Established and recent policy arrangements for river management in The Netherlands: an analysis of discourses

After water levels in The Netherlands reached a near-critical level in 1995, a new discourse for managing the lower Rhine basin was introduced into debates about river management. This discourse, called `Room for the river¿, introduces a new management strategy in which the river is given more room (i.e. land adjacent to the main course of the river is made available for flooding) in order to reduce the risk of flooding.