ABSTRACT
Place-based approaches to rural development are increasingly favoured. It is argued that they increase self-efficacy through bottom-up development and decentralisation of decision-making. In doing so, place-based approaches strengthen the resilience of rural areas against global pressures by decreasing state dependencies and increasing the economic competitiveness of rural areas. Regional reflexivity, or rather place-based reflexivity, defined as the ability of engaged development actors to reflect and to act upon their own activities and interests in order to assess the development of their region and alter their actions accordingly, will eventually result in effective institutional reform, social innovation and inclusive development. This chapter illustrates this process for the Westerkwartier, a rural area situated to the west of Groningen city in the Netherlands. It demonstrates how a new collaborative spirit was the impetus for initially informal and later on formalised collaborations, how collective agency was built and how this was supported by new, well-working arrangements.
