When The Levee Breaks: The Robustness of Water Governance Structures in the Netherlands and Louisiana

Comparisons between the water management and flood security systems of the Netherlands and Louisiana often undervalue the role of governance structures in helping preparedness and response to catastrophes. This thesis utilizes Hooghe and Marks' typologies of multilevel governance and the design principles of Ostrom's social-ecological systems to evaluate the relative robustness of both the Louisiana and Dutch water governance structures. Following the Hurricane Katrina disaster in Louisiana and the massive flooding of 1953 in the Netherlands, there was a large-scale restructuring of those water resource regimes to increase the efficiency. However, in either case there were trade-offs between centralization and local control of water management. In looking towards the future of Louisiana, and the Dutch system, it seems that the most crucial aspect of efficiency is coordination across levels of governance and between uses of the resource.