This contribution focuses on the process of consensus building within the do-main of policies and politics. It concentrates on Dutch and German regional economic development policies, to illustrate the similarities and differences in the policymaking process. Regional economic policies flourished in the 1950s and 1960s, when most developed countries were implementing them. Industrial subsidies and infrastructure investments were intended to strengthen the economic structure of those regions lagging behind the standards of national growth. This post-war history of regional policy will be investigated, using the Northern Netherlands and North West Germany as examples. Parallels and divergences between concepts, instruments and administration will be scruti-nised from a comparative perspective. Similar patterns in Dutch and German regions point to a European consensus on how to develop ‘backward’ re-gions. Differences in and between the regions will be explained on the basis of variations in planning traditions on a national and even regional scale.