Rural development policies have existed for decades, especially in OECD countries, and their impact has always been acknowledged by local actors. Our survey puts the emphasis on the diversity of policy instruments and public authorities, but also on the plurality of objectives, supporting and promoting economic activities (including agriculture), land planning, residential attractiveness and maintaining the quality of life of populations, conservation and preservation of local resources. We show that these policies have been subject to many shifts in vision and strategy – shifts which echo the changing perceptions of what rural development means and of what its objectives should be. Both the policies and the concept of rural development have evolved with economic circumstances, been discussed in the same debates, and have undergone the same reversals. They have changed in parallel with the recognition of the multifunctionality of agriculture, or with transitions from centralized decision-making to greater inclusion of the various users of rural areas and even greater consideration for social criteria and ecological and environmental variables. Following a long period in which rural development policies were essentially top-down decisions imposed by state and central governments, the policy-making process has since been decentralized (or “regionalized”) and localized and has in more recent years sought to include the views of the populations