fuller participation in decision-making). Fourthly, MLG includes a wide variety of actors within its political structures, including supranational bureaucrats in Brussels, major national governmental elites, and regional and local subnational authorities who have conflicting public philosophies and ideologies. This leaves the question open as to whether such a broad basis of political representation of its governing elites is not more likely to aggravate conflicts within the EU. Fifthly, and most importantly, MLG rests ultimately on the notion of a “network configuration”, rather than a “hierarchy”, an idea which lacks empirical precision, and is largely metaphorical in meaning. Its analytical utility has therefore been limited and open to question thus far (For example, see Piattoni 2009: 4).
But there are also several positive attributes and strengths in the multilevel governance approach, particularly in the current European context, that deserve recognition. For example, Gary Marks, in a seminal article in 1992, first questioned the sharply dichotomous view of European integration presented by neo-functionalists and intergovernmentalists. He particularly criticised their lack of attention to ‘flesh-and-blood’ actors” in their theories. He thereby [39] “asserted the autonomous explanatory force of a third paradigm, that of MLG” (Piattoni 2009: 2). Secondly, “MLG challenged the contention that non-state interests could only influence EU policy-making by operating through state representatives, and that they could not successfully challenge the ‘gate-keeping’ capacity of the central state” (Piattoni 2009:3). This insight was initially confined to cohesion policy, but later extended to environmental policy, agricultural policy and other important sectors of European policy. Thirdly, it is clear that the MLG concept is most appropriately applied to how the EU has actually operated since the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1991, and it has contributed to what may accurately be described as a new type of polity which is in fact sui generis. Fourthly, we also acknowledge the utility of the subsequent (2003) theoretical contribution of Marks and Hooghe to the initial concept of MLG in their distinction between Types I and II MLG. Type I MLG applies to at least three and up to five different levels of governance: international, supranational regional, national, subnational regional, and local. It therefore constitutes a modification and extension of the usual definition of federal systems as containing two levels of government, national and regional, with different jurisdictions and memberships. Type II MLG is also an ideal type that describes the political decision-making role of units and groups that are not part of the public sector, including private interest groups like business, labour and agriculture and non-profit voluntary or third sector groups such as charitable organisations and social assistance groups. According to Piattoni, “Type II governance normally coexists with Type I governance in the same overarching polity, and is generally embedded in Type I governance” (Piattoni 2009, citing Marks and Hooghe 2003: 238). These two types of overlapping governance structures coexist in a dynamic relationship that has been described as a “negotiated arrangement” in a new institutional order. It is considered to provide “technically superior solutions to complex collective problems [by] staying at a sufficiently small scale not to impose sacrifices on individual preferences” (Piattoni 2009. MLG, then, is a valuable “multilevel concept” that is capable of “moving across and connecting different analytical planes”. It can also encompass much of the current literature on regionalism, which postulates an apparent causal correlation between increasing political devolution and growing civil society involvement in governance. (Piattoni 2009: 7).
In short, MLG is a concept that has both strengths and weaknesses, but is still very much in the process of theoretical framing and evolution. “It captures a significant number of policy processes, forms of political mobilisation, and trends towards polity restructuring to warrant its continued use in the future” (Piattoni 2010:13).
[40] MLG in the European Union and Intergovernmental Relations in the US
There are also some valuable insights to be gained by conducting a direct comparison of the governance patterns of MLG in the European Union and the patterns of internal intergovernmental relations in American federalism. Such a comparison was made recently by Edoardo Ongaro et al., eds. in their Governance and Intergovernmental Relations in the European Union and the United States: Theoretical Perspectives (2010). In their Introductory chapter, they define “intergovernmental relations” as the pattern of relations between the federal and other levels of government within the public sector, one that is widely adopted by American practitioners and political scientists. They refer to multilevel governance as “the study of the ‘crossroads of vertical (intergovernmental) and horizontal (state-society) relations,” a general description that is widely embraced by European Union officials and students. Their objective is to “build a [theoretical] bridge between these two academic and practitioner communities and their respective ‘cognitive maps’” (Ongaro et al., eds. 2010:1).
Is it possible to bridge the two very different streams of research into US federalism/intergovernmental relations and EU multilevel governance? Theo A.J. Toonen strongly believes that it is. He argues that the modern MLG model of internal intergovernmental relations and public administration is based on two new major approaches in this economically globalised post-modern age: 1) a focus on multidisciplinary and cross-sectional institutional clusters and 2) concentration on networked regions. MLG can foster “an ability to collaborate in a varied institutional context [by] using member-states, regional and local government institutions as partners and agents for joint policy-making and implementation.” It thereby places greater emphasis on “networks” and on “governance arrangements” than on “hierarchies” and “government” (Toonen 2010: 30). Toonen proposes to combine the perspectives of MLG and IGR by “organising at least part of the European debate on the utility of systems of MLG along American lines.” He proposes to incorporate the US public administration concepts of intergovernmental constitution (IGC), intergovernmental relations (IGR) and intergovernmental management (IGM) into the analysis of the internal intergovernmental relations of the EU.
Toonen also notes perceptively that the simple dichotomy and “juxtaposition of federal and unitary systems breaks down when it has to face the variety of administrative systems that need to be addressed today” (Toonen 2010: 35). “Federalism” is now generally understood to be “an abstract and multi-interpretable concept”. And “unitarism” is likewise viewed as highly contentious and ambiguous in meaning. If one distinguishes the analysis of federal and unitary systems of governance and public administration – the governance perspective – from the study of actual states, then “the actual relative subsystem [41] autonomy within a unitary state might be as large or as small as within a federal structure” (Toonen 2010: 36). He contends that “unitary states may actually operate as federalised systems from a sociological, political or administrative point of view,” which he labels “sociological federalism.” And he argues that “conversely, a governance and administratively-oriented ‘implementation’ federalism within a unitary state structure is also possible,” particularly where there is an “informal, bottom-up ‘participative management’” (Ibid.) In short, according to Toonen (2010:36), “the main a priori difference among unitary and federal states is that due to their different legal frameworks, the relative autonomy of subsystems has a distinctive legal expression.” This may not, however, have important practical consequences. It follows, then, that it is both possible and legitimate to study federal and unitary systems from various conceptual perspectives: sovereign or power theory, network analysis or interdependency theory.
In our view, Toonen’s effort to combine the theoretical perspectives of the IGR and MLG frameworks is promising in its potential contribution to the current debate about the utility of MLG as a comparative analytical tool. We shall consider in the concluding section below to what extent it may be used to gauge the value of the multilevel governance concept in the analysis of intergovernmental relations in the current economically globalised world.
A Schematic Comparison of Contemporary UK and German Intergovernmental Relations With Respect to Multilevel Governance Theory
The United Kingdom: Post-Devolution (1998 to the Present)
What do British scholars take the concept of “multilevel governance” to mean and what do they see as its underlying causes in the UK? In applying