairs by sketching out translations of the funds for agriculture and for tourism in France, Spain and the United Kingdom. The central hypothesis developed is that in spite of the commitment of Commission officials and many actors in the field, translation of the EU's rural development policy cannot overide the contours of the local- sectoral relations which exist in each area. If the universalism of the integrated approach turns out to be a ghost, nevertheless it has fueled the institutionalisation of new modes of public action within a political system which may now be European but which remains highly polycentric.