Multi Level Governance

The concept of multi-level governance (MLG) has been developed by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks in the early 1990s. The MLG refers to a coordination of policies between the different levels of government (supranational, national and subnational) which requires an increased number of social actors, organizations and laws to achieve coherent policies. Therefore, several authors have shown an interest in this new form of governance and tried to define it such as Andy Smith in his article “Multi-level Governance: What is it and how can it be studied?” (2003) and more recently Paul Stephenson: “Twenty years of multi-level governance: Where does it come from? What is it? Where is it going?” (2013). Both readings aim to define the main characteristics of the MLG in different ways. A Smith defines it through the three levels power which are the local governance, the governance of the European Union (EU), and the two fundamental political concepts (institutionalization and legitimation). Regarding P. Stephenson’s article, he illustrates through different scholars point of view, that they have been mainly five uses of the MLG these last twenty years (original, functional, combined, normative and comparatives uses). This write-up will analyse the common themes of both readings and compare them to have a better understanding of what is the MLG and to know the divergent author’s arguments.

To explain the origin of the expansion of powers at the EU level which led to the MLG, both authors mention two major treaties: the Single European Act (SEA) of 1987 and the Maastricht treaty of 1992. These two European agreement are the main causes of the European integration as stated A. Smith. In fact, it’s precisely the creation of new European institutions like for example the European Committee, that created the feeling to be a European citizen and therefore to belong to one community. In his article, P. Stephenson has an approach more societal mentioning a set of questions linked to Mark’s article (1993) regarding these news institutions - how they appeared? which actors are involved and what are the consequences of this institutional innovation for those which already exist? These issues have a great importance to understand how the multi-governance policies work because it permits to know institutional effect (either positive or negative) but also how they operate.

The author of Twenty years of MLG mentions briefly the transformation from ‘government’ to

‘governance’ (p. 820) to understand the evolution of European cohesion policy through the

different level of governance, but this shift should be more explained to give a sense of what

the governance was and what it became. A. Smith describes in details this transformation from

the ‘local government’ which refer to what local authorities did, to a ‘local governance’ which

examine who governs (Dahl, 1961). To illustrate his argument, he takes two concrete example:

America with the intergovernmental relations and France with the centre-periphery. He

mentioned that scholars’ vision has evolved thanks to these two exceptions because before they

didn’t pay attention to who govern the subnational government. This is quite interesting to

notice because it shows clearly that during a long time the power of the local authorities was

not considered. Thus, it can be considered that the MLG achieves a certain balance between

the different level of power.

As the first rival of the traditional form of governance, P. Stephenson cited the Open Method

of Coordination (OMC) introduced by the Lisbon treaty in 2001 which creates a common

understanding of problems and helps to build consensus on solutions and their practical

implementation. This new legislation makes the EU ‘heterarchical’ and ‘decentred’ (p. 823)

because there is no a transmission of hierarchical powers from the international to subnational

level but rather an “interdependent policy co-ordination”, in others words that the different

European governments work together. A. Smith referred also to this new form of governance

in his research with the ‘horizontal intergovernmentalist’ where he developed two main

objections to it. Firstly, he affirms that horizontal intergovernmentalists prevail national

corporate leaders rather than the national interest which is totally unfair for the citizens.

Moreover, he says that social and political elites are more interdependent than horizontal

intergovernmentalists which can create some strategies and preferences choices within the

Council for example. The second objection to horizontal intergovernmentalists is that it can

neglect the role of subnational government (regional, local actor) (Marks 1993; Hooghe and

Marks 2001) because these actors have limited access to European Council and hence they

have a low influence. These findings show clearly the weaknesses of the MLG which can foster

one area of governance relative to another one. The author brings the reader to wonder if these

various forms of governance are truly fair and efficient. However, it would have been more

understandable if the example of some countries has been illustrating to have a concrete idea

of this theory.

These intergovernmental relations between EU members’ states has led to the Europeanization

which is defined in P. Stephenson article (p. 821) as an ‘inter-organizational linkages’ of new

patterns. The consequences of the Europeanization can be interpreted in different ways from

one state to another. In fact, A. Smith takes the example of Spain and the UK where

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