Multilevel governance entails transformations of statehood, leading to significant changes both in the public sphere of politics and the private sphere of economic activity and in their modes of interaction, the law included. The fragmentation of the public sphere and the decentering of the state have led to new types of regulation and the emergence of global regulatory networks, thereby intermingling the public and the private. The transition from government to governance blurs a clear hierarchy of norms and the distinctions between hard/soft and public/private law; it encourages a fragmentation of public functions. Renewed international legalization has been seen by some in formalist terms, as a way of providing some certainty and predictability; this view has been used to buttress the legitimacy of global governance Although there have been attempts to improve coordination between international regimes, they seem generally to spawn further regulatory networks; any formal constitutionalization of international regimes seems unlikely.
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.
The aim of this paper is to highlight the relevance of a geographical multilevel technology policy within the European Union. At the present time the European policy of innovation is a "community" policy, in other words it involves a sharing of skills. In this paper we argue that outside the problems that this situation inherently poses, this territorial organisation may be considered as an asset. We use the central concept of technology externalities, taken in its traditional shape and in its renewals, to provide theoretical justifications for a "territorialised technology policy", that is to say a policy of innovation designed and implemented on several territorial levels. Three levels are here taken into account : regional, national, European.
The aim of this paper is to highlight the relevance of a geographical multilevel technology policy within the European Union. At the present time the European policy of innovation is a "community" policy, in other words it involves a sharing of skills. In this paper we argue that outside the problems that this situation inherently poses, this territorial organisation may be considered as an asset. We use the central concept of technology externalities, taken in its traditional shape and in its renewals, to provide theoretical justifications for a "territorialised technology policy", that is to say a policy of innovation designed and implemented on several territorial levels. Three levels are here taken into account : regional, national, European.
The aim of this paper is to highlight the relevance of a geographical multilevel technology policy within the European Union. At the present time the European policy of innovation is a "community" policy, in other words it involves a sharing of skills. In this paper we argue that outside the problems that this situation inherently poses, this territorial organisation may be considered as an asset. We use the central concept of technology externalities, taken in its traditional shape and in its renewals, to provide theoretical justifications for a "territorialised technology policy", that is to say a policy of innovation designed and implemented on several territorial levels. Three levels are here taken into account : regional, national, European.
The Westphalian idea of sovereignty in international relations has undergone recent transformation. "Shared sovereignty" through multilevel governance describes the responsibility of the European Union (EU) and its Member States in tobacco control policy. We examine how this has occurred on the EU level through directives and recommendations, accession rules for new members, tobacco control campaigns, and financial support for antitobacco nongovernmental organizations. In particular, the negotiation and ratification of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and the participation in the FCTC Conference of the Parties illustrates shared sovereignty. The EU Commission was the lead negotiator for Member States on issues over which it had jurisdiction, while individual Member States, through the EU presidency, could negotiate on issues on which authority was divided or remained with them. Shared sovereignty through multilevel governance has become the norm in the tobacco control policy area for EU members, including having one international organization negotiate within the context of another.
The main aim of this essay is to define the concept of multilevel governance as a political model and to identify the effects that this concept has if it is implemented at the level of European Union. Firstly, I will talk about the concept of multilevel governance and what it means in practice. Secondly, I will analyze the multilevel governance concept in the context of European Union. Thirdly, I will show what this concept brings new to the public management, both at national and supranational level.
The paper analyzes the common assumption that the EU has little power over taxation. We find that the EU's own taxing power is indeed narrowly circumscribed: its revenues have evolved from rather supranational beginnings in the 1950s towards an increasingly intergovernmental system. Based on a comprehensive analysis of EU tax legislation and ECJ tax jurisprudence from 1958 to 2007, we show that at the same time, the EU exerts considerable regulatory control over the member states' taxing power and imposes tighter constraints on member state taxes than the US federal government imposes on state taxation. These findings contradict the standard account of the EU as a regulatory polity which specializes in apolitical issues of market creation and leaves political issues to the member states: despite strong safeguards, the EU massively regulates the highly salient issue of member state taxation.
Environmental governance and management are facing a multiplicity of challenges related to spatial scales and multiple levels of governance. Water management is a field particularly sensitive to issues of scale because the hydrological system with its different scalar levels from small catchments to large river basins plays such a prominent role. It thus exemplifies fundamental issues and dilemmas of scale in modern environmental management and governance. In this introductory article to an Environmental Management special feature on "Multilevel Water Governance: Coping with Problems of Scale," we delineate our understanding of problems of scale and the dimensions of scalar politics that are central to water resource management. We provide an overview of the contributions to this special feature, concluding with a discussion of how scalar research can usefully challenge conventional wisdom on water resource management. We hope that this discussion of water governance stimulates a broader debate and inquiry relating to the scalar dimensions of environmental governance and management in general. ; Peer Reviewed
South America's security agenda demands the simultaneous management of domestic crises, interstate conflicts and transnational threats. Though located at different systemic levels (national, international, transnational), the three conflict clusters are often interrelated and tend to overlap in the region's border areas. The region's policy makers, aware of this highly complex agenda and in spite of their striking differences, have tended to build regional structures of authority that coordinate, manage and rule collective responses to these threats. In addition, the unilateral, bilateral and multilateral structures and the region's capabilities to solve conflicts have become more important than the respective inter-American bodies over the past decade. Given this shift in the management of regional security affairs, we ask if a multilevel approach on the part of an overarching security architecture is more effective than separate governance schemes regarding each specific security threat. Since neither the traditional models of power balancing and alliance building nor the security-community approach can sufficiently explain the region's security dynamics, we assume and provide evidence that different systems of security governance overlap and coexist in South America. ; Sicherheits-Governance in Südamerika: Auf dem Weg zu einer Mehrebenenarchitektur. Südamerikas sicherheitspolitische Agenda erfordert die zeitgleiche Bearbeitung innenpolitischer Krisen, zwischenstaatlicher Konflikte und transnationaler Bedrohungen. Diese drei Konfliktcluster sind - obschon analytisch auf verschiedenen systemischen Niveaus (national, international, transnational) zu verorten - oft eng miteinander verwoben und neigen insbesondere in den Grenzregionen dazu, sich wechselseitig zu überlappen. Die politischen Entscheidungsträger in der Region sind sich der komplexen Agenda bewusst und haben, unbeschadet ihrer offenkundigen Differenzen, damit begonnen, den Bedrohungen durch die Schaffung regionaler Autoritätsstrukturen auf uni- und multilateraler Ebene gemeinsam zu begegnen. Hinzu kommt die Beobachtung, dass die Fähigkeiten der Region zur eigenständigen Konfliktregulierung gegenüber den entsprechenden interamerikanischen Organen in der letzten Dekade insgesamt an Gewicht gewonnen haben. Das vorliegende Arbeitspapier fragt angesichts dieser neuartigen Entwicklungen und Verschiebungen danach, ob in Südamerika ein Mehrebenenansatz auf der Grundlage einer bedrohungsübergreifenden Sicherheitsarchitektur effektivere Ergebnisse zu zeitigen vermag als einzelne, voneinander separierte Governance-Schemata, die jeweils auf ein spezifisches Bedrohungscluster abstellen. Da weder traditionelle Modelle (Machtbalance, Allianzenbildung) noch konstruktivistische Konzepte (Sicherheitsgemeinschaft) die sicherheitspolitische Dynamik in der Region hinreichend zu erklären vermögen, gründet das Papier auf der im folgenden empirisch unterfütterten Prämisse, wonach in der Region unterschiedliche, sich überschneidende Sicherheits-Governance-Schemata koexistieren.
This paper deals with the regionalization of the technology and innovation policies in the context of the so-called multilevel governance. Such regionalization involves several problems. The scope of policies with numerous actors and multilevel governance structures transform the political action into a complex process of negotiations among the different levels and groups of actors. This paper describes the recent theoretical and political developments that relate to the multilevel governance of innovation with numerous actors in the regional field. It is based on a German regional innovation system to assess if the political innovation is suitable to be transferred to the regional governments.
Since the 1980s, the European Union has created mechanisms to integrate the increasing lobbying activity of European-wide interest groups. This has led to considerable pressures upon national interest groups to participate in European level organisations. This chapter will focus on how Portuguese interest groups reacted to these Europeanisation pressures in the EU multi-level governance system. It is frequently argued that, due to common pressures such as economic and monetary union (EMU), Trade Unions and Business associations need to work together more closely at the European level. This chapter maintains that although Portuguese employers and Trade Union actors have gained some multi-level leverage after joining the major transnational Eurogroups, they still lag behind in terms of using all the possibilities of influence in the multilevel governance system. Their actions consist in reacting to policies set up by the Eurogroups in which they are integrated. The chapter explores how Europe impacts on the day-to-day business of these groups and will offer some explanations as to why they fail to exploit its full potential.
This paper discusses the basic constitutional problem of modern international law since the UN Charter: How can the power-oriented international legal system based on "sovereign equality of states" be reconciled with the universal recognition of "inalienable" human rights deriving from respect for human dignity and popular sovereignty? State representatives, intergovernmental organizations, international judges and non-governmental organizations often express different views on how far the universal recognition of human rights has changed the subjects, structures, general principles, interpretative methods and "object and purpose" of international law (e.g. by the emergence of erga omnes obligations and jus cogens limiting state sovereignty to renounce human rights treaties, to refuse diplomatic protection of individuals abroad, or domestic implementation of international obligations for the benefit of domestic citizens). The paper explains why effective protection of human rights at home and abroad requires multilevel constitutional protection of individual rights as well as multilevel constitutional restraints of national, regional and worldwide governance powers and procedures. While all European states have accepted that the European Convention on Human Rights and EC law have evolved into international constitutional law, the prevailing paradigm for most states outside Europe remains "constitutional nationalism" rather than "multilevel constitutional pluralism." Consequently, European proposals for reforms of international economic law often aim at "constitutional reforms" (e.g. of worldwide governance institutions) rather than only "administrative reforms", as they are frequently favoured by non-European governments defending state sovereignty and popular sovereignty within a more power-oriented "international law among states."
Dieser Beitrag identifiziert die inhaltlichen und politischen Innovationen von Regional Governance am Beispiel der integrierten ländlichen Entwicklung. Die politischen Probleme des Ansatzes werden anhand einer Reihe von Fallstudien analysiert. Hier treten die Konkurrenz von Regional Governance zum regionalen "Government", starke sektorale Interessen und Institutionen sowie der Mehrebenencharakter von Politik für ländliche Räume als Hindernisse in den Vordergrund. Der Beitrag schließt mit einer ausführlichen und realistischen Diskussion der Handlungsoptionen zur Stärkung der integrierten ländlichen Entwicklung. ; peerReviewed
This paper presents a comparative study of two central EU climate policies: the revised Emissions Trading System (ETS), and the revised Renewable Energy Directive (RES). Both were originally developed in the early 2000s and revised policies were adopted in December 2008. While the ETS from 2013 on will have a quite centralized and market-streamlined design, the revised RES stands forward as a more decentralized and technology-focused policy. Differing institutional feed-back mechanisms and related roles of policy entrepreneurs can shed considerable light on these policy differences. Due to member states' cautiousness and contrary to the preferences of the Commission, the initial ETS was designed as a rather decentralized and 'politicized' market system, creating a malfunctioning institutional dynamic. In the revision process, the Commission skillfully highlighted this ineffective dynamic to win support for a much more centralized and market-streamlined approach. In the case of RES, national technology-specific support schemes and the strong links between the renewables industry and member states promoted the converse outcome: decentralization and technology development. Members of the European Parliament utilized these mechanisms through policy networking, while the Commission successfully used developments within the global climate regime to induce some degree of centralization.
