The problems of regions include globally uneven power relations and development patterns, and rapid and uncertain exogenous threats. At the same time, economic and social restructuring involving devolved planning responsibilities, privatised resource rights, and networked management approaches have undermined previous scholarly and policy assumptions about the institutional character of regions. We know that resourceful (or resilient) regions exhibit higher regional network engagement which is in turn affected by broader enabling fiscal, administrative and democratic preconditions. This paper examines the role and tools of the state, and other ‘metagovernors’, in organizing both the conditions for regional network engagement, and the broader enabling fiscal, administrative and democratic pre-conditions. It seeks to cut through the dominant discourse on governance complexity and explore the transformations necessary to avert governance failure and achieve regional resourcefulness.