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This article deals with the currently widely discussed concept of regional governance and investigates the roles this concept actually plays within rural development policy and its implementation in Germany. The main question is whether or not ‘regional governance’ is just a fashionable scientific term. Can we really observe impacts of the regional governance discussion on policies for sustainable regional development in rural areas in Germany? To answer this question the programmatic statements of the EU community initiative LEADER+ are analysed against the background of the most important regional governance criteria. Subsequently, a deeper look into the implementation of LEADER+ in six German regions shows that regional governance still needs some forms of hierarchical co‐ordination by higher levels of state. Some major problems for the implementation of regional governance in LEADER+ as well as some important positive impacts of the programme are identified. These show that, despite all potential problems, the concept of regional governance has the potential to make a significant contribution to the successful development of rural areas.