In the last decades, in many parts of Europe involving local stakeholders or the local public in river management has become a standard procedure. The explicit purpose as well as the underlying rationale for this practice, however, differs considerably among the projects, and these are reflected in a high diversity of forms of involvement. For many decision makers, the purpose of involving other interest groups is limited to achieving a sufficient local acceptance of the project, and accordingly they adopt minimal forms of involvement. Theoretical literature and first empirical studies, however, suggest that stakeholder involvement can have, if done in appropriate quality, have much more far-reaching benefits for a sustainable river management such as a better consensus, social learning and social capital building. But there is so far only little reliable evidence that and under which conditions such benefits in fact result from involvement processes. The reason for this is that such involvement processes represent very complex social interventions, and all “affordable” measurement methods have their weaknesses. I will present the procedure and results of three evaluation studies based on different evaluation methods. I will conclude by discussing the limitations of these methods and possible ways to overcome them.
