TEPS Project follows 6 Research Objectives:

1. Develop a new conceptual and methodological framework aimed at assessing local development, by overcoming the rift between the World Bank and the United Nations' view on development;

2. Assess local development (as opportunity and as outcome) in Romania for the last 130 years (1890s, 1930, 1992, 2021) by operationalizing the novel methodological framework;

3. Assess spatial patterns and spatial inequality in local development for the last 130 years;

4. Statistically explore determinants of local development outcome for the last 130 years;

5. Assess (via an electronic survey) the way in which local public stakeholders conceptualise development and understand its determinants, and whether their perceptions are related with existing theory and empirics, and how they vary with type of territory;

6. Conduct four case studies to: (a) identify structural differences between stakeholders' collaboration networks from local communities that are developed/underdeveloped and situated/not situated in a context of territorial opportunities, respectively (by mapping policy networks using social network analysis); (b) assess the role of agency for local development using path tracing and triangulation of sources;