The aim of this study is to investigate the reasons for good and bad economic performance indifferent rural areas and, in particular, to investigate the role of tangible and less tangiblefactors in influencing development outcomes1. The core research question can be stated as:Why do rural areas in apparently similar economic, social and environmental circumstanceshave markedly different performance over relatively long periods of time? The basicresearch hypothesis is that the differential development of rural areas can be explained by acombination of ‘tangible’ and ‘less tangible’ factors and the way in which these interact inspecific national, regional and local contexts. Such factors not only define differentopportunities and constraints for local development, but also illustrate how effective the localand regional system is in tapping resources and opportunities and ameliorating constraints.