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AbstractResearch on governance has extensively explored the complex interactions of governmental, nongovernmental, and
for‐profit entities in the execution of public policy. It has consistently failed, however, to model
empirically the joint effects of political and bureaucratic actors in governance systems. To address this issue, a
theory of multilevel governance built upon the foundation of representative bureaucracy was developed and tested.
Results from an analysis of Texas school districts suggest that Latinos at all levels of the governance system,
political and managerial, influence representation at other levels. Findings also indicate that Latinos at each
level of governance have positive effects, directly and indirectly, on outcomes for Latino students. The influence
of both political and managerial actors at times extends beyond the immediately adjoining level; the effects
of such actors cascade through the governance system. The results show that a priority for systematic research
should be the identification of approaches and settings for examining the multilevel aspect of governance. ©
2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

The commentary returns to the beginning of the career of multilevel governance as a distinct perspective on the European Union and European integration. At the time, multilevel governance allowed a generation of students to overcome the stylised debates between Liberal Intergovernmentalism and Neofunctionalism on how to best capture the 'nature of the beast'. At the same time, multilevel governance still privileged the role of public authorities over economic and societal actors. While subsequent studies broadened the focus to include the social partners or public interest groups, Hooghe and Marks have retained their public authority bias. The commentary argues that the focus on multilevel government rather than multilevel governance has increased the scope or applicability of Hooghe and Marks' approach, both within the European Union and beyond. At the same time, the government bias has prevented the multilevel governance approach from unlocking its full explanatory potential.

ABSTRACTIn 1996 the Alan K. Campbell Institute in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University was awarded a grant to rate management performance of state and local governments and selected federal agencies. The project includes several parallel initiatives to evaluate government performance. This article contains a description of a multilevel fuzzy rule‐based system developed to evaluate state government performance. The objective is to measure effectiveness in state financial management and produce a relative ranking of performance. The system incorporates evaluation criteria and expert judgment. It utilizes survey and other publicly available information relevant to state financial management. Fuzzy set theory is used to represent imprecision in evaluated information and judgments. The results of this evaluation are compared to a parallel journalistic effort to rank state performance. The article highlights the differences between the two approaches and outlines the advantages of the fuzzy rule‐based system.

Operating within the Marxist tradition, radical economists have utilized a macro-social level structural analysis focusing on modes of production, social relations of production, and class exploitation. But what of classism, the class bigotry and oppression experienced in the everyday lives of working people and their families, at work, in their communities, and in other social spaces? This paper seeks to expand our understanding of the political economy of class by sketching out a multilevel analysis of class oppression as a social system that encompasses macro, meso, and micro levels, and includes both structures and human agency. It will examine how people come to occupy their class roles; how they learn their particular class outlook, mannerisms, behavior, and culture; and how the personal and social dynamics of class oppression are related to the larger macrostructures of class oppression and exploitation.

The important role that climate leaders and leadership play at different levels of the European Union (EU) multilevel governance system is exemplified. Initially, climate leader states set the pace with ambitious policy measures that were adopted largely on an ad hoc basis. Since the mid-1980s, the EU has developed a multilevel climate governance system that has facilitated leadership and lesson-drawing at all governance levels including the local level. The EU has become a global climate policy leader by example although it had been set up as a 'leaderless Europe'. The resulting 'leadership without leader' paradox cannot be sufficiently explained merely by reference to top-level EU climate policies. Local level climate innovations and lesson-drawing have increasingly been encouraged by the EU's multilevel climate governance system which has become more polycentric. The recognition of economic co-benefits of climate policy measures has helped to further the EU's climate leadership role.

At its founding in 1957, the European Union (EU) had no environmental policy, no environmental bureaucracy, and no environmental laws. When, in 1973, the EU began systematically to address environmental concerns there was little expectation that the environment would develop into one of the largest areas of common activity. Twenty-five years on, the EU has some of the most progressive environmental policies of any state in the world although it is not itself a state. At the same time, the preexisting environmental policies of the member states have undergone a progressive change through their involvement in EU environmental policymaking. In other words, the member states have created an institutional entity to perform certain tasks which has in turn deeply affected the way they themselves perceive and act against environmental problems. This theme issue of Government and Policy offers a retrospective analysis of these developments. The purpose of this introductory essay is to describe the historical evolution of EU environmental policy and to identify the most salient themes.

AbstractDifferent streams of political research have pointed to two macro‐phenomena that appear as opposite at first glance: On the one hand, the increasing delegation of competencies to jurisdictions beyond the central government, resulting in the denationalization of political authority. On the other, the passing of reforms that reassert the centre of the nation state through policy integration and administrative coordination. In this article, we argue that these two processes can be analysed under a unified framework in terms of multilevel dynamics, whereby delegation ultimately elicits recentring reforms at the national level. To examine this argument and break down the mechanisms at work, we develop two sets of hypotheses: first, we theorise how the delegation of competencies to international organisations, sub‐national entities and independent agencies can eventually trigger recentring reforms; second, we propose that the capacity to act attributed to these actors also shapes such reforms. Our empirical analysis relies on an original dataset across four policy fields and 13 countries. By using multilevel regression models, we show that especially the delegation of competencies to agencies at the national level as well as the double delegation to European agencies increases the probability that governments pass recentring reforms. Furthermore, if these agencies have a stronger capacity to act, recentring becomes more likely. Our findings contribute to the development of multilevel governance as a dynamic theory of policy making.