Selling excellence: hydrohubs and policy mobility in a neo-liberal world order

This chapter sketches a new empirical phenomenon that commentators have named ‘hydrohubs’. These are nations, city-states and cities that seek influence and economic or political benefits through branding themselves as centres of excellence and expertise in water policy, management and governance. Aspiring hydrohubs conduct branding and promotion of their water sector internationally and nurture their legitimacy domestically. In addition to sketching out and illustrating hydrohubs as a new empirical phenomenon, we seek to make two conceptual contributions. First, we distinguish the concept of hydrohubs from earlier forms of policy mobility in the water sector. Second, we bring nuance to the discussion on nation and city branding by suggesting a typology of hydrohubs based on the scope and outreach of their operations. We illustrate the typology by two vignettes from the Netherlands as a ‘global hydrohub’ and Turkey as a ‘regional hydrohub’ and discuss the implications of the rise of hydrohubs for global water governance processes and architecture. Building on the conceptual argument and empirical illustrations, we then position the rise of hydrohubs in contemporary debates on water governance.