The Changing Role of the State in Dutch Regional Partnerships

Abstract

Introduction Since the 1990s regional partnerships have become a popular instrument of rural and environmental policy across Europe. This has also attracted the interest of governance scholars who consider regional partnerships to be an example of the general shift from government to governance (Bevir and Rhodes, 2003; Rhodes, 1997). The governance debate on regional partnerships has been one sided in two ways. Firstly, it shows a lack of correlation between governance as a normative prescription and governance as an empirical phenomenon (Jordan, 2008, page 29). Secondly, the role of the state as an initiator and partner in these regional partnerships has been given insufficient attention (Bloomfield et al, 2001, page 510). We aim to address both issues by: (1) discussing the correlation between normative governance prescriptions and empirical manifestations and (2) focusing on the role of the state as an initiator and partner in regional partnerships and its dynamics. Our interest in the role of the state in regional partnerships implies that we will confine ourselves to those partnerships that are state initiated and/or include state actors in the partnership. Pure forms of societal self-governance partnerships preclude a role for state actors and are therefore excluded from our analysis (Kooiman, 2003; Rhodes, 1996). But how do we define`the state' and`regional partnerships'? Clearly, the concept of the state is an``elusive and contested concept'' (Flinders, 2006, page 223) meaning different things from different theoretical perspectives (Hay et al, 2006; Pierre and Peters, 2000). We have here opted for an institutional state perspective, limiting its definition to the political and bureaucratic institutions of the nation-state. A broader definition could include state-initiated regional partnerships as being part of the state and this would blur our distinction between the state and regional partnerships (Flinders, 2006). Regional partnerships can be defined as more or less stable cooperations between governmental, societal, and market actors from different levels, which cooperate and negotiate to deliver or implement policies in a region. The region covers, in this study, a specific geographical area that is subprovincial but covers several

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