Avrupa komşuluk politikası ve doğu ortaklığı kapsamında sürdürülebilir kalkınma girişimleri: Vaka çalışması "Gürcistan'da Leader uygulaması"

This thesis examines the European Union's (EU) sustainable development initiatives in the context of European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and Eastern Partnership (EaP) from the soft power perspective. ENP and EaP are EU's main initiatives for ensuring security and stability in the Eastern Neighbourhood. They have undergone several revisions due to the redefined security threats. This thesis argue, rural development also has a security facade. The security perspective of ENP and EaP is too broad that the importance of micro policies or sub-programmes in ensuring the EU influence in the security field is often undermined. Accordingly, the main argument of the thesis is that the objectives of the rural development programme, community-led local development (CLLD) — also widely known as LEADER, complies with the evolving methods and security perspective of the revised ENP and EaP policies. Therefore, it can provide room for European influence in the rural development field. In the light of these arguments, the implementation in Georgia will be taken as a case study. The qualitative research will start with the review of the literature on soft power to create a theoretical foundation. In the following chapters, I will extensively analyze ENP and EaP policies' role in the EU soft power. Afterwards, a proper focus on LEADER approach will be provided. The last chapter will provide a discussion on LEADER implementation in Georgia in the context of the EU soft power use.