Regional network‐building for complexity: A region‐oriented policy response to increasing and varied demands for older person care in the Netherlands

Abstract

Abstract Networks are increasingly seen as promising generic solutions to complex public problems. This article analyzes network‐building in action within a specific regional setting as an attempt to cope with increasing and varied demands for older person care, studying everyday organizational and policy activities of actors. Drawing on a qualitative in‐depth case study of a regional network in Zeeland—the most aging region in the Netherlands—our findings illuminate how this network is created, nurtured, and sustained, and the particularities and complexities this involves. Our practice‐based approach demonstrates that network‐building requires the ongoing work of many agents within organizational contexts, as well as the outside interference of stakeholders to make the network “work” within the wider population of networks, institutional context, and geographical place. This highlights to network literature the importance of place‐based interventions that characterize how a network develops and pursues opportunities to come up with suitable responses to local needs.

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