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Governance In Seaport Clusters Peter W. de Erlangen 1. Introduction Apart from well-known physical factors such as the location, maritime accessibility and hinterland infrastructure, the governance of seaports is an important determinant of their performance. An analysis of the governance of seaports has mostly been limited to the role of the port authority. Notwithstanding the central role of port authorities in ports, we argue that an analysis of governance in seaports requires attention for the role of (private) firms. Institutional economic literature offers a useful framework for ana lysing advantages and disadvantages of alternative governance mechanisms and provides a basis for ana lysing the roles of port authorities. In this paper we deal with the issue of cluster governance in seaports and illustrate our approach with an analysis of the port of Rotterdam.. First, we briefly discuss the theoretical foundations of the cluster governance concept. Second, we discuss the role of port authorities in the governance of seaports. Third, we present empirical results of a survey among 43 cluster experts in Rotterdam on the governance of Rotterdam’s port cluster. We feminality the paper with conclusions. 2.The Quality Of Cluster Governance We define cluster governance as ‘the mix of and relations between various mechanisms of coordination used in a cluster’. The quality of the governance differs between clusters. The quality depends on the level of coordination costs and the ‘scope’ of ‘coordination beyond price’. Low coordination costs and much coordination beyond price improve the quality of governance. When the benefits of coordination are distributed unequally, when (the threat of) opportunistic behaviour prevents coordination or when benefits of coordination are uncertain, coordination beyond price does not arise spontaneously or instantaneously, even when benefits of coordination exceed costs. Therefore there is in general a shortage of