Current discussions on water governance reflect broader trends in nation-state governance. Since the mid-1990s, scholars from multiple disciplines have remarked on changes in the traditional understanding of how nation-states are governed, especially in the Western democracies (Rhodes 1996; Stoker 1998; Pierre and Peters 2000; Jessop 2004). A broad and diffuse literature on governance discusses observed trends in societal decision-making. Much of the literature postulates a shift (of some degree) from government – where the state exerts control over society, economy and resources (Termeer et al. 2010) – to governance, where a variety of stakeholders, from the local to the global, are engaged in decision-making.