Please to go political parties, public opinion, social movements for more papers on multilevel governance

* * *

In revision. Virtues and Vices of Scale Flexibility, with Liesbet Hooghe

This paper is part of a larger project on jurisdictional architecture. We are currently revising the piece, so comments are particularly welcome.

"In the eyes of its detractors, dispersal of authority across multiple jurisdictions exacerbates corruption, leads to gridlock, engenders moral hazard, constrains redistribution, obfuscates accountability, and wastes money. Yet a vast literature shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that the incidence of multi-level governance has increased over the past several decades. Systematic data on regional authority in 42 countries for the period 1950 to 2005 reveal that in no country have regions lost authority, and in a large minority they have gained authority. At no time in the past have supranational jurisdictions been more authoritative than at the present. For all its current problems, the scope and depth of authority exercised in the European Union has increased over the past half century. While the extent of authority exercised by other regional regimes is less than that of the EU, many such regimes exist, and most have gained, not lost, authority over the past two decades."

* * *

2003. Unraveling the Central State. But How? Types of Multi-level Governance, with Liesbet Hooghe, American Political Science Review 97:2 (June), pp. 233-243.

This paper roots multilevel governance in several literatures, including those on local government, federalism, European integration, international relations, and public policy. We added the statement that "We make no claim to originality" in proof.

"The reallocation of authority upward, downward, and sideways from central states has drawn attention from a growing number of scholars in political science. Yet beyond agreement that governance has become (and should be) multi-level, there is no consensus about how it should be organized. This article draws on several literatures to distinguish two types of multi-level governance. One type conceives of dispersion of authority to general-purpose, nonintersecting, and durable jurisdictions. A second type of governance conceives of task-specific, intersecting, and flexible jurisdictions.We conclude by specifying the virtues of each type of governance."

A version of this argument with greater emphasis on the European Union is

2004. Contrasting Visions of Multi-Level Governance? with Liesbet Hooghe, in Multi-Level Governance, edited by Ian Bache and Matthew Flinders (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 15-30.

* * *

2002. What Do Subnational Offices Think They Are Doing in Brussels? with Richard Haesly and Heather Mbaye, Regional and Federal Studies, 12: 3 (Autumn), pp. 1-23.

"The past decade-and-a-half has seen an explosion in the number of offices established by subnational governments at the heart of the European Union. The first such offices were set up by English local authorities and German Länder in 1984, and for several years they went virtually unnoticed. In 1988 there were 15 such offices. By the end of 1993, the time of the first systematic survey of such offices, there were 54. Today there are over 160. Such offices serve no official EU function. They are not mentioned in the treaties; they play no formal role in the policy process. They are part of the subterranean political world of multi-level governance that lies beneath and beyond EU treaties."

* * *

2001. Multi-level Governance and European Integration,with Liesbet Hooghe (Rowman & Littlefield: Boulder, Colorado), 256 pp.

Chapter 1, contents, and front material

* * *

2000. Optimality and Authority: A Critique of Neoclassical Theory, with Liesbet Hooghe, Journal of Common Market Studies 38: 5 (December), pp. 795-816.

This piece distances us from an economistic approach to jurisdictional architecture. It is a pre-cursor to our postfunctional approach to European integration and a series of papers on subnational and international governance that are in revision.

"This paper initiates a dialogue between two literatures: the neoclassical theory of authority and the analysis of multilevel governance. Neoclassical theory examines the tension between the benefits of centraization and the costs of imposing uniformity across diverse territories. it implies that multilevel governance is the optimal response to this trade-off. This article critically examines the assumptions of neoclassical theory, and offers some building blocks for an alternative approach."

* * *

1996. Exploring and Explaining Variation in EU Cohesion Policy, in Liesbet Hooghe, ed., European Integration and EU Cohesion Policy: Building Multilevel Governance, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 388-422.

"The evidence presented in this paper provides substantial support for the existence of multi-level governance in the Euro-polity, To a variable degree, depending on which phase of cohesion policy one is examining and where decision-making is taking place-national, supranational, and national actors share responsibility for policymaking. To understand the distribution of power in cohesion policy, one has to refer not just to the distribution of formal
authority, but, as emphasized in the policy-network literature, to financial dependencies, informational asymmetries, and the embeddedness of pre-existing institutional norms. Member-state executives do not exclusively determine any single phase of cohesion policy, either in Brussels or in their own territories. Despite their formidable resources, state executives are one set of actors among others operating in multiple arenas. In cohesion policy, subnational actors are active alongside supranational and national actors at the supranational level of decision-making, and supranational actors are active alongside
subnational and national actors at the subnational level."

* * *

1996. Governance in the European Union, with Fritz Scharpf, Philippe Schmitter, and Wolfgang Streeck, (London: Sage Press), 182 pp.

* * *

1996. An Actor-Centered Approach to Multi-Level Governance, Regional and Federal Studies 6: 2 (Summer), pp. 20-40.

* * *

1996. European Integration and the State: Multi-level vs. State Centric Governance, with Liesbet Hooghe and Kermit Blank, Journal of Common Market Studies 34: 3 (September), pp. 341-378.

This paper was our first attempt to set out multilevel governance as a general approach to European integration. We contrast multilevel governance to the state centric view that national authority was not being diluted because national states were exchanging one kind of control for another. We did not realize at the time that the concept of multilevel governance would come to feature in discourse among decision makers precisely because it avoided the trap of state-centrism and placed European integration in a broader frame of jurisdictional reallocation.

"This article takes initial steps in evaluating contending models of EU governance. We argue that the sovereignty of individual states is diluted in the European arena by collective decision-making and by supranational institutions. In addition, European states are losing their grip on the mediation of domestic interest representation in international relations. We make this argument along two tracks. First, we analyse the conditions under which central state executives may lose their grip on power. Next, we divide the policy process into stages and specify which institutional rules may induce various actors to deepen EU policy-making."

* * *

1996. Europe With the Regions: Channels of Subnational Representation in the European Union, with Liesbet Hooghe, Publius, 26:1 (Winter), pp. 73-92.

"One of the most important consequences of European integration is the multiplication of extra-national channels for subnational political activity. Territorial relations are being transformed: national states are losing control over important areas of decision making, a variety of new channels have been created for regional mobilization, and subnational governments are engaged in innovative, transnational, patterns of interaction. Regions, however, do not engage in these activities equally. There is no congruence in the political role of cities, municipalities, and regions in the European Union. On the contrary, there are enormous differences in the level of organization, financial resources, political autonomy, and political influence of subnational governments across Europe. The result is the unfolding of common threads of change against a background of persisting variation."

* * *

1996. Competencies, Cracks, and Conflicts: Regional Mobilization in the European Union, with Francois Nielsen, Jane Salk, and Leonard Ray, Comparative Political Studies, 29: 2 (1996), pp. 164-193. 

"Over the past five years, a new and unexpected form of interest representation has developed in the European Union” subnational governments that mobilize directly in Brussels. The authors propose explanations for this phenomenon, drawing on theories of public choice, resource mobilization, and multilevel governance. The first set of hypotheses is concerned with the material and cultural resources that may induce a subnational government to organize in the European arena. The second set of hypotheses explains regional representation as an outcome of overlapping competencies, tensions, and conflicts in a system of multilevel governance. The authors find that subnational representation is positively associated with the degree of overlap between the competencies of subnational and supranational governments and with the political distinctiveness of a region and the relative strength of citizens’ regional identity."

* * *

1995. "La Transformación de la Movilización Regional en la Unión Europea,"  ("The Transformation of Regional Mobilization in the European Union"), with Iván Llamazares, Revista de Estudios Políticos 22: 1, pp.149-170.

* * *

1993. Structural Policy and Multilevel Governance in the EC, in Alan Cafruny and Glenda Rosenthal, eds., The State of the European Community, (New York: Lynne Rienner,), pp. 391-410.

This was the first paper I wrote setting out the concept of multilevel governance. I wrote this during a sabbatical at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in 1991/92.

* * *

1992. Structural Policy in the European Community, in Alberta Sbragia, ed., The Political Consequences of 1992 for the European Community, (Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution), pp. 191-224.

This was my first paper on European integration.

"Instead of the advent of some new political order, however distant, one finds an emerging political disorder; instead of a neat, two-sided process involving member states and Community institutions, One finds a complex, multilayered, decisionmaking process stretching beneath the state as well as above it; instead of a consistent pattern of
policymaking across policy areas, one finds extremely wide and persistent variations. In short, the European Community seems to be part of a new political (dis)order that is multilayered, constitutionally open-ended, and programmatically diverse."