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Almost all the most common versions of the history of Community Structural Funds underline the fact that until their reform in 1988 these interventions have mostly strengthened the grip of national governments on the development of the so-called'disadvantaged'territories. Such analysis, largely based on research carried out in the 1980s [Martins et ai, 1985; Meny, 1982b], minimises the degree of autonomy given to the European Commission and infra-national actors for the elaboration and implementation of actions financed by these funds.

Today, with the benefit of hindsight, a richer story emerges which helps us better understand the political impact of the Structural Funds since their reform in 1988, and this on two levels. First, the discovery of the actors' strategies and resources outside the national governments allows us to approach the complexity of the political transactions involved in the process. More fundamentally, returning to this development compels us to think about the correctness of the implicit and explicit analytical grids which were adopted to explain the complexity which was created, at regional as well as national levels. Paradoxically, so far the impact of the Structural Funds on the political capacity of the regions has often been handled through a prism of an adjusted version of intergovernmental analysis which favoured the study of international changes rather than deepening the analysis of hierarchies emerging around the Structural Funds in a given territory. We have attempted to fill this gap in empirical research and theoretical reflection with our work centred on the Structural Funds in the rural environment of three Member …