**3.4 Institutional adjustments to improve research support for understanding and developing strategies to enhance civil society**

There is a wealth of individual community studies as well as important comparative studies of both urban neighborhoods and rural communities. A major weakness, however, is the insufficient development of national and international databases that can facilitate a cumulative growth in our understanding of what strategies and programs are most effective in facilitating the development of civil society, and, in turn, community resilience. This problem could be greatly diminished in ways that follow the model of the institutional structures that have produced such miraculous achievements in medical research in the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

There is a need for better coordination of data bases between the various agencies that fund research related to community sustainability. Currently, in the United States, for example, the National Institute of Health, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, United States Department of Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and other agencies support various types of community-based research. One of the most important recent studies, the Moving to Opportunity Experiment [20], was funded by the Internal Revenue Service of the U. S. Treasury Department, which had a keen interest in identifying the effects of the neighborhood a child grows up in on his or her future earnings and thus his or her potential to be a tax burden or a taxpayer. A challenge exists, however, insofar as each agency has its own independent data base. The European Union has provided a very helpful alternative by funding cross-national studies of community development programs within the Union that provide empirically based comparative insights into the impact of local and regional social institutions and networks on the effectiveness of different approaches to community development [31]. Cross-national data bases obtained by international organizations like the UN [55], the World Bank [56] and OECD [57] also provide scientific bases of comparisons of the effect of national-level institutions on the ability of local communities to cope with change.

A striking finding from a cross-national database is the relationship between national institutions, participation in community and personal subjective happiness. The World Happiness Report [58], which is based on sample surveys of citizens' subjective perceptions of the happiness of their lives in 156 countries, ranks Finland at the happiest place to live, followed by their Nordic neighbors Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. The United Kingdom ranks 15th and the United States is 19th. Finland and the other Nordic countries at the top of the happiness index have high performing capitalist economies but also have the highest levels of tax support for social support programs (see, e. g., [59]).

The Finnish model of rural policy has been reasonably successful in achieving coherence among sectoral policies oriented to rural areas (the so-called broad rural policy) and in tailoring specific programmes to promote rural development (the so-called narrow rural policy). The Rural Policy Committee has played a crucial role in the governance of rural policy, bringing together diverse actors, and advocating for rural communities. Key priorities for the future are delivering public services to an aging and dispersed population more equitably and efficiently, enhancing the competitiveness of an increasing number of non-farm related rural firms, and improving the business environment in rural areas by fulling utilizing their abundant natural amenities [60].
