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Over the past 50 years, an increasing amount of political authority has been delegated to the regional government level in Europe. This paper analyses regional demands for involvement in policy-making by focusing on the preferences of top-level regional civil servants ("regio-crats"). A survey (n=347) of regio-crats in 60 regions of 5 European Union member states serves as the empirical basis for the analysis of regional demands for policy involvement in the multilevel system. The data reveal differential patterns of demands. By and large, regio-crats emerge as being conservative, incremental and modest in their wishes for greater policy involvement, except where the regional contexts are characterised by substantial emancipatory political ambitions or cultural distinctiveness. Regional demands for policy participation in the multilevel system are pragmatic, patch-worked and incremental, and more conservative than transformative.

Political scientists have always accorded interest organizations a prominent place in European Union (EU) policy-making because they connect the EU institutions to citizens, provide important information to EU policy-makers, and control resources that impact on the problem-solving capacity of EU policies. In other words, they are vital to both the input legitimacy and the output legitimacy of the EU. So far, research on interest organizations in EU policy-making has concentrated on EU-level interest organizations and EU-level politics. This edited book draws attention to the role national interest organizations play in the EU multilevel system. All contributions present state-of-the-art research on that subject in the form of theory-driven empirical analyses.

Political scientists have always accorded interest organizations a prominent place in European Union (EU) policy-making because they connect the EU institutions to citizens, provide important information to EU policy-makers, and control resources that impact on the problem-solving capacity of EU policies. In other words, they are vital to both the input legitimacy and the output legitimacy of the EU. So far, research on interest organizations in EU policy-making has concentrated on EU-level interest organizations and EU-level politics. This edited book draws attention to the role national interest organizations play in the EU multilevel system. All contributions present state-of-the-art research on that subject in the form of theory-driven empirical analyses.

Nicaragua enacted its Water Law in 2007, with the Dublin Principles for sustainable water management and integrated water resources management as its guiding framework. Implementation of the law remains a challenge, but significant efforts have been made to roll out this new water resources framework, to improve water management by enhancing a multilevel water governance system. To analyze multilevel water governance in Nicaragua and diagnose stakeholders&rsquo ; roles and compliance with the law, we applied a socio-ecological system framework and several methods of analysis to process data collected from 52 in-depth semistructured interviews conducted with key stakeholders in the water sector. We found that the major variables affecting multilevel water governance were social interests, administrative capacity, and political, economic, and legal arrangements. The results suggest that there is centralization at the national level, a tendency toward noncollective choice rules, little investment in water resources, and a lack of knowledge concerning conflict resolution mechanisms. For multilevel water governance, a lack of funds is the main social, economic, and political constraint, affecting interactions and outcomes. Nevertheless, there is great potential to improve water resource management in Nicaragua by enacting the self-funding schemes established in the law. Moreover, government institutions, users, and various networks are willing to participate and take action to implement the law.

Nicaragua enacted its Water Law in 2007, with the Dublin Principles for sustainable water management and integrated water resources management as its guiding framework. Implementation of the law remains a challenge, but significant efforts have been made to roll out this new water resources framework, to improve water management by enhancing a multilevel water governance system. To analyze multilevel water governance in Nicaragua and diagnose stakeholders' roles and compliance with the law, we applied a socio-ecological system framework and several methods of analysis to process data collected from 52 in-depth semistructured interviews conducted with key stakeholders in the water sector. We found that the major variables affecting multilevel water governance were social interests, administrative capacity, and political, economic, and legal arrangements. The results suggest that there is centralization at the national level, a tendency toward noncollective choice rules, little investment in water resources, and a lack of knowledge concerning conflict resolution mechanisms. For multilevel water governance, a lack of funds is the main social, economic, and political constraint, affecting interactions and outcomes. Nevertheless, there is great potential to improve water resource management in Nicaragua by enacting the self-funding schemes established in the law. Moreover, government institutions, users, and various networks are willing to participate and take action to implement the law.

Political parties increasingly operate at multiple political levels. Nevertheless, we do not yet know much about the consequences of these multilevel electoral systems (MLESs) on party behaviour. To fill this gap, we examine party manifestos for European Parliament (EP) elections and compare them with party manifestos for national elections. Using manifesto data and covering 15 European Union (EU) countries between 1979 and 2014, we focus on European issues and ask whether parties' issue emphasis and the positions they take are the same in both kinds of documents and respectively at both levels of the MLES. We show that although parties put more emphasis on EU issues in EP than in national elections, they behave sincerely regarding their position towards the EU – these are very similar irrespective of the electoral context. As many elections take place in MLES environments, in Europe, in particular, but far beyond, this noteworthy finding is highly relevant for scholars of party competition in general and even more instructive for the so far fragmented literature exploring the implications of MLESs.

AbstractIncreasingly, researchers and practitioners operate in complex systems difficult to comprehend. In them, the multiplicity of perspectives, elements and relationships operating on multiple levels makes the practice of systems thinking and boundary critique considerably difficult. Drawing upon boundary critique and hierarchy theory, this paper presents ways of thinking in terms of multilevel boundary judgements models useful for addressing the aforementioned problem in all fields of study. A real example of the use of these models is presented. This paper also discusses how thinking in terms of multiple levels of boundary judgements is important to better deal with values and moral frameworks and to promote critical reflexivity in systemic interventions, while escaping the dangers of reductionism. Furthermore, a systemic way of exploring the role of moral frameworks in systems practice is discussed, contributing with new concepts useful to develop a deeper understanding of ethical issues in systems practice.

We use the case of a "whole-system" change program in a national healthcare system to empirically examine the multilevel dynamics underlying organizational adaptation. Our analysis demonstrates how the cognitive distance between agents' causal representations affects opportunities to cooperate in hierarchical systems. Using complexity theory, we identify a scale-invariant causal pathway that can be applied recursively across many organizational levels. At each level, three coupled feedback loops determine how local agents modify their cognitive representations to include uncovered interdependencies and synchronize their adaptive search across organizational boundaries: a "boundary work" loop, a "small wins" loop, and a "parochialism" loop. Our results also point to the scale-dependency of the strength of dissipative processes across levels. These novel results further develop the theory of organizational change and have practical implications for large multilevel organizations, especially regarding the sustainability of improvements.

Acknowledging that both analysts and practitioners face problems of meaningful categorization of social order in general, and the European political-administrative system in particular, this article suggests a conceptual frame through which European administrative order may be understood. Providing such a frame is important, because the catalogue of categories of the European Union (EU) polity developed so far fails to acknowledge its administrative dimension. Given that the ongoing political transformation in the EU implies ever more administrative interaction between political levels in order to coordinate, manage and implement policies, this administrative dimension becomes ever more important. This article thus sets out a threefold agenda: First, it offers a supplementary conceptual frame that takes the 'administrative dimension' seriously. It is suggested that the European politico-administrative organism should be conceived as a European multilevel administrative system (MLA) consisting of three dimensions: Institutional independence, integration and cooptation. Second, the article suggests how the MLA approach differs from one of its main conceptual rivals – the multilevel governance approach (MLG). Finally, the article offers some empirical illustrations of the value of the developed MLA approach for our understanding of the contemporary European administrative system.

This commentary takes stock of how Multi-level Governance and European Integration has helped scholars frame empirical research agendas. It focuses on three specific research programmes emanating from the book: (1) the role of identity in multi-level governance, (2) political contestation in multi-level systems, and (3) the effect of multi-level governance on policy outcomes. It aims to highlight existing knowledge in these lines of research whilst offering several critical reflections and directions for future research. The commentary argues that the book's observation that governance structures are ultimately shaped by identities rather than by efficiency considerations has proved almost prophetic given recent backlash against the EU. The book expertly shows that there is an inherent tension in sharing authority across multiple levels of government, and that multi-level systems require constant recalibration and renegotiation of how authority is shared.