Social Innovation in Rural Development Policy: Strengthening Participation, Representation and Accountability

European rural development policy has increasingly promoted place-based, community-led approaches, epitomised by the LEADER programme. Embedded within these approaches is a belief that bottom-up development is best placed to deliver policies building on local strengths and addressing local needs. However, community-led approaches have also faced criticisms for being too technical and constrained by national and international priorities. To overcome such barriers to advancing place-based rural innovation, this paper explores two distinctive approaches to strengthening participation, representation and accountability with these processes: Northern Ireland’s Community-led Local Development and the Social Value Engine. The first approach seeks to promote local engagement and participation through a bottom-up process while the second is a tool that encourages community consultation. Through the research, we examine how each approach fosters community inclusion, accountability and representation.