Stakeholder Empowerment in Sustainable Rural Development Partnerships: Two Case Studies from Italy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article provides an interesting analysis of relevant issues. Title 2.1 should be "Case Study Regions" and not "Case Studies". Table  1 should be corrected to mention First, Second and Third Level categories at the top. Why cooperatives are not mentioned in the third category of "economic association"? The list of references in the end should be homogeneized according to the journal criteria. Section 5, mentioned in the introduction as presenting the "concluding remarks" was not found in the end!? The recommendations presented in page 12, as well as the policy implications,  are very general and lack clarity. The limitations of the study are well identified, particularly the lack of in-depth interviews with the stakeholders, crucial to build stronger conclusions. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you so much for your valuable comments. We appreciate the time that you spent reviewing our manuscript. We have changed the text according to your remarks. Please see attached the table with your comments and revisions we have made to the text. Once again thank you for your support to our work. 

Sincerely,

Nazgul 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The theme of this paper, EU Rural Development Partnership, is important and the paper is well written. Here are a few concerns:

 

1) Major comment

Regarding Section 2.3, it would be better to explain the data in more detail. What year is the data? Are the results the same even if the year of the data is different? (For example, are the results the same whether you use data from the 1990s or from the 2020s?)

 

2) Minor comments

- Regarding the Abstract, it is recommended to increase the description of the results. The last sentence doesn't make sense, so it could be deleted.

- Fig. 3 is too small to see.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you so much for your valuable comments. We appreciate the time that you spent reviewing our manuscript. We have changed the text according to your remarks. Please see attached the table with your comments and revisions we have made to the text. Once again thank you for your support to our work. 

Sincerely,

Nazgul

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

the content of the article is interesting, but I have a few comments/ suggestions.

General notes: The article is written correctly, but it has the character of popular literature rather than a scientific article - unfortunately. It lacks a proper literature review or empirical research review. Although some comments on the LEADER program were included in the introduction to the article, it is definitely not enough. The methodological part should also be improved. The current form lacks a clearly formulated objective of the empirical research and the scope of research, in particular regarding the time of the research. The Results section is written in an interesting way, minor stylistic and editorial remarks concern lines 366 - 382. The section on practical implications (lines 446-474) should also be redrafted.

I leave my comments for you (Authors) to consider. I think the article is good, but with the addition of a Literature Review section and some minor adjustments in the Materials and Methods and Discussion and Conclusions sections, they could make this article even better.

Kind regards,

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
Thank you so much for your valuable comments. We appreciate the time that you spent reviewing our manuscript. We have changed the text according to your remarks. Please see attached the table with your comments and revisions we have made to the text. Once again thank you for your support to our work. 

Sincerely,
Nazgul

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Although your manuscript represents, in my opinion, a strong submission for SUSTAINABILITY, there are a few issues that have to be addressed:

1. The theoretical section seems to be underdeveloped and should be improved by analyzing new sources.
The theoretical framework (included mostly in section 1 of the manuscript) seems to be underdeveloped, especially when considering the richness of the literature dedicated to this topic. The literature review provides only a brief glimpse on the relevant existing scientific work, while it also lacks a consistent narrative which should have been used toward building an argument. Furthermore, some of the claims made in the manuscript are not fully developed as valid arguments and are not properly substantiated.

The main issue with your theoretical framework/literature review is that it seems to tackle multiple issues, without giving due consideration to most of the themes/ideas included in these sections of your manuscript.


2.  Although the manuscript mostly uses proper academic expressions, there are multiple language and phrasing mistakes (typos, words which are not properly used) or sections which could be rephrased in order to ensure better clarity.  I would recommend proofreading the manuscript one more time.

4.   The empirical section (Results) should be more focused on explaining and interpreting the results of your analysis from a public policy point of view. This is the main strength of your manuscript but you do not fully interpret these results from a public administration or public policy perspective, thus it would be rather troublesome for a practitioner to use your research to improve public policies. 

Please try to resize the figures and graphs produces, as they are not easy to read. 

5. The conclusions and policy recommendations developed based on the findings are, to some degree, general and cannot easily serve as true and convincing policy recommendations for decision makers. The manuscript fails to make good use of the results obtained and to translate them into original and specific policy recommendations that could help decision-makers develop sustainable public policies.

6.  The research could have been greatly improved if the authors would have approached the topic in a comparative approach and observe the phenomena in other contexts. This would have provided a more complex image of the topic and could have opened multiple avenues to design consistent and feasible public policies. However, this does not seem to be possible in this case. This should be done at least from a theoretical point of view (in Section 1), as I am aware that it would be impossible to collect new empirical data. 

7.  The abstract could/should better reflect the content of your paper; the abstract is rather broad/general, does not include sufficient information  and it fails to highlight the main public policy implications of the manuscript. Please reconsider and improve the abstract in order to better reflect your findings and the importance of the results. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
Thank you so much for your valuable comments. We appreciate the time that you spent reviewing our manuscript. We have changed the text according to your remarks. Please see attached the table with your comments and revisions we have made to the text. Once again thank you for your support to our work. 
Sincerely,
Nazgul

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Please check line 396 and correct: the title of section 4 is out of place!

Author Response

Please check line 396 and correct: the title of section 4 is out of place!

 

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you so much for this minor, but very important note. This section should be certainly visible! :)  We have corrected this technical mistake. 

We are very grateful to you for supporting our work. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Thanks for having addressed my comments, your paper is now ready to be published.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Thank you so much for your comments, which helped us to improve our manuscript.