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This article challenges the methodological nationalism of the convergence debate by arguing that multilevel governance destabilizes the coalitions thought to underpin liberal and coordinated varieties of capitalism. Existing efforts to explain how coherent production regimes emerge and persist assume that some dominant social bloc ensures coherence by imposing its interests across all relevant regulatory subspheres. This assumption is not tenable in systems of multilevel governance. Three features of multilevel governance diminish the scope for a uniform social bloc to ensure a tight coupling of complementary regulations. First, the strategic opportunities for playing multilevel games vary across regulatory subspheres. Second, willingness to exploit these opportunities varies, because the transnational scope of legislation adds a "constrain-competitor" dimension to actors' decision-making that may either strengthen or weaken interest group cohesion. Third, the institutional set-up at the supranational level of Europe's multilevel polity multiplies alignment options. To illustrate these claims, the article draws on case studies of EU company law initiatives concerning takeovers and worker participation.

This article challenges the methodological nationalism of the convergence debate by arguing that multilevel governance destabilizes the coalitions thought to underpin liberal and coordinated varieties of capitalism. Existing efforts to explain how coherent production regimes emerge and persist assume that some dominant social bloc ensures coherence by imposing its interests across all relevant regulatory subspheres. This assumption is not tenable in systems of multilevel governance. Three features of multilevel governance diminish the scope for a uniform social bloc to ensure a tight coupling of complementary regulations. First, the strategic opportunities for playing multilevel games vary across regulatory subspheres. Second, willingness to exploit these opportunities varies, because the transnational scope of legislation adds a constrain-competitor dimension to actors' decision-making that may either strengthen or weaken interest group cohesion. Third, the institutional set-up at the supranational level of Europe's multilevel polity multiplies alignment options. To illustrate these claims, the article draws on case studies of EU company law initiatives concerning takeovers and worker participation.

Climate change policy has commonly been framed as a matter of international governance for which global policy strategies can be readily employed. The decade of experience following the 1997 signing of the Kyoto Protocol suggests a far more complex process involving a wide range of policy options and varied engagement by multiple levels of governance systems. The respective experiences of the United States and Canada suggest that formal engagement in the international realm of policy is not a good indicator of domestic policy development or emissions reductions. The different contexts of intergovernmental relations, varied resources available to subnational governments for policy development and implementation, and role of subnational leaders in policy formation have emerged as important factors in explaining national differences between these North American neighbors. Consequently, climate change increasingly presents itself as a challenge not only of international relations but also of multilevel governance, thereby creating considerable opportunity to learn from domestic policy experimentation.

The article aims to explore the patterns of multilevel governance in Catalonia in the context of a process of Europeanization. Catalonia is no longer a simple sphere of linguistic & cultural identity deprived of political expression. Nor, however, is it a political reality with the structures of a nation state. Today, Catalonia is a country with a considerable degree of self-government, but whose place within Europe for the most part continues to be articulated through its political dependencies on the Spanish state. At the same time, it is a country with an internal network of strong local identities -- municipalities & comarques (or counties) -- & a capital, Barcelona, with its own extraordinary projection: all of which is also expressed in the political sphere. To explore the complexities of Catalan governance, first we develop a framework of analysis; secondly, we examine the multilevel distribution of public resources; & finally, we investigate the framing, at multiple territorial levels, of policies that handle these resources. 13 Tables, 1 Figure, 16 References. Adapted from the source document.

Aboriginal self-government is changing the governance landscape in Canada. This paper focuses on a little-studied aspect of aboriginal self-government arrangements, namely the horizontal dispersion of power among non-governmental institutions in the policy process. Nunavut, the Canadian territory created in 1999, offers a good example of this horizontal power dispersion. The Government of Nunavut is the only Canadian public government stemming from a land claim agreement. This creates a special set of obligations and entrenches a horizontal multilevel governance model, with a unique model of governance between a public government, the government of Nunavut (GN), that serves a predominantly Inuit population, and a nonprofit beneficiary organization, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.(NTI), representing the Inuit of Nunavut. In this paper we map out the authority and legitimacy of these levels of governance and the impacts of this system on Nunavut public policies and access to resource development revenues.

Polycentric theory, as applied to sustainability policy adoption, contends that municipalities will act independently to provide public services that protect the environment. Our multilevel regression analysis of survey responses from 1,497 municipalities across the United States challenges that notion. We find that internal drivers of municipal action are insufficient. Lower policy adoption is explained by capacity constraints. More policy making occurs in states with a multilevel governance framework supportive of local sustainability action. Contrary to Fischel's homevoter hypothesis, we find large cities and rural areas show higher levels of adoption than suburbs (possibly due to free riding within a metropolitan region).

AbstractThe European Union (EU) is currently facing unprecedented challenges to its problem‐solving capacity, such as those represented by pressing transnational crises and by bottom‐up criticisms towards the European integration process. Moreover, the EU is said to compensate its weak input legitimacy with an enhanced problem‐solving capacity. However, the notion of problem‐solving itself has remained remarkably vague in the multilevel governance (MLG) literature. This symposium analyses problem‐solving in different MLG settings. In this introduction, we identify procedural and operational notions of problem‐solving in MLG, and present a structural framework to guide the comparative analyses of multilevel systems along the dimensions of political integration, functional differentiation and decentralization. The contributions to the symposium illustrate how structural elements of different multilevel systems shape both the policy‐making process and the politics of problem‐solving within these systems. In doing so, they pave the way for further comparative research.

This article offers an ethnographically oriented, interpretive approach for the research into the democratic qualities of multilevel governance (MLG). The complex and networked MLG arrangements, such as the European Union's (EU) participatory policy practices, are changing the traditional roles of public administration and politics in ways we cannot yet fully foresee. Especially, the impact on democracy is subject to debate. With two case studies, this article seeks to shift the focus of the discussion on the democratic possibilities of MLG from theoretical analysis to empirical research into local and mundane experiences concerning EU policy implementation. The cases studied are the rural development programme LEADER and the youth policy programme Youth in Action. The studies suggest that the participation of NGOs or individual citizens cannot automatically be seen as a counterbalance to administration since the participants seem capable of adopting technocratic or administrative identities and roles. In addition, participatory practices may be geared to impact on the participants instead of functioning as their democratic opportunity to impact on governance. Therefore, this article suggests that the assessments of democracy should not only concentrate on the formal status of the participants: a credible democratic legitimation requires both the possibility and the will to act politically. ; peerReviewed

The study of multilevel governance (MLG) is fundamentally concerned with the capacity of MLG to effectively deal with policy problems. However, the notion of problem‐solving itself remains vague. Moreover, MLG research prioritizes questions of structure and agency, while neglecting the role and nature of policy problems themselves. This symposium defines problem‐solving in both procedural and operational terms. The introduction reviews relevant attributes of policy problems and existing assumptions about their influence on problem‐solving. By adding uncertainty, tractability, and three political attributes (power, conflict, salience), we propose an extended list of attributes of policy problems that matter for problem‐solving, and link them to different notions of procedural and operational problem‐solving in MLG. The contributions address the challenges facing problem‐solving in the European Union, adopting a particular focus on the characteristics of policy problems. Empirical cases include the European Semester, Brexit, the governance of the swine flu pandemic, and climate change.