• Journal of Agricultural Extension & Community Development
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.871-907
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to establish a new rural development policy system based on the unit of a community organizations. This study is to complement or replace the existing rural development system which is based on the unit of rural villages. The communalism which is the core concept of traditional rural villages has been weakened or destroyed. Especially, economic, social and spatial communalism of a rural villages has been weakened rapidly in the process of industralization and urbanization for the last 50 years. This means that strong communalism inside rural villages and neighborhood independence from each others among rural villages are already weakened. Rural villages no longer represent rural area, unlikely the hypothesis policy makers have been used to set up rural development policies. Advanced countries like EU and Japan are well known to have a rural development policy based on the units of social organizations in the rural area. These policies have been on the main stream in the era of local decentralization. Rural resident's organization made rural site's development plan using local assets and submitted to the public sector. Then the public sector examine its value and possibilities as a rural development projects. And public sector finalize the decision on subsidy grant. These policy patterns are already introduced partly in the field of urban development programme as well as rural development programme. It is time to apply those policies more widely and to examine more systematically.