Between arguments, interests and expertise: the institutional development of the Dutch water boards, 1953-present

The Dutch water boards perform essential tasks for the Netherlands and generally effectively, yet they have often been called old-fashioned, ineffective and expensive. This paper describes and analyses the discussions on the water boards since 1953 in order to increase insight in the factors that influence institutional change in water...

Water Management on the Island of IJsselmonde 1000 to 1953: Polycentric Governance, Adaptation, and Petrification

One of the central tenets of adaptive management is polycentric governance. Yet, despite the popularity of the concept, few detailed case studies of polycentric governance systems exist. In this paper, we aim to partly fill this gap. We describe water management between the years 1000 and 1953 on the Dutch island of IJsselmonde in the...