Governance and contested land use in the Netherlands: the case of the Drentsche Aa

This chapter investigates, theoretically as well as empirically, the way in which initiatives aimed at territorial governance work out in practice. The concept of territorial governance has increasingly received attention in policy plans as well as in the policy science literature. So far, little is known about how espoused shifts towards territorial governance manifest themselves in practice. By analysing the shift in governance in the Drentsche Aa in the Netherlands, this chapter sheds light on what happens when the espoused shift to territorial governance is applied to concrete situations, in which different dilemmas and opposing forces are at play. It shows that territorial governance in the Drentsche Aa area is struggling with tensions between regional multi-actor practices and hierarchical policy practices. We conclude that shifts in governance indeed occurred in this area, but that they manifested themselves in practice as hybrids between area based hierarchy and multi actor initiatives. As such the shifts are not as straightforward and unambiguous as sometimes thought and/or aimed for in literature, but instead their manifestation in practice is complex, ambiguous and context dependent.