Taking stakeholders into account while making plans helps to increase legitimacy. But in long-term planning involvement of stakeholders encounters severe problems. It encounters problems because of the misfit in planning horizons between asset manager and stakeholders. Furthermore, the ambiguous and indistinct character of stakeholders' ambitions makes successful participation difficult. This article explores ways to deal with this problematic nature of stakeholder participation in long-term planning within modern water infrastructure asset management. Following theory, this article presents a typology with four types of possible styles for asset management which also gives rise to specific forms of stakeholder participation: (1) monofunctional -asset manager realizes the main function of its assets and manages them with only an eye on the principle core function of the asset; (2) integratedasset manager realizes an integral approach of its assets, and manages them with this integral approach in mind; (3) accommodating -asset manager realizes the main function of its assets but accommodates other functions as well; and (4) learning -asset manager is responsible for the main function of its assets, but invites stakeholders to participate, intertwine other functions and to manage, explore and develop the system jointly. The feasibility of these styles of asset management is assessed by looking at four cases with a long-term perspective within Dutch water management. We derived possible characteristics of these styles and accompanying stakeholder participation, seen from a long-term perspective. These characteristics give appropriate directions to deal with the problematic nature of stakeholder participation in long-term issues within modern water and infrastructural asset management.

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Self-organized citizens' initiatives are a form of collective action and contribute to society through the production of public goods and services. Traditional collective action theory predicts that such initiatives are near impossible because of the persistent problems of free-riding. Citizens' initiatives however do exist and function properly, and their numbers seem to be increasing in countries such as the Netherlands. This article argues that free-riding problems can be overcome when some form of exclusivity is arranged in citizens' initiatives. We assume that citizens' initiatives use active and/or passive strategies to limit free-riding behaviour. Using three illustrative cases, our research shows that position rules, boundary rules, and authority rules are used in a subtle and often implicit way to differentiate the level of influence and authority between the more and the less committed members, enabling collective action. Such rules, though advantageous, may be paradoxical to the goals of the citizens' initiatives and can undermine the virtues associated with them.