Summary

This methodological case study explores the model and use of a national Rural Parliament as an effective way of bringing rural stakeholders together to discuss pertinent issues. The Scottish edition follows earlier examples of Sweden, Finland and Estonia.

Results

The main advantage of the Rural Parliament model is that it is very much stakeholder-led, addressing the issues by people talking to each other and coming up with ideas, rather than being dictated by policy or government intervention.

All the preparatory work meant that the Rural Parliament itself was able to focus on identifying solutions and the actions needed to overcome the challenges which we had identified.