The combined effects of socio-economic growth as well as climate change exert increasing pressure on international river basins and require dedicated cooperative efforts to jointly manage international rivers. Cooperative strategies drawn from scientific literature, empirical research and practitioner’s handbooks are explored and clustered into six key dimensions of goals, instruments, structures, actors, leadership and resources to provide an assessment tool of actor strategies for both scientists and practitioners. The exploratory framework is applied to Dutch–German cooperation in the delta of the Rhine catchment, testing its conceptual validity and applicability in international river basin management as well as providing policy recommendations for the study area. The assessment framework can serve as an instrument to inventory, map and evaluate the importance of specific actor strategies and to facilitate dialogue and cross-border cooperation between riparian countries. Alternatively, the framework can be put to use, for example by downstream countries, to assess and coordinate their range of strategies on the national, regional and local level in order to engage and influence their counterparts.

This longitudinal study assesses the performance of the Dutch-German cross-border water regime using a combination of performance indicators. The regime has, despite many efforts over five decades, rarely progressed beyond policy making and hardly contributed to actual problem-solving for issues such as water pollution or river restoration. Stakeholder satisfaction is nevertheless high, showing that combined performance indicators are needed to assess cross-border cooperation, and performance cannot simply be equated with problem-solving and goal attainment. Practical policy advice is provided to progress beyond policy making, focusing on policy design, network management and the adequacy of resources (financial, human, legal) for policy implementation.