The political economy of wine: How terroir and intra-sector dynamics affect land use in Spain

•Urban sprawl is related to intra-sector dynamics and their influence upon land use policies.•Spain is an Old World wine producer lacking zoning policies defining terroirs.•The lack of zoning of terroir diminishes average grape prices and facilitates urban sprawl.

This paper provides a constructive critique of Corrine Cash's paper “Good governance and strong political will: Are they enough for transformation?”, published in volume 58 of Land Use Policy in 2016. By focusing on how intra-sector dynamics influence land use policies in conflicts revolving around urban sprawl, this paper aims to complement and, to some extent, widen the analytic lens deployed by Cash. The examination of the Spanish wine sector and its lack of zoning policies confirms Cash's argument about the need to go beyond discourses of 'good governance' and 'strong political will' to understand the dynamics underpinning real spatial processes. However, this exploration underscores the need to add layers of complexity to land use analyses, showing the relevance of intra-sector conflict and logics. In complicating any simplistic reduction of urban sprawl conflicts to rural-urban oppositions, the paper ultimately calls for a more dynamic and multiscalar planning theory to address complex governance issues.