The Theory of Multi-Level Governance: Conceptual, Empirical, and Normative Challenges

T H E T H E O RY O F M ULTI - L EV E L GOV E R NA N C E

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The Theory of Multi-level Governance Conceptual, Empirical, and Normative Challenges

SIMONA PIATTONI

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3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York # Simona Piattoni 2010 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Library of Congress Control Number: 2009942582 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by the MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn ISBN 978–0–19–956292–3 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Preface I stumbled upon the concept of Multi-level Governance (MLG) fresh out of my graduate studies, when my interest in regional development led me to learn more about cohesion policy. The concept appeared immediately intriguing and challenging. I decided that I would try to clarify for myself what it was really about— whether it was a new theory of European integration, an apt description of EU governance, or a normative ideal for post-parliamentary, post-national, postWestphalian polities. The more I learnt about it, the more I felt that if I wanted to really understand what it stood for, I needed to delve into new fields of study such as international relations, constitutionalism, normative theory—an exciting, but also potentially endless endeavor. And yet, reconnaissance of this varied terrain seemed absolutely imperative. Studying the European Union, I had come to realize that as a comparativist I could not safely ignore the production of international relations colleagues, nor that I could neglect the work of legal scholars and political theorists. Multi-disciplinary reflection in EU studies is the order of the day. The expansion of the horizon that ensues is as breathtaking as it is mesmerizing. Yet, after a while, new landscapes start to look familiar and it becomes possible to reconnect past memories with new discoveries. This book, then, started as a house-cleaning exercise. As is typical of these (exhausting) activities, I found myself looking into increasingly distant quarters of my disciplinary abode, until I felt that I had left almost no corner untouched. Retracing my steps backwards and tidying things up was more demanding than I had anticipated, in part because the treasures that I had discovered in the process made me feel like not rushing the task, and in part because I had perhaps at times come to lose sight of the specific purpose of my endeavors. At the end of this enterprise, I believe that I have been enormously enriched personally and I hope that I have also made some real progress on a number of issues. If I wanted to do justice to all the people that helped me along the way, this preface would certainly exceed conventional dimensions, as I have many people to thank for directing my attention to yet unexplored fields or for rescuing me when I seemed to disappear under too much stuff. As far as I can remember, a few people have been my interlocutors in many conferences and workshops exploring the contours of multi-level governance: Ian Bache, Thomas Christiansen, Chris Deschouwer, Liesbet Hooghe, Charlie Jeffery, Michael Keating, John Loughlin, Gary Marks, Stijn Smismans, and many others who have, on different occasions, shared their thoughts and comments. These colleagues have collectively acted as a real community of scholars, without which I would not have conceived and written this book. They have all, in one capacity or another, enormously enriched me. In my perusals, I have been greatly stimulated by participation in several collaborative projects. Initially, in order to better familiarize myself (and my

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students) with what appeared to be a fascinating debate and a booming literature, I ran a Jean Monnet Module in “Multi-Level Governance” from 2003–4 to 2007–8. This gave me the opportunity to invite to Trento many colleagues who were studying different aspects of MLG and to conclude with a double conference on the same topic, the first in Trento in May 2007 and the second in Brussels in January 2008. Meanwhile, I have been involved in several research projects on the theme of “governance,” from a Framework Programme 5 (FPV) project on “Informal Governance in the EU—IGEU” (with Thomas Christiansen), to a FPVI project, “Civil Society in European Governance—CIVGOV” (coordinated by Carlo Ruzza), within which I steered a research team on structural policy in some 30 EU regions. Both projects gave me the opportunity to investigate the many formal and informal links between regional authorities and their respective societies, to probe how strong and vital these links are, and to assess whether or not they help the process of governance. More recently, I have brought this long-term interest to bear in the analysis of the enlarged Union, thanks to my involvement in an FPVII “Wider Europe, Deeper Integration” (EU-CONSENT) Network of Excellence (coordinated by Wolfgang Wessels), in which I coordinated a team that dealt with “The institutionalization of access for civil society” (in practice, the Committee of the Regions, the Economic and Social Committee, and the Social Dialogue). Interactions with the many colleagues whom I met thanks to these projects have given me more stimuli than I could probably retain. I was also involved in the first stocktaking exercise organized by the Committee of the Regions in the fall of 2008 on MLG (CoR Ateliers on Multi-Level Governance), for which I thank the Head of the Forward Studies Unit, Mme Taulegne. My gratitude goes also to two fantastic institutions: the University of Trento and the University of California, Berkeley. In Trento, I work with a group of very stimulating and supportive colleagues, without whose help—for example, by taking on my teaching duties during my sabbatical year in 2008–9!—I could not have written this book. I would like to mention them individually: Roberto Belloni, Marco Brunazzo, Vincent della Sala, Alessia Dona`, Sergio Fabbrini, Gaspare Nevola, Daniela Sicurelli. In particular, I owe to Sergio the idea of a book on MLG and it is due to his constant encouragement that I actually put it into practice. Roberto and Vincent also read part of the manuscript and directed me to important references. Milena Bigatto and Emanuela Bozzini participated in research connected with this book, suggested references that I would have missed, and read and commented on parts of the manuscript. In Berkeley, I spent two wonderful summers as guest of the Institute for Governmental Studies, that provided me with the quiet and the facilities that allowed me to, first, conceptualize my approach to MLG and, later, to write two chapters of the book. My thanks go to the Directors of the Institute for Governmental Studies (IGS), Bruce Cain (in 2005) and Jack Citrin (in 2008), and to IGS Managing Director, Liz Wiener, for their hospitality and collegiality. In Trento and in Berkeley, moreover, I had the immense pleasure of chatting, over lunch or dinner, with two Emeriti who were kind enough to share their thoughts and food with me: to Gianfranco Poggi and Giuseppe di Palma, my heartfelt thanks.

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I also want to thank the Center for European Studies at Harvard, and particularly Andrew Martin, for organizing a presentation of the first sketch of this work in April 2008 and Jonas Tallberg (and other attendees) for taking the trouble to comment on it. Thanks too to the European Union Center of Excellence— European Studies Center of the University of Pittsburgh, and particularly its Director Alberta Sbragia, for giving me the opportunity to present my ideas there in April 2008. Finally, I would like to thank Dominic Byatt of Oxford University Press for believing in this project from the start and for patiently waiting while I added “the last touches” to the manuscript. But my passion for and commitment to the discipline has been inspired during these many years by three senior colleagues, whom I consider my real mentors in this enterprise. They have been perhaps only tangentially involved in this project—and certainly do not carry any responsibility for the outcome!—but they have been a constant source of inspiration: Suzanne Berger, Beate KohlerKoch, and Alberta Sbragia. Thanks to them, I became convinced that it was indeed possible to be, at the same time, a scholar and a mother. While every effort was made to contact copyright holders of material in this book, in some cases we were unable to do so. If the copyright holders contact the author or publisher, we will be pleased to rectify any omission at the earliest opportunity. Simona Piattoni University of Trento [email protected]

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Contents List of Figures

x

List of Abbreviations

xi

Introduction

1 PA RT I : T H E T H E O R E T I C A L C H AL L E N G E

1. 2. 3. 4.

Conceptual Analysis Center versus Periphery Domestic versus International State versus Society

17 32 51 65

PA RT I I : TH E E M P I R I C A L CH A L L E N G E

5. 6. 7. 8.

Empirical Analysis Cohesion Policy Environmental Policy Higher Education Policy

83 102 133 151

PA RT I I I : T H E N O R M AT I V E CH A L LE NG E

9. Normative Analysis

177

10. Input Legitimacy

192

11. Output Legitimacy

210

12. Democracy

228

Conclusion

249

Bibliography Index

261 293

List of Figures 1.1. MLG’s analytical space

27

2.1. The first axis: the center-periphery dimension

37

3.1. The second axis: the national-international dimension

53

4.1. The third axis: the state-society dimension

69

6.1. Cohesion policy

103

7.1. Environmental policy

141

8.1. The MLG space of higher education policy

153

List of Abbreviations AER

Assembly of European Regions

AR

Akkreditierungsrat

BAT

best available technology

BATNEEC

BAT without excessive economic cost

BEI

Bank of European Investment

BFUG

Bologna Follow-Up Group

CCC

Coalfields Community Campaign

CCRLA

Consultative Council of Regional and Local Authorities

CEC

Commission of the European Communities

Cedefop

European Center for the Development of Vocational Training

CEECs

Central and Eastern European Countries

CEMR

Council for European Municipalities and Regions

CoR

Committee of the Regions

COMETT

Community Program for Education and Training in Technology

COREPER

Committee of the Permanent Representatives

CORINE

Coordinated Information on the Environment

CPMR

Council of Peripheral and Maritime Regions

CRE

Confederation of European Union Rectors’ Conferences

CSO

civil society organization

CSR

Conferenza Stato-Regioni

CVCP

Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals

DAAD

Deutscher Akademisher Austauschdienst

DATAR

De´le´gation a` l’ame´nagement du territoire et a` l’action re´gionale

DG

Directorate-General

EAC

Education and Culture

EAGGF

European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund

EAP

Environment Action Program

ECAS

European Citizen Action Service

ECJ

European Court of Justice

ECRML

European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages

ECSC

European Community of Coal and Steel

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Abbreviations

ECTS

European credit transfer system

EEA

European Environmental Agency

EEB

European Environmental Bureau

EEC

European Economic Communities

EHEA

European Higher Education Area

EIA

Environmental Impact Assessment

ELVs

end-of-life vehicles

ENIC

European Network of Information Centers on academic recognition and mobility

ENQA

European Network for Quality Assurance

EP

European Parliament

ERDF

European Regional Development Fund

ERDP

European Regional Development Policy

ESC

Economic and Social Committee

ESF

European Social Fund

ESIB

European Union International Board

ETF

European Training Foundation

EU

European Union

EUA

European Universities Associations

EURASHE

European Association of Institutions in Higher Education

FDI

foreign direct investment

FIFG

Financial Instrument for Fisheries Guidance

FPV

Framework Program Five

FPVI

Framework Program Six

FPVII

Framework Program VII

GDP

gross domestic product

HE

Higher Education

HEI

higher education institution

HEQC

Higher Education Quality Council

HLPF

High Level Policy Forum

Hp

hypothesis

HRK

Hochschulrektorconferenz

IGO

intergovernmental organization

IMPEL

Implementation and Enforcement of Environmental Law

IR

international relations

KMK

Kulturministerkonferenz

Abbreviations LI

liberal intergovernmentalism

LLP

Lifelong Learning Program

MAI

multilateral agreement on investment

MEP

Member of the European Parliament

MPIfG

Max-Planck Institut fu¨r Gesellschaftsforschung

MLG

multi-level governance

NARIC

Network of National Academic Recognition Information Centers

NF

neo-functionalism

NGO

non-governmental organization

NUM

National Union of Mineworkers

NUTS

Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics

OECD

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

OMC

Open Method of Coordination

POS

political opportunity structures

PPP

public private partnerships

PR

proportional representation

QAA

Quality Assurance Agency

QAD

Quality Assessment Division

QMV

qualified majority voting

RIO

Regional Information Office

ROPs

Rahmenpru¨fungordnungen

RSPB

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

SEA

Strategic Environmental Assessment

SEM

Single European Market

SFs

Structural Funds

SGIB

Standing Group on Indicators and Benchmarks

SMO

social movement organization

SNA

subnational authority

TEU

Treaty on the European Union

TBR

Trade Barrier Regulation

UNESCO

United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization

WHO

World Health Organization

WR

Wissenschaftsrat

WTO

World Trade Organization

WWF

World Wildlife Fund for Nature

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Introduction MLG has become the most omnipresent and acceptable label that one can stick on the contemporary EU. Even its own politicians use it! My hunch is that its popularity among theories can be attributable to its descriptive neutrality and, hence, its putative compatibility with virtually any of the institutionalist theories and even several of their more extreme predecessors. (Schmitter 2004: 49)

M U LT I - L EV E L G OV E R NA N C E : T H E P U Z Z L E Multi-level governance (MLG) is a rather popular term, widely used by students of European integration and international relations (IR) as well as by commentators and practitioners. It evokes the idea of increasingly complex arrangements for arriving at authoritative decisions in increasingly dense networks of public and private, individual and collective actors. In particular, it is deemed to capture important features of how binding decisions are arrived at in the European Union. Yet, MLG is not just a convenient description of political mobilization leading to European policy-making, it also points to fundamental changes in contemporary rule. As such, it suggests that structural transformations are taking place in contemporary European states under the impact of the process of European integration. Finally, MLG prompts reconsideration of what constitutes legitimate rule (in both state and non-state contexts), and therefore invites normative reflection on the conditions under which binding decisions gain widespread acceptance and bestow legitimacy on the institutions that produce them. Many different agendas are encompassed under the deceivingly simple label of MLG, and some of these agendas are pursued also under different labels. Descriptions of the European Union abound, each emphasizing a different characteristic aspect. The EU has been described as “less than a federation, more than a regime” (Wallace 1983: 403), “neither a state nor an international organization” (Sbragia 1992: 257), a “regulatory state” (Majone 1996), a “fused polity” (Wessels 1997), a “post-national state” (Caporaso 2000b), a “composite polity” (Tarrow 2001), a “compound polity” (Fabbrini 2007)—just to name a few of the labels that have gained wider currency. How does the notion of MLG relate to these other concepts? Are the labels totally interchangeable, or do they point to significantly

2

Introduction

different phenomena within European and EU rule? Do they all apply at the same analytical level or do they pertain to different planes of political interaction? Like other popular concepts, MLG runs the risk of becoming an umbrella under which many disparate phenomena are subsumed, to the point that it may lose all denotative precision and become “over-stretched” (Sartori 1970, 1984). Necessary characteristics get mixed up with accessory features, with the consequence that empirical referents become fuzzy and over-inclusive, making MLG certainly a “compelling metaphor” (Rosamund 2000: 110), but also a “(dis-) ordering framework” that makes “‘grand-theorizing’ difficult” (Rosamund 2000: 111). Phenomena that would best be captured by other conceptual labels end up being subsumed under MLG, to the point that it loses its capacity to explain which phenomena are not encompassed within this concept (Sartori’s minimal test of negative denotational power). In reality, a wide array of theoretical, empirical, and normative issues are encompassed under this deceivingly simple label, which deserve to be fully discussed. The first aspect of MLG that must be discussed is the theoretical (ontological) one. What is the definition of MLG, that is, what are the necessary features that uniquely define it and set it apart from other cognate concepts? For example, what is the difference between multi-level governance and governance tout court (or network governance, just to mention another widely used term)? What is the nature of the levels that must enter the definition of multi-level governance? Are they territorial, functional, or purely analytical levels? Do they direct our attention towards new forms of government, new forms of state, or new forms of rule? Do they represent a challenge to the sovereignty of the nation-state: its unity, autonomy, and distinctiveness? From the answers to these questions follow different denotations of MLG, that is, different empirical referents that are denoted by the connotational features of the concept. The second aspect is clearly analytical (epistemological). How do we recognize instances of MLG or how do we know that something like MLG does indeed exist? What is the characteristic realm of application of MLG: individual nationstates, the European Union, or the entire world? Is MLG a process (trend) or a situation (state)? Clearly these queries are closely related to the first, but they force us to get down to earth and to describe and discuss discrete and concrete instances of MLG and to highlight those unique events which could not be captured by any other concept. If it is true that all empirical concepts contain, in a nutshell, empirically testable propositions, then we must be able to tease them out and subject them to empirical test. These questions are epistemological because they determine the kind of evidence that we need to produce if we want to make a case for the existence of MLG. The third aspect of MLG is normative and is related to the desirability of MLG and its outcomes, should this concept prove to be sufficiently relevant (have sufficient connotational clarity) and significant (have clear denotational scope). Here we ask under what conditions decisions made through MLG arrangements are more, less, or equally legitimate and effective than decisions arrived at through other arrangements, and why. Clearly, if MLG arrangements prove

Introduction

3

both legitimate and efficient, then there would be grounds for extending their range of application. Should they instead prove only dimly legitimate and hardly efficient, then there would be reason to oppose their diffusion. In other words, is MLG a providential solution to current problems of conventional rule or is it in fact an inevitable development (Schmitter 2004)? Should we encourage more MLG or should we rather restrict it? Normative questions should not be kept separate from a theoretical and empirical investigation, because the eventual legitimacy enjoyed by governance arrangements may facilitate their deployment just as their patent illegitimacy might lead to a reaction against them (the conditional is mandatory). Hence, normative considerations cannot be expunged from a positive analysis. This book will deal with these concerns: it will discuss the origin and evolution of MLG and it will carry out a conceptual analysis of this term. It will also explore concrete instances of MLG arrangements and discuss their desirability. It will emerge that MLG is sometimes employed as a new buzz-word for rather old concerns and debates, but that it does point to genuinely new developments that could not be captured, or only less clearly, by other terms. Perhaps, the simplest way of justifying interest in MLG is to say that it is a wonderful pretext for embarking upon a fascinating theoretical, empirical, and normative journey through the “business of rule,” as it is powerfully shaped by historical occurrences, domestic dynamics, European integration, and global developments. The next sections will argue in greater detail that is very much worth our while undertaking this journey, by recalling in broad outline some of the postwar developments that shaped the emergence of MLG.

T H E R E D E S I G N O F S TAT E S OV E R E I G N T Y The first set of arguments that should convince us of the value of an exploration of MLG regards the transformation of the national state, both in terms of its territorial articulation and in terms of its authoritative decision-making arrangements. Already some thirty years ago, British political scientist Laurence J. Sharpe (1979, 1993) drew attention to the trend towards territorial disarticulation of central states that was clearly observable throughout Europe. This trend assumed different forms and names in different national contexts—deconcentration, regionalization, devolution, federalization—but in all cases it challenged the centralized nature of unitary states and the established division of competences in decentralized states. Another British scholar, R. A. W. Rhodes (1988, 1997), drew attention to the increasing involvement of private or semi-public actors in much policy-making activity—from decision to implementation and evaluation— and the devolution to them of a share of authoritative decision-making. Obviously, private involvement in private policy-making was nothing new, but it had been theorized mainly within corporatist and neo-corporatist approaches (Schmitter 1977; Lehmbruch and Schmitter 1982; Streeck and Schmitter 1985b). What was

4

Introduction

new was that it began to appear as a regular feature also in a unitary state like Britain that had theorized and practiced the sovereignty of Parliament in policymaking. These trends signaled new mobilization dynamics and new patterns of policy-making, but, more fundamentally, they called into question both the form and the functioning of the European nation-state. Since the French Revolution, the unitary state has been both a formidable instrument of rule and a guarantor of the equality of treatment of all citizens in a given territory. In addition, it has been a powerful creator and enforcer of markets and a determined promoter of growth. As such, it has been one of those “institutional innovations” which sometimes mark the history of political thought and practice. The state that emerged from the French Revolution was meant to eliminate all those intermediary powers that stood between citizens and state authorities, getting rid of those ancien re´gime social formations that had obtained remarkable privileges for themselves by serving the sovereign in some capacity or another. The idea that democracy implies popular sovereignty and equality of access and treatment for all citizens—regardless of whether it really provides it or whether it is even theoretically possible to provide it—was then introduced. As a system of domestic rule, this model was adopted by many other European states, from those that imported it willingly (Spain, Portugal, Hungary) to those on which it was imposed after the Napoleonic conquests (the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy) and spread throughout continental Europe (Loughlin et al. forthcoming). The centralized unitary state was the hallmark of modernity. As a system of external defense and internal protection, this model retained all the advantages associated with centralized control of the territory and the ensuing efficiency gains, particularly in times of war. Control of (possibly contiguous) territories had been the driving objective of the sovereigns of Europe since the demise of the Holy Roman Empire. The “feudal solution”—control of the territory thanks to a web of personal bonds of loyalty among feudal lords— proved to be inefficient and progressively gave way to the “state solution” (Poggi 1978). From this secure power base, the state could launch military and diplomatic campaigns for the conquest of ever larger markets and the accumulation of ever larger resources, thus pulling in its train the nascent forces of capitalism that would find in national markets, currencies, and tribunals the institutional framework for their expansion. The process of state creation was long and difficult, involving the weeding-out of many potential state-building centers and leaving in place only a handful of such formations (Tilly 1975). Although the end-date for this process is conventionally placed between the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and the mid-nineteenth century—by which time a system of sovereign states had been created in Europe—a few additional reconfigurations occurred after this date (from the creation of Italy and Germany to the separation of Belgium from the Netherlands, from the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire to the separation of Norway from the union with Sweden, from the dismemberment and reconstitution of Poland to the creation and demise of the Third German Reich—to name but the most relevant developments until World War II). Most of these new states, with the notable exceptions of Germany, Austria, and much later Belgium,

Introduction

5

adopted a centralized solution to the business of rule, such that the unitary, sovereign, centralized state became the “standard model” throughout Europe. Even in the UK, which from the historical record appears to have been an ideal candidate for a federal solution, the unitary solution had won out. The end of World War II represents in many ways the zero hour for the whole continent, not just for Germany. In many ways, the seeds of the transformation of state rule, sown during the 1930s, began to sprout at that point. The system of international relations created at Westphalia had shown its most dramatic implications: the sovereign states had failed to secure peace through diplomatic bilateral relations, just as they had failed to open ever-growing markets for domestic manufacturing and commercial interests by relying uniquely on bilateral agreements (or unilateral conquests). These lessons were learnt the hard way in Europe, and motivated a handful of political leaders to overcome the system of the past and base the future on a new system of shared sovereignty. These, in a nutshell, were the motivating forces behind the creation of the European Community, at least according to the official version. Although there is nothing necessary about the creation and subsequent development of the EC into what it is today, nevertheless it has certainly not been an instance of pure happenstance. A healthy sense of the inescapable interdependence of formally sovereign states had by then been injected into national leaders. In the words of John Ruggie, “the institutional, juridical, and spatial complexes associated with the community may constitute nothing less than the emergence of the first truly postmodern international political force” (Ruggie 1993: 140; emphasis added).

T H E RE D E FI N I TI ON O F NAT I ONA L S OL I DA RI T Y Among the early states, nation-building followed state formation as a way of securing obedience from a populace that often perceived state structures as foreign and incomprehensible (Weber 1976) without having to resort to force and repression. In a few latecomer states (such as Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Norway), the romantic ideal of a national community that conquers a territory for itself among fierce opponents was the driving force behind the process of state formation, yet even in these states the job of forging a “community of destiny” was far from complete even after the achievement of territorial unity and political independence. Throughout Europe, the expediency of appealing to a feeling of belonging in order to secure citizens’ compliance with the laws of the state, as well as the need to buffer economic interests from the social displacements caused by their activity, drove the progressive concession of economic, political, and social citizenship rights (Marshall 1992), which had to be equally distributed if the national community “fiction” (Anderson 1983) was to have any real selling power. This myth had further implications in terms of the increasingly necessary balance that had somehow to be struck, particularly after World War II, between the sacrifices demanded from citizens (taxes and conscription) and the rewards

6

Introduction

that the state distributed to them (protection and services). After World War II, states turned to domestic preoccupations, driven by the need to repair war damage and reconstruct shattered systems of national solidarity upon new bases. The assumption, since the 1950s, of increasing numbers of tasks that the acknowledgment of citizenship rights entailed led to the creation of “welfare states” (or, to use a more sophisticated expression, the performance of “social eudaemonic” functions on the part of the state; Poggi 1978: 134). As the number of services and the complexity of their delivery increased, citizens, politicians, and scholars began to question the “balance” between rights and duties and to reassess decision-making and delivery arrangements. Even where the neo-liberal critique of the welfare state failed to gain real ground, as in the Scandinavian states and in most European continental states (Pierson 1996), reconsideration of the ways in which services were delivered began in earnest. The complaint was that the welfare state had become too expensive and intrusive and that personal services (health, housing, education, etc.) had become excessively bureaucratized and citizens felt increasingly “alienated” from the state agencies that delivered them. Issues of “ownership” and “participation” were partly related to the territorial distribution of state services, but had partly to do with the flexibility of service provision and the general responsiveness and accessibility of state agencies. Issues connected with the “quality of democracy,” rather than the “quantum of democracy,” started to emerge and the need for more authentic, grass-roots participation was expressed by both political parties and social movements. In addition to the “right to participation,” people started to clamour for the “right to roots.” In some countries, these concerns got channelled through new parties, such as Mogens Gilstrups’s Danish Progress Party,1 Anders Lange’s Party in Norway,2 D66 in the Netherlands,3 the Greens in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria.4 Elsewhere, they were expressed as a “backlash” against the welfare state, programs for redeploying people from welfare to workfare, and a neo-liberal critique of an all-invasive and ineffective state (Pierson 2000). In other countries, still, they took the form of a resurgence of regional and minority-language identities, particularly in the “Celtic periphery” (Keating 1988, 1998). Implicit in the regional nationalist movement was a critique of the way in which the system of national solidarity had been articulated. Whether it took the form of an explicit attack on the “cultural division of labour” (cf. Gramsci 1966; Hechter 1975) that several nation-states had put in place, relegat1 Mogens Gilstrups Fremskridtspartiet (The Progress party of Mogens Gilstrup) was founded in 1972 but made its electoral mark in the 1973 elections on a program of reduction of the state’s taxing and spending powers. 2 Anders Langes Parti til sterk nedsettelse av skatter, avgifter og offentlige inngrep (The party of Anders Lange for the strong reduction of taxes, excises, and public intervention) was founded in 1973 following the Danish example. After Carl I. Hagen took over the leadership, he changed its name into Fremskrittspartiet (Progress Party). 3 D66, or Demokraten 66, was founded in 1966 in the Netherlands by Hans van Mierlo on a program requesting increased citizen participation in political decisions. 4 Die Gru¨nen (the Greens or the Green Alternative), the first environmental parties of Europe, were founded in Switzerland in 1971, in Germany in 1979, and in Austria in 1986.

Introduction

7

ing the peripheries to the role of prime materials providers and “expropriating” them of their natural resources to enrich the core areas or whether it manifested itself as cultural opposition to hegemonic cultures and languages that debased the peripheral cultures and languages as backward and pre-modern (Rokkan and Urwin 1982, 1983; De Winter and Tu¨rsan 1998), the questioning of the national state was often coupled with a questioning of the centralized state. Issues of subsidiarity became paramount, in the sense of both giving back to society the power to decide for itself and of giving back to sub-state nations the right to decide for themselves. The concerns connected with the transformation of the nation-state model then involved both the format of the decision-making processes, and therefore state-society relations, and the territorial structure of the state, and therefore center-periphery relations.

T H E T R A N S F O R M AT I O N O F T E R R I TO R I A L S T RU C T U R E Towards the end of the 1960s, several centralized states began to alter their territorial articulation, creating levels of government between the central level (the national government and its peripheral articulation) and the local level (selfgoverning municipalities). This “meso-level” took a different form in different countries (Sharpe 1979; Dente and Kjellberg 1988), but everywhere a need was felt for a more articulated structure of political participation and service delivery. The trend towards decentralization (or regionalization from the top) coincided with the surge of minority languages and cultures that began in the 1960s (or regionalism from the bottom). Sub-state nationalisms emerged in the UK (the Celtic fringe represented by Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland), France (Brittany, Provence, and Corsica), Belgium (a mix of territorial and linguistic divisions led to the increasing separation of Flanders from Wallonia, the creation of three language communities, and the Brussels capital region), Italy (autonomist claims by South Tyrol, first, and Lombardy, Venetia, and Piedmont, later), Spain (the disquiet in the “historical regions” of Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia), Sweden, Finland, and Norway (the Finnish-speaking minority in the former, the Swedish-speaking minority in the latter, and the Sami minority in all three), Portugal (the Azores), and the list could go on. Indeed, since the end of the Cold War, the picture has become even more complicated, particularly after the separation between the Czech Republic and Slovakia and the break-up of the former republic of Yugoslavia into six independent (or semi-independent) entities (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, and Slovenia), and the corresponding formation of minority nationalisms wherever the division could not neatly separate ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups that had been forced to live together under Communist rule. More generally, it has become more acceptable everywhere to profess a minority national identity based on historical, cultural, linguistic, religious, or other traits. Indeed, the postwar period has witnessed only

8

Introduction

one major reunification, that of western and eastern Germany, marked by the difficulty of reviving a common cultural and political identity. The European Union looms much larger in this broad-brush picture than would appear at first sight. Although not directly responsible, at least in the beginning, either for the decentralization trends in centralized states or for the resurgence of sub-state nationalisms in national states, the European Community has offered a context of peace, stability, and openness within which even the more disruptive regionalist movements could safely express their requests. Indeed, it has added a momentum of its own to these developments, particularly thanks to the direct involvement of the regional authorities that the European Regional Development Policy, later Cohesion policy, has encouraged, at least since the mid-1980s. In 1986, the signing of the Single European Act had already revealed an opportunity to increase the amount of resources to be distributed to European regions in order to compensate those that were lagging behind or de-industrializing for their greater vulnerability in the larger and more competitive market that was being created. Indeed, the prospect of becoming net receivers of development funds did much to quell the anxiety of the “historical” regions of Spain that, having played a crucial role in the return of that country to democracy, were weary of the (still) centralistic tendencies of the Spanish state. The reform of Cohesion policy in 1986 entailed the direct involvement of regional authorities in the determination and implementation of the Structural Funds, thus implicitly pushing for the creation of (at a minimum, statistical and administrative) regions even in states where none existed. The Commission stopped short of requesting the creation everywhere of new tiers of legislative regions, but the pressure towards decentralization increased throughout Europe through the lever of the Structural Funds (Hughes et al. 2007; Bache 2008). Since the signing of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe, a new emphasis was placed on the great (and increasing) cultural and linguistic diversity of the Union, within which minority languages received official recognition and protection.5 These trends have accelerated further since the 2004–7 enlargement. The process of European integration, then, has reinforced and accelerated developments that were already at work domestically through secular trends related to the increased cultural awareness of European societies since the 1960s. The proponents of MLG highlight the specific contribution of the process of European integration to these developments and, indeed, propose to see the very process of European integration as the creation of a multi-level system of

5

The Charter was adopted as a convention on 25 June 1992 by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, and was opened for signature in Strasbourg on 5 November 1992. It entered into force on 1 March 1998. The text is available on the Council of Europe web-page: .

Introduction

9

governance. In what follows, I will analyze in greater detail the nature of these developments and of the challenges that they pose to the European nation-state, and discuss both the ontology and the epistemology of the complex phenomena that are currently grouped under the label of MLG. The goal is to move from mere description of these phenomena to the formulation of more encompassing theories establishing causal connections susceptible to empirical testing.

T R E S PA S S I N G S TAT E B O UN DA R I E S What I have outlined above are fairly uncontested transformations in the “business of rule” (Poggi 1978). They entail aspects of political mobilization, authoritative decision-making, and institutional articulation; in other words, they operate in the politics, policy, and polity dimensions. Taking MLG seriously means disentangling how these three conceptual planes intersect and deciding how they are related to one another. It also implies tackling the theoretical, empirical, and normative implications of MLG. In this book, I investigate each of these planes according to each of these criteria, but I then bring the several threads together to discuss whether the novel forms of political mobilization and the peculiar modes of policy-making that we observe in the European Union add up to a transformation of legitimate rule. We know that the nation-state is under pressure from many directions and that it is undergoing radical transformation (Strange 1996); whether this implies the demise of the European nation-state, as we have known it, remains to be seen. The first pressure comes from above. Irrespective of whether the European Union simply exists in order to allow the member-states to reach policy goals that they would be incapable of attaining in isolation, as an intergovernmental account would suggest, or is causing a veritable shift in loyalties from the individual states to the supranational polity, as first argued by neo-functionalism, it is clear that the EU has engendered a transfer of power and a pooling of sovereignty from the member-states to the Union. When the supranational institutions of the EU constrain domestic policy-making or impose sanctions on irregular state behavior, it is clear that certain powers have been shifted onto the supranational level. A vast literature looks at these transformations, debating whether the European nation-state is being transcended or, indeed, rescued (Bartolini 2005; Milward 1992). While these statements represent extreme positions that admit just about any other intermediate position, no one by now denies that the state is at least challenged from above. The second pressure comes from below. The central state is induced to relinquish decision-making powers to levels of government that lie at, or close to, the periphery. Regardless of whether this pressure is created by sub-state nationalisms (regionalism) or rather by the willingness of the central state to offload some of the burdensome tasks taken up during the heyday of the welfare state (regionalization), throughout Europe we witness a trend towards the devolution of certain

10

Introduction

functions to intermediate levels of government (or administration) that lie between the center (the national government) and the periphery (municipal governments). Centralized states create administrative regions; regionalized states increase the competences of already existing regions; federal states redefine the division of labor between the state and the national governments. The centralized, unitary state seems to be declining in Europe (Loughlin 2001). Lastly, the third pressure, comes from within. The blurring of the conventional distinction between state and society is normally blamed on globalization and European integration. Yet, even before these developments captured scholars’ attention, states had started to relinquish some of the tasks that they had taken upon themselves during the postwar period and to reduce that “overload” that they had experienced since the 1970s in the heyday of Keynesianism and the welfare state. The result has been a scaling down of state competencies, particularly in welfare-related fields, and a retrenchment of public administrations into the role of facilitators and regulators rather than producers and deliverers (Peters 2000: Pierre and Peters 2000). The tasks thus relinquished have been taken up by (more or less organized and autonomous, for profit or non-profit) expressions of civil society; hence we have witnessed trends towards devolution and delegation in much of Western Europe. Sometimes, such services have been simply abandoned (as according to the stern creed of liberal self-help); sometimes they have been handed over to marketoriented agencies; sometimes they have been taken up by voluntary nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). At all events, the boundaries between state and society have been shifted, trespassed, or blurred.

THE PLAN OF THE BOOK If these are the pressures, how have European states reacted to them? Multi-level governance is supposed to provide an answer, but in order to determine whether the answer takes the form of new patterns of political mobilization, new modes of policy-making, or new structures of authoritative rule we need to look at all three levels of political interaction: politics, policy, and polity. And we must meet headon three challenges of a theoretical, empirical, and normative nature. This is what the present volume purports to do, with each of its three parts dedicated to one of these challenges. Part I addresses the theoretical challenge that stems from a conceptual and historical analysis of multi-level governance. This analysis, contained in Chapter 1, shows that MLG, like other theories of governance, questions the continued existence of the unitary, autonomous, sovereign state, yet it does so by drawing special attention to the relevance that territorial jurisdictions enjoy within contemporary rule. Against the backdrop of other theories of governance that emphasize the ubiquity of networks, the role of committees, and independent administrative agencies, and the spread of new modes of governance based on “soft law,” MLG stubbornly

Introduction

11

reminds us that territorial jurisdictions are not about to disappear even though they are undergoing powerful transformations and even though non-territorial jurisdictions are becoming ever more relevant. Unearthing the causes for this transformation of the state and its expected consequences are the goals of the theoretical chapters contained in the first part. MLG is thus considered to be more than just a “compelling metaphor,” but an empirical concept that contains, at least in nuce, a causal explanation. Extracting the theoretical implications contained in the concept of MLG implies crossing three analytical boundaries. Chapter 2 is dedicated to the questioning of the center–periphery divide. It looks in particular at the postwar “invention of the Regions” (Anderson 1994) and at their new assertiveness vis-a`-vis the unitary state. It avoids embracing the prevalent view that sees this development as responding to functional imperatives and rather draws attention to the political visions and entrepreneurship that are frequently associated with the claim for greater institutional powers on the part of regional authorities. Chapter 3 records the unraveling of the sovereign state and the challenging of the domestic-international divide by venturing into recent developments in international relations theory. The aim of the chapter is to extract from recent IR theories a fundamental insight for MLG: namely new forms of governance appear to “work” because they accommodate emerging factual and normative assumptions. Chapter 4 turns to the trespassing of the third boundary, that between state and society. The boundaries of the political have been shifting for many decades (Maier 1987), but perhaps as never before, the two spheres have begun to blur into one another. Territorial and functional interests have always stood in an uneasy relationship with one another, but now start to look suspiciously similar in kind. Subnational interests are represented by institutional and non-institutional actors just as functional interests are promoted by governmental and non-governmental organizations. The legal and normative divide between state and society that has characterized the European state tradition is disappearing and the prospects for self- or co-governance are spreading. This first part then discusses how these three developments are part and parcel of the concept of multi-level governance and asserts the analytical relevance of MLG. Part II faces the empirical challenge by testing the applicability of MLG in three policy settings. These policies rank differently in terms of the a priori plausibility of being convincingly described as cases of MLG. The idea, elaborated in Chapter 5, is to subject MLG to a “most dissimilar cases” strategy and check whether it retains its explanatory power in all of them. Cohesion policy (Chapter 6) is certainly the “most likely” case, having been the policy area within which MLG was first theorized. The expectations generated by the theoretical discussion of the concept—that subnational governments will mobilize around cohesion issues, that they will challenge the gate-keeping capacities of their state, that they will forge cross-border linkages with other subnational governments in order to solve problems that exceed their individual jurisdictional reach, and that they will join forces with civil society organizations; indeed, that they will act through such

12

Introduction

organizations in order to achieve their goals—must be tested. In the process, the naı¨ve version of the “Europe of the Regions” thesis will be criticized only to uphold a more sophisticated version of the same. Chapter 7 is dedicated to environmental policy. This is the case of a policy that, although clearly relevant from a territorial point of view, was originally conceived in non-territorial terms: witness the mobilization of social movements and environmental groups. However, these latter, much as in the previous case, often join forces with subnational authorities in order to challenge the authority of central states that prefer to ignore the more stringent regulations (subsidiarity). Alliances were forged between the supra- and the subnational levels—sometimes represented by civil society organizations—in order to enforce environmental standards and implement product and process regulations. Finally, higher education policy is the object of Chapter 8. A “least likely case” for MLG, higher education also shows the empirical relevance of this concept of governance. In this case, the difficulties encountered by national education ministries in implementing the Bologna Process—in some cases, due to the federal nature of the state, which impeded the national ministry from imposing its views on state ministries—induced them to concede greater autonomy to individual institutions of learning, thus unleashing energies for increasing differentiation and marketization of higher education degrees that have been picked up increasingly also by SNAs. As competition clearly exceeds the boundaries of any national education system, international lobbies and quality assurance agencies quickly acquire greater policy centrality than national ministries. The chapters of the second part, then, confirm the empirical relevance of MLG. Finally, Part III takes on the normative challenge and discusses the legitimacy of MLG arrangements and decisions. This is an exercise that cannot be avoided, not only because the “normative turn” in EU studies has even surpassed the “governance turn,” but because the political plausibility of MLG arrangements are directly correlated with their delivering legitimate decisions and activating legitimate structures. The democratic temper of the EU is ultimately at stake (Chapter 9). The normative assessment of MLG arrangements proceeds by taking two by now staple criteria—input and output legitimacy—and by discussing whether and how they contribute to or detract from EU democracy. Input legitimacy is analyzed in Chapter 10 by looking at three components: authorization, representation, and participation. The importance of securing ample input into authoritative decision-making lies both in the better quality of the final decision and in the legitimating effect that participation in the decision-making process confers on the final decisions, even in the eyes of those groups that may “lose” from the decisions. The goal of this chapter is to check whether the manner in which governmental and non-governmental actors are authorized to participate in MLG arrangements, the interests that they therein represent, and the ways in which they participate in the policy-making process make MLG decisions more input legitimate. Chapter 11 looks at output legitimacy, analyzed in terms of transparency, responsiveness, and accountability. Given the difficulty of assessing the quality

Introduction

13

and effectiveness of policy outcomes, output legitimacy is interpreted as an assessment of the quality of input-providing on the part of the actors involved in MLG arrangements. The questions that animate this chapter are whether MLG arrangements secure enough transparency to allow an assessment of such inputproviding exercises, whether they allow subnational authorities, social partners, and civil society organizations to be responsive towards their constituencies, and whether they allow these constituencies and other “forums” to hold these actors to account. The complex interrelationship between too much and too little responsiveness and the consequent potential impossibility of holding actors to account leads to a discussion of how MLG arrangements may avoid the “joint decision trap” thanks to their “loosely coupled” structure. Chapter 12 wraps up this discussion by analyzing how MLG arrangements contribute to the overall democracy of the European Union. While the debate is still too open to draw any firm conclusion on the matter, it would appear that a diffusion and generalization of MLG structures would eventually lead to the creation of some type of “federal state” or “compound polity” that might provide a sufficiently solid yet malleable constitutional structure to accommodate territorial and functional jurisdictions, the coexistence of several levels of government, and the possibility for experimentation and diffusion of policy solutions. The concluding chapter picks up where this introductory chapter leaves off in speculating on the evolution of the European state. Along the way a few points will have been acquired. First, the European state is indeed being transformed and challenged along the three dimensions identified in this book. It is becoming less unitary, less autonomous, and less distinctive in its mode of action. Second, the territorial dimension cannot be ignored. There is no future solely made of multiple functional, overlapping, competing jurisdictions on the horizon: positive and negative externalities will still need to be tackled at the territorial level, both on expediency and on normative grounds. Third, in a supranational polity like the EU, subnational authorities will become increasingly more similar to social groups and lobbies; however, the values that they mobilize within the political cultures of the respective state traditions will prevent them from being completely assimilated into these a-territorial formations. Fourth, governance will be all the more effective, the greater the cooperation between territorial and non-territorial jurisdictions, as is revealed by the performance of those territorial authorities in which the welding of subnational governments with their respective civil societies has already occurred. Fifth, MLG does indeed capture a significant number of policy processes, forms of political mobilization, and trends towards polity restructuring to warrant its continued use in the future.

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Part I The Theoretical Challenge

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1 Conceptual Analysis Instead of the advent of some new political order, however distant, one finds an emerging political disorder; instead of a neat, two-sided process involving member-states and Community institutions, one finds a complex multilayered, decision-making process stretching beneath the state, as well as above it; instead of a consistent pattern of policymaking across policy areas, one finds extremely wide and persistent variations. In short, the European Community seems to be part of a new political (dis)order that is multilayered, constitutionally open-ended, and programmatically diverse. (Marks 1992: 221)

I N T RO D U C T I O N The debate on multi-level governance (MLG) spans at least fifteen years, since the seminal article by Gary Marks (1992), who first proposed it as a useful concept for understanding some of the decision-making dynamics of the European Union. Until then, the field of EU studies in political science had been dominated by the theories of neo-functionalism and intergovernmentalism, which purported to explain not only how the European Union had come about, but also how it functioned. It was generally assumed that the same forces which explained the creation and evolution of the European Union would also explain its functioning. Whether the fundamental unit of analysis was states defending and promoting their national interests in an intergovernmental arena or market forces which inevitably drew individuals, groups, and firms towards the supranational level, the forces of integration also explained the functioning of the integrated entity. Marks (1992) had the merit of calling into question this dichotomous view of European integration and of inserting a conceptual wedge between the two theoretical poles. By highlighting the lack of attention of both theories to “flesh-and blood” actors—whether because trapped in their institutional roles and therefore always promoting the interest of the institutions they represented, as with intergovernmentalism, or because moved by the powerful economic and social forces of the market, as with neo-functionalism—he drew attention to phenomena that could not easily be accommodated by either theory. In order to avoid the Scylla of the raison d’e´tat and the Charybdis of impersonal forces, Marks (1993, 1996) introduced the visions, passions, and interests of real life

18

The Theoretical Challenge

individuals and asserted the autonomous explanatory force of a third paradigm, that of multi-level governance. MLG quickly became a catch-all phrase that indicated phenomena taking place at three different analytical levels: that of political mobilization (politics), that of policy-making arrangements (policy), and that of state structures (polity).1

M LG A S PO L I T I C A L M O B I L I Z AT I O N The first, and for a long time only, application of MLG “theory” was in the realm of cohesion policy, as it was in this realm that unconventional mobilization dynamics and decision-making patterns were most apparent (Hooghe 1995, 1996b; Hooghe and Marks 1996; Marks et al. 1996; Keating and Hooghe 1996; Jeffery 2000; Le Gale`s and Lequesne 2002). Other applications were later developed for different EU policy fields, such as environmental policy (Jordan 1998), as well as in non-EU settings (Rosenau and Czempiel 1992). Since then, the concept has caught on and there has been a veritable explosion in the number of scholars using it. In a direct confrontation with intergovernmental state-centrism, including its liberal version (Moravcsik 1993, 1998), MLG challenged the contention that nonstate interests could aspire to make an impression on EU policy-making only by operating through state representatives, that is, that they could not successfully challenge the “gate-keeping” capacity of the central state. There were three main contentions of liberal intergovernmentalism: (1) that governments could effectively control the center-periphery gates (thus deciding which subnational formations could be given the right to represent themselves in the political process as carriers of legitimately distinct interests); (2) that they could control the statesociety gates (thus retaining the power to select and prioritize societal demands into a “national interest”); and (3) that they could keep the domestic-foreign gates (thus functioning as the sole legitimate representatives of domestic interests, whatever their level and nature). Marks et al. (1996) drew attention to the roles that non-national state authorities and non-governmental organizations played in the daily politics of the European Union and therefore to their capacity to be present in the European and international arenas without the gatekeepers’ permission. The debate, in the field of regional or cohesion policy, boiled down to deciding whether subnational authorities were willing and capable of contributing to the policy-making process without the supervision of the central national governments. Their formal or informal involvement in European regional policy

1

A political economy reading of the political implications of European integration is suggested in Marks and Hooghe (1997).

Conceptual Analysis

19

gave them an additional argument in their struggle with their central governments for larger devolutionary powers and fanned regionalist aspirations for autonomy (Bourne 2003; Jeffery 1997a, 1997b; Jones and Keating 1995; Keating and Jones 1985; Piattoni 2003a; Rhodes 1995). Involvement of the regional level in cohesion policy had also potentially significant polity implications: if regions were deemed essential for the success of structural policy, then also those states which lacked a “third” level were expected to create it (Bullmann 1994; Jeffery 1997b). Hopes were raised for an upcoming “Europe of the Regions” (Anderson 1991; Christiansen 1996; Jeffery 1997a; Loughlin 1996; see also Elias 2008a). Far from functioning as vigilant keepers of the territorial gates, national governments were unaware that the fences were being torn down. At a minimum, Marks et al. (1996) had drawn attention to the capacity of noncentral state authorities to open, or even remove, the center-periphery gate and to cross the domestic-foreign gate without laissez-passer (this is the “multi-level” aspect of MLG). Moreover, they had also drawn or reawakened people’s attention to the forays that non-governmental organizations made into the daily politics of the European Union, thus marauding past the state-society gate (and this is the “governance” aspect of MLG). MLG was thus meant to draw attention precisely to the fact that the relevant levels of the “EU game” were not only the national and the supranational (as in the famous two-level theorization by Putnam (1988) so eagerly utilized by liberal-intergovernmentalism proponents), but that there were other levels which mattered as well. The point of departure for this multi-level governance is the existence of overlapping competencies among multiple levels of governments and the interaction of political actors across those levels. . . . Instead of the two level game assumptions adopted by state centrists, MLG theorists posit a set of overarching, multi-level policy networks. . . . The presumption of multi-level governance is that these actors participate in diverse policy networks and this may involve subnational actors—interest groups and subnational governments—dealing directly with supranational actors. (Marks et al. 1996: 167)

In this attempt to flesh out the potential of MLG theory, Marks’s agenda was usefully complemented and strengthened by that of Liesbet Hooghe, who had autonomously pursued an interest in regional mobilization for quite some time (Hooghe 1995, 1996a), thus tapping into the abundant resources of a different type of literature: that on sub-state nationalism (Keating and Jones 1985; Jones and Keating 1995; Keating and Loughlin 1997). Transformations that were taking place at the EU level, and seemed uniquely determined by inter-institutional dynamics within the EU, revealed interesting parallels with developments that had their roots in regional mobilization and were therefore external, and initially perhaps even hostile, to the EU but internal to the member-states. In its turn, the literature on sub-state nationalism was part of a larger literature on the reawakening of political contention in Europe (McAdam et al. 2001; Imig and Tarrow 2001; Tarrow and Della Porta 2004; Tarrow 2005; Tilly and Tarrow 2007), and on new social movements (Della Porta and Diani 2006; Diani and McAdam 2003),

20

The Theoretical Challenge

which supposedly had their roots in the emergence of post-materialist values in the late 1960s and 1970s. The works of Marks and McAdam (1996) and Marks et al. (1996) testify to this convergence. Even though some of the empirically oriented literature on “Europe and the regions” often concluded that the regions which best promoted their interests at the EU level did so by working through their national governments (cf. Hooghe 1996b, Hooghe and Keating 1994; Jeffery 2000), the essence of the MLG view necessarily pointed in the direction of a confusion (con-fusion) of established processes and hierarchies and the emergence of new configurations of powers and competences. The “actor-centeredness” of MLG emphasized how the different levels were traversed and linked by actors moving rather freely across formally still existent levels of government and spheres of authority. The new processes were, therefore, not just multi-level, but also multi-actor—meaning that different types of actors linked different governmental levels and populated the policy networks thus formed. However, by challenging the gate-keeping capacity of the state, Marks et al. (1996) were implicitly also calling attention to the changing nature of the state in Europe, hence inviting reflection on the polity dimension.

M LG A S P O L I C Y- M A K I N G Once asserted, MLG theory began to be applied to the exploration of the arrangements for the production of EU policies and, more generally, to the overall functioning of the EU. This is by now generally referred to as the “postontological” phase in EU studies (Jachtenfuchs 1995; Caporaso 1996; Wiener and Diez 2004). Having momentarily shelved the existential (ontological) question of what forces were driving European integration and what kind of political construct it would eventually become, scholars began to direct their attention to the ways in which the EU actually functions and produces authoritative decisions. Scholars were also reacting to objective developments in the European Union. The completion of the Single Market and the creation of the Economic and Monetary Union signaled the completion of economic integration. The Union was by now a powerful machine producing regulation, disbursing funds, promoting competition. This “governance turn” was shared by other approaches: three strands of literature are definitely worth mentioning as they amount to a veritable “Copernican revolution” in EU studies: namely network governance, committee governance, and new modes of governance. “Network governance” (Peterson 1995a, 1995b; Dehousse 1997; Kohler-Koch and Eising 1999, to name just a few) addresses many of the same empirical developments as MLG, focussing on the discrete networks that emerge in the EU around single policy areas and sometimes around single policy issues. There are two main questions. The first question, posed particularly by Kohler-Koch (1999c), is whether it is possible to extrapolate from the diverse variety of networks a specific EU mode of governance which cuts across and encompasses

Conceptual Analysis

21

all different networks. The second question is whether and how such a structure gets transposed onto the different member-states’ own modes of governance and what difficulties and resistance such an operation encounters. In this case too, the reflection quickly (and self-consciously) broadens from an analysis of policymaking to an analysis of (the patterns of) political mobilization and state-society relations. Kohler-Koch’s contention is that EU networks configure the relations between public institutions and private interests in ways that defy the conventional notions used by political scientists to describe state-society relations such as statism, liberalism, and corporatism2 and constitute a fourth ideal-type in its own right. The second strand in the governance literature is on “committee governance” (Joerges and Neyer 1997; Joerges and Vos 1998; Christiansen and Kirchner 2000; Christiansen and Larsson 2008), produced by those scholars who study the many committees that are created to deal with those “details” of European policymaking that exceed the Council’s attention and the Commission’s knowledge. Since committees are a form of network, the two approaches overlap in part. However, while networks normally emerge spontaneously and are only later “sanctioned” by the recognition of national and supranational authorities, committees are carefully crafted by supranational and national authorities to address some of the co-management problems that they face in their daily tasks. The main problems are twofold (Majone 2001; Pollack 2003b). On the one hand, the Council wants to supervise the Commission activity, particularly when it is entrusted with the implementation of Council decisions that cannot, by their very nature, be sufficiently detailed to exclude any kind of “drift.” On the other hand, the Commission needs the knowledge of experts dispersed across different institutional and non-institutional levels in the member-states in order to carry out its tasks. According to some, committees that were originally set up as a way for the principals (the member-states) to monitor their agent (the Commission) have turned into the agent’s way of shaping policy frames and creating networks of experts and stakeholders intimately connected with the policy in question (Wessels 1998). Interestingly, therefore, in their actual operation, these committees tend to acquire traits that make them similar to self-crafted networks as they tend to act like small communities generating specific worldviews, specialized languages, approved argumentative styles, standard procedures (Quaglia et al. 2008). The typology of committees is very wide, as they serve different purposes (intelligence gathering, solution finding, implementation monitoring, outcome evaluation) without (yet) configuring any overarching structure that may prove technically unviable and politically awkward if extended over too many areas and too many issues.

2

A line of reflection with roots in Lijphart (1977, 1999), directly quoted by the author, as well as in Streeck and Schmitter (1985b).

22

The Theoretical Challenge

The third strand is the “new modes of governance” literature which expands its focus to embrace all those arrangements that have been devised since the Treaty of Maastricht to arrive at minimally binding agreements without issuing formal regulations (overviews are contained in Eberlein and Kerwer 2002, 2004; Knill and Lenschow 2003; Citi and Rhodes 2007). Open Method of Coordination (OMC), soft law, dialogues—these are the ways in which the EU has tried to secure coordination among and convergence towards desired ends in the absence of sufficient consensus to legislate change. These new modes are premised on the self-steering capacity of actors who jointly establish the goals to be achieved as well as the roadmap for their achievement. These actors realize that in order to achieve commonly desired policy results, they need to negotiate a flexible approach tailored to the pace and difficulties of each partner. Public authorities are part of these arrangements, either as mere actors or as facilitators or as supervisors—hence the perception that these new modes of governance unfold in the “shadow of hierarchy” (He´ritier and Eckert 2008). However, also in this case we witness a certain flattening of hierarchies and blurring of boundaries that was detected also by the other two strands. The new modes of governance literature share with the other governance approaches an appreciation of the self-constituting capacity of these arrangements and ample recourse to good arguments in order to find commonly satisfactory solutions as suggested by the discursive approach to politics (Drycek 1990; Wæver 2004). Other scholars have called these methods “democratic experimentalism” (Dorf and Sabel 1998) or “experimentalist governance” (Sabel and Zeitlin 2008) and the structures that result are described as “directly deliberative polyarchy” (Cohen and Sabel 1997).

M LG A S PO L I T Y- S T RU C T U R I N G The MLG perspective—like that of network governance, committee governance, and the new modes of governance—almost inevitably ends up analyzing all three aspects of state-society interactions: political mobilization, policy-making, and state structuring. Trying to confine the analysis of MLG to only one of these analytical planes would be futile and deprive the concept of its main source of interest and fertility. MLG is interesting precisely because it spans different analytical levels—hence the maddening task of devising a “multi-level framework for analysis” (Citi and Rhodes 2007) to study multi-level governance!—and because it points to inherently dynamic arrangements. The step from describing policy-making processes and patterns of political mobilization to theorizing about how individual member-states and the EU polity are being restructured is as inevitable as it is demanding. It means engaging with portentous issues (the structuring of the political space) and mammoth literatures (on state formation, different state forms, different models of democracy, etc.) in their own right. As the theorists of MLG themselves acknowledged, proper theorization on how the new type of mobilization and policy-making was redefining the state—that is, the

Conceptual Analysis

23

institutional structures of center-periphery, state-society, and domestic-foreign relations—was, at the time of their writing, still out of sight. However, MLG theorists have not framed clear expectations about the dynamics of this polity. If, as these theorists claim, competencies have slipped away from central states both up to the supranational level and down to the sub-national level, then, ceteris paribus, one would expect greater interaction among actors at these levels. But the details remain murky and, apart from a generalized presumption of increasing mobilization across levels, they provide no systematic set of expectations about which actors should mobilize and why. (Marks et al. 1996: 167)

In reality, the “destructive part” (pars destruens) of the original Marks argument was stronger than its “constructive part” (pars construens). The weapon that had allowed him to create a conceptual space for MLG (i.e. to say what MLG was not), that is, its “actor-centeredness,” was not as useful in erecting the MLG construction (i.e. to say what MLG was), although stimulating and suggestive of other types of investigation that could depart from this (see e.g. the attempt to explore the personalistic, informal component of many governance arrangements pursued by Christiansen and Piattoni 2003; Stacey and Rittberger 2003; Mak and van Tatenhove 2006). Indeed, MLG theory-building proved to be a much harder and as yet uncompleted task, to which other scholars also contributed. The third phase in MLG studies, then, increasingly concentrated precisely on the process of constructing a multi-level polity and on its expected features. In many ways, this marks a return to the original ontological agenda of integration studies, somehow closing the analytical circle. Scholars were by now suggesting that MLG referred to processes that, through the slow accumulation of policy decisions and political mobilization, were transforming the political structure of the European Union, the structures of the individual European member-states and, perhaps through similar dynamics elsewhere, the structures of the state tout court. This line of inquiry has its roots in the attempts of scholars who sought to explain real-life developments, while studying changes in the public administration and territorial articulation of national states. Two notable examples will suffice. R. A. W. Rhodes (1988, 1996, 1997) analyzed the disaggregation of British governmental and territorial structure; Fritz Scharpf (1988, 1994a, 1994b, 1997a, 2000a) investigated the aggregation and coordination of diverse policy preferences in Europe. Though taking concrete territorial entities as their point of departure, in both cases MLG was approached as a quintessentially theoretical problem. MLG studies thus acquired an increasingly more abstract and authentically theoretical overtone and produced attempts at general theorizations. To begin with, Marks and Hooghe audaciously sought to use the concept not just to describe a peculiar type of decision-making arrangement (policy) or a new pattern of political mobilization (politics), but also as a novel development in state restructuring (polity) (Hooghe and Marks 2002, 2003; Marks and Hooghe 2004). Building on ideas first propounded by economists (Frey and Eichenberger 1999), in numerous contributions Marks and Hooghe developed two ideal-types

24

The Theoretical Challenge

of MLG, in an attempt to define the theoretical space within which empirical instances of intergovernmental relations, which were emerging, for example, in cohesion policy, could be located. Their goal was to theorize the “unravelling of the state” (Hooghe and Marks 2003) and the emergence of new patterns of relations between different levels of government that had traditionally been conceived as hierarchically ordered, or at least nested within one another, and that were now challenging or bypassing these established relations without, however, completely superseding them. According to Marks and Hooghe, (ideal)Type I MLG resembles more conventional federal systems, which establish a stable division of labor across a limited number of levels of government with general jurisdiction over a given territory or a given set of issues and mutually exclusive membership. (Ideal)Type II MLG, for the moment still lacking a well-identified “real-life” referent, appears as an anarchical, fluctuating superimposition of single-purpose jurisdictions with overlapping memberships. In an attempt to distill theoretically typical modes of action from different governance systems, Marks and Hooghe argued that different types of mobilization can be associated with these two MLG ideal-types: a “voice” type of action in Type I MLG systems and an “exit” type of action in Type II MLG systems, as one would logically expect from actors trapped in fairly stable and ordered systems of governance and actors free to move easily across numerous and unconnected systems of governance, respectively. Chris Skelcher (2005) advanced this line of thinking by elaborating a general theory of how systems of governance develop “jurisdictional integrity.” Also according to Skelcher, Type I MLG is the type we (think we) know better because it is “the predominant mode within national polities” (Skelcher 2005: 94). The process of state-building imposed order on surrounding territories by asserting the exclusive jurisdiction of national centers over competing would-be national centers and creating a “hierarchically ordered system of multi-purpose governments” (Skelcher 2005: 94). Type II governance tends to flourish specifically when there is a need for a tailored governmental body to address an issue that is not susceptible to policy action by a Type I organization, for example, in the international arena and when there are particular functional governance problems. The empirical data . . . show that Type II governance occurs extensively in settings where the high boundary integrity of Type I governmental systems produces a competency constraint, in other words where mainstream governmental organizations are unable to respond flexibly to policy issues that intersect their jurisdictions. (Skelcher 2005: 94)

Type II governance normally coexists with Type I governance in the same overarching polity it is embedded in (Hooghe and Marks 2003: 238). Typically, in contemporary societies, Type II jurisdictions get superimposed onto one another in a disorderly fashion and onto Type I jurisdictions. We often observe overlaps between both jurisdictional types, among which, in case of conflict, it may be difficult to adjudicate. In this case, according to Skelcher’s terminology, we have “polycentric governance.” Challenges to jurisdictional integrity (hence

Conceptual Analysis

25

confusion and overlap) may come from above or below, when super- or subordinate jurisdictions step forward to manage more effectively given policy issues (thus fanning integrative or devolutionary processes). Alternatively, they may come from the side, when same-level jurisdictions trespass across jurisdictional boundaries (thus triggering aggregative processes). Interestingly, and in accordance with an actor-centered approach to MLG, Skelcher observes how “The boundary spanning behavior of individuals operating at the margins of their jurisdictions embodies a deeper motivation to challenge and recast the existing patterns of governmental authority” (Skelcher 2005: 96). Moreover, relational integrity is more complicated for Type II than Type I governance. Type I governance, in practice, is nothing more nor less than the conventional nation-state: Type I bodies are constructed, discursively in terms of their formal authority, as the government for that community of citizens. The body is embedded in a political process that makes it the focus of the expression and allocation of community values. There is an infrastructure of democratic rule by elected representatives that provides symbolic and substantive means for securing legitimacy, consensus and accountability. Type II bodies, by contrast, have properties that lead to weak “democratic anchorage.” (Skelcher 2005: 96)

So, while the conceptual dichotomy between Type I and Type II governance is clear, it is less simple to devise concrete modes of boundary regulation (processes) and less easy to build institutions for their regulation and adjudication (structures). Type II MLG structures borrow some of their legitimacy, consensus, and accountability from Type I governance structures, but they also attempt to create mechanisms of their own. Generally speaking, though, they exist in an “institutional void” and must rely on the force of interpersonal relations for their continuing existence. Normally speaking, the legitimacy of Type I MLG structures derives from the procedures by which they are regulated (rules, roles, and norms), while the legitimacy of Type II MLG structure depends on their effectiveness and on the “navigational skills” of their management. Clearly, these are two distinct normative planes, and yet these two types of governance coexist in contemporary democracies and characterize the European polity, in particular. According to Pierre and Peters (2000), these two types of governance coexist in a “negotiated order” typical of situations in which the new institutional level, in this case the European Union, is trying to get institutionalized in a context which is still dominated by existing institutions. Bache (2008) and Conzelmann and Smith (2008) understand these two Types in a rather straightforward way, as different ways of organizing the delivery of specific services in modern democracies. In this sense, Type II jurisdictions may also be non-territorial and get superimposed on Type I jurisdictions. Fairly common examples—which feature in abundance in every European memberstate—are national health units, school districts, industrial consortia, and so on. If, however, we take these two MLG Types as “ideal-types,” then it becomes more difficult and problematic to conceive a modern polity as consisting mostly or exclusively of non-territorial jurisdictions that only claim functional allegiance

26

The Theoretical Challenge

from their members and offer them only limited opportunities to express their desires and grievances. In many ways, this would amount to a major restructuring of the European state, and one which would seem hard to accept normatively. The contrast and inherent tension between these two types of MLG was reformulated by Scharpf in terms of the search for the “optimal scale of government,” that is, that level of government which is both effective in securing solutions to collective problems, because it operates on a sufficiently large scale to obtain technically superior solutions, and democratic, because it remains on a sufficiently small scale not to involve any significant sacrifice of individual preferences (Scharpf 1988: 239). Like Bartolini (1998) and Skelcher (2005), Scharpf believes that the balance between governmental levels accomplished by the national state in the eighteenth century has been progressively called into question by states’ inability to prevent external threats (negative externalities) that pitted them against each other (read: wars) and by their inability to fully reap the profits (positive externalities) that monetary and real flows on a continental scale could generate (read: single market). From the realization of the inability of national states to prevent wars and reap profits supposedly comes their resolution to equip themselves with supranational structures of government (read: the European Union). And yet, as many scholars acknowledge, the apparent inefficiency of a given level of government does not immediately entail its willingness to divest itself of its powers in favor of another level of government. The new order presupposes the weakening and the overcoming of the old order, and yet governmental institutions live well past the reasons for their coming into being, partly because they manage to mobilize a wealth of expectations, myths, and loyalties that, by shaping individual behavior, tend to grant them staying power (cf. Jachtenfuchs 1997). But these are questions that will be taken up in the third part of the book.

M LG’S C ON C E P TUA L S PAC E Summarizing the conceptual history to date, the term “multi-level governance” denotes a diverse set of arrangements, a panoply of systems of coordination and negotiation among formally independent but functionally interdependent entities that stand in complex relations to one another and that, through coordination and negotiation, keep redefining these relations. It is also itself a “multi-level concept,” because it connects different analytical planes and raises different types of questions. Let us recall the main points made in the course of the conceptual analysis carried out above. MLG is at the same time a theory of political mobilization, of policy-making, and of polity structuring, hence any theorization about MLG must be couched alternatively or simultaneously in politics, policy, or polity terms. The levels which are connected by MLG must be first and foremost understood as territorial levels (supranational, national, subnational), each commanding a certain degree of

Conceptual Analysis

27

authority over the corresponding territory and the individuals residing in it, but they may also indicate other jurisdictional levels, identified with regard to a certain function and to the constituents who are interested in the performance of that function. The challenges which they face are of an objective nature (asserting jurisdictional integrity over the selected territory or function) and of a subjective nature (securing relational integrity in terms of legitimacy, consensus, and accountability), hence the need to study both their empirical and normative implications. MLG thus raises theoretical, empirical, and normative questions that require commensurate answers in terms of empirically falsifiable propositions. I here propose a graphic elaboration (Figure 1.1) of the conceptual space within which MLG is located in order to help identify the empirical propositions to be tested. As already remarked, MLG is an inherently dynamic concept that crosses several analytical boundaries or “gates”: namely the gates between center and periphery, between the domestic and the international, and between state and society. The origin of the axes identifies the (ideal-typical) sovereign state, as it has been theorized since the seventeenth century: a territorial system endowed with high boundary and relational integrity (Skelcher 2005; Bartolini 2005). The first axis (X1) indicates movements away from the unitary state towards decentralized, devolved, and federal configurations along a formal power dimension (center v. periphery), as theorized by regionalism. We know that what makes the federated units strong vis-a`-vis the center are both formal attributes (e.g. legislative and fiscal competences) as well as less formal, but nevertheless crucial, characteristics (such as cultural distinctiveness and administrative capacities): X2

Europe and (“of” or “with”) the regions

Theories of European integration O

X1 Type I MLG

Regionalism X3

Type II MLG

Fig. 1.1. MLG’s analytical space Notes: X1 ¼ center-periphery dimension; X2 ¼ domestic-international dimension; X3 ¼ state-society dimension; O ¼ the sovereign state.

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The Theoretical Challenge

the first axis can be thought of as measuring primarily the former but as being sensitive also to the latter. The second axis (X2) indicates movements away from the autonomous state towards increasingly structured modes of international cooperation and regulation, as theorized by intergovernmentalism. International regimes subject (albeit willing) sovereign states to their disciplining rule, thus limiting and constraining the autonomy of the individual states. International relations thus increasingly shed their purely anarchic character and acquire the traits of regulated regimes. The third axis (X3) portrays movements away from the clear-cut distinction between the public and the private, between state and society, between lex and jus. Movements away from the origin show increasing degrees of involvement of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs) in authoritative decision-making, policy implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, as theorized by functionalism. Three intersecting planes and a three-dimensional space are thus formed. The first plane, delimited by X1 and X2, is the one travelled mostly by the literature on “Europe and the Regions”: comparative studies on devolutionary trends in Europe or on the emergence of a “third level” in Europe typically connect changes in center-periphery relations with the stimuli (various push and pull factors) coming from the international context (because of the heightened competition sparked by globalization, because of the regulatory osmosis encouraged by Europeanization, or simply because of cross-national emulation). Similarly, the “Europe of the regions” hypothesis postulated a causal correlation between growing Europeanization and the strengthening of regional identities, whereas the literature on “Europe with the regions” reduced the causal claim to a mere correlation, with the European Union simply acting as an additional structure of political opportunities that only some regions were willing and able to effectively exploit. Again, on this plane, we would find studies of the ingenious ways in which regional authorities use their manifold (particularly social, economic, and cultural) resources to conduct their own brand of foreign diplomacy (paradiplomacy), establishing regional offices in Brussels, opening up to cultural exchanges, entering cross-border cooperation agreements, engaging in twinning exercises, lending assistance to their “co-regionals” living abroad, and so on (Keating and Aldecoa 1999). The varied literature on regional mobilization in Brussels and elsewhere belongs, in other words, to this plane. The second plane is the one described by the X2 and X3 axes: on this plane, we can locate the vast literature that tries to chart the mobilization of transnational groups, such as international social movements and advocacy coalitions. The mobilization of these new global actors has been studied independently by sociologists, but has also been correlated with the process of European integration. The European Union and other international organizations provide novel structures of political opportunity for the mobilization of groups once confined within national or local borders. Without explicitly challenging the hierarchy of territorial jurisdictions, these groups nevertheless cross the boundary between the domestic and the international without waiting at the gates or asking for permission from national authorities. By representing values and principles diffused in

Conceptual Analysis

29

the international society that cannot be effectively channeled by other political formations (such as political parties) nor by the national states themselves, these movements claim to represent public interests and perform public functions (Ruzza 2004). Also at the international level, in other words, the blurring of the public and private takes place. We must not forget, in addition, that this is clearly also the plane of conventional theories of European integration, particularly of neo-functionalism, which predicated the creation and evolution of the European Community on the spontaneous mobilization of social groups across national borders and the creation of functional spillovers with the help and under the stewardship of the European Commission. While intergovernmentalism should be situated along, or very close to, the X2 axis, so as not to deviate from a statecentered interpretation of the creation of international organizations and regimes, neo-functionalism would be found further out on the X2X3 plane, since both the supranational and the social dimensions of European integration must be fully taken into account. The third plane is formed by the X1 and X3 axes and hosts attempts at exploring the varied governance arrangements that increasingly feature non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations, policy advocacy coalitions, and other expressions of organized civil society in authoritative decision-making and that study their interrelation with the devolutionary processes at work within individual national states. The problematique best explored along this plane is one that postulates causal relations between growing devolution and growing civil society involvement in governance arrangements. The White Paper on Governance probably most strongly promoted this correlation between regional and local authorities, on the one hand, and civil society organizations, on the other, in the formulation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of Community policies. In particular, the Marks and Hooghe theorization of Type I and Type II MLG could easily be depicted by a line connecting two rather advanced points on the X1 and X3 axes, representing the whole spectrum of Type I and Type II MLG going, respectively, from a highly federalized territorial system (on X1) to a highly fragmented functional system (on X3). It would be worth exploring whether the above correlations are seen as a (desirable) empirical development or as a causally necessary phenomenon. It would also be interesting to assess whether the increasing involvement of regional and local authorities (whether they hold a democratic electoral mandate or are simply appointed by the national government) in the EU policy-making process alongside various civil society organizations induces confusion between the public nature of the former (clear Type I governance structures) and the private nature of the latter (clear Type II governance bodies). In other words, whether it brings about a “privatization” of regional and local authorities as well as a “publicization” of civil society. This latter hypothesis is indeed plausible and the trend may even be validated and reinforced by the existence of associations of territorial juridsictions, such as international associations of regional and local authorities, that represent Type I governance institutions as if they were members of Type II governance structures. Indeed, it could even be hypothesized that any

30

The Theoretical Challenge

movement towards the subordination of formerly autonomous Type I governance bodies (the European member-states) to a super-ordinate body (the European Union) necessarily implies the demotion of their subordinate Type I articulations (the regions and localities) to Type II governance formations. This is a strong hypothesis indeed, which would however be worth exploring and testing. But this would mean entering the space described by the three planes: the analytical space of MLG proper. Finally, the three axes together identify the space of variation of multi-level governance. In light of the conceptual analysis performed above, it is clear that, in accordance with its original formulation, MLG levels must be first and foremost understood as territorial governments rather than as functional jurisdictions. By connecting these levels above and beyond their standard hierarchical or nested relations, it was argued, the Community pushed for a transformation of centerperiphery relations and for a redefinition of the boundaries of the respective territories and jurisdictions (X1X2 plane). The subsequent theorization of Type I and Type II MLG, then, entertained the possibility that the Union might not just upset traditional territorial hierarchies, but also foster the creation of purely functional MLG arrangements, thus connecting the X1 and X3 axes to form the X1X3 plane. Because they involve not only territorial jurisdictions and their lawful authorities, but also the corresponding expressions of civil societies, MLG arrangements also challenge more analytical boundaries between public and private spheres of authority, between state and civil society. Moreover, since the European Union gives regional and local authorities and societies ample opportunities for involvement across national borders, the boundary between the domestic and the international spheres is also crossed (X2X3 plane). The analytical space of MLG is in fact the whole volume identified by the three axes (X1X2X3 space). Whether network governance, committee governance, and the new modes of governance cross the same analytical boundaries and situate themselves in the same analytical space will be a matter for empirical research. Network governance puts particular emphasis on the form that governance arrangements take, rather than on their scope and reach, and implicitly assumes that the fundamental presence of civil society organizations in these networks challenges the statesociety division (and thus belongs more explicitly to the X1X3 plane). Committee governance, in turn, is particularly attentive to the creation of transnational deliberative communities of experts who, far from acting as the agents of their national principals, contribute to the creation of micro-regimes for the ideation, implementation, and evaluation of policy solutions (and can therefore also be located on the X1X2 plane). The new modes of governance theorization, finally, draw particular attention to the delegation of policy-making to independent agencies and to the creation of policy regimes thanks to the involvement of stakeholders in flexible processes where goals are set, benchmarks defined, roadmaps sketched, and progress is monitored (thus traveling the X2X3 plane). Yet, none of them travels all planes simultaneously as MLG does. Having thus clarified the inherently multi-dimensional connotation of MLG, how can we now identify

Conceptual Analysis

31

the empirical referents that are uniquely denoted by it? How can we address the legitimacy of the decisions that it produces?

O P E R AT I O NA L I Z I N G A N D EVA LUAT I N G M LG Despite the conceptual refinement of MLG carried out above, we are not yet able to generate propositions concerning the empirical validity and the normative plausibility of MLG arrangements. I believe we should do this. After all, one of the tasks of scientists is to formulate theories, test them, and discard them should they not prove able to make sense of current events. Lest this sounds positivist (or, more accurately, post-positivist; Hajer and Wagenaar 2003: 6), let me acknowledge the very real possibility that the process of constructing and using these analytical tools may create the reality they are supposed to describe and explain. This is one of the many valuable lessons that we learn from discursive analysis (Wæver 2004). Social reality is never only made of purely objective facts detached from the subjects that try to apprehend them, but it is constituted through the very process of learning and knowing. Social scientists construct reality while they study it. For this reason, EU scholars must be extra careful not to become involuntary instruments of rule: by simply studying and writing about governance, they might lend coherence, existence, and an even aura of legitimacy to what may well be inchoate, disorderly, and elitist attempts at getting a few things done—exactly by whom and for whom remains to be seen. This is why, I believe, trying to get one’s feet back on the ground is all the more important: governance may be a very appealing theoretical concept, but how much of governing in the European Union does it capture? Does it describe a contingent state of affairs or a fundamental dynamic of European integration that will necessarily get further reinforced in the future? Whose stakes are really taken into account and acted upon? Is this way of arriving at binding decisions fair, inclusive, and effective? Should it be upheld as a desirable benchmark and should it be transposed to other institutional contexts? Can it indeed be transposed to other institutional contexts or is it EU-specific? These empirical and normative questions will be taken up in the second and third parts of the book.

2 Center versus Periphery At the micro-level, the chains have been forged by a tendency on the part of the people everywhere to replace their links to whole systems (e.g., societies and state) with greater attachments to subsystems (e.g., ethnic, racial, religious and class groups). This mounting subgroupism is conceived to derive from the inability of whole systems to confront and solve the big issues of our time and the resulting sense people have of having lost control over their own lives. (Rosenau 1989a: 22)

THE FIRST AXIS The first challenge to the state comes from below. The European state is challenged by bottom-up dynamics that operate along the three analytical dimensions previously identified. A surge in regional political mobilization— regional nationalisms, linguistic minorities, ethno-regionalist parties—is challenging the cultural and social homogeneity of contemporary nation-states from below, claiming greater autonomy if not outright independence (politics). Policymaking increasingly requires the activation of subnational levels of government and civil society organizations for the ideation, implementation, and assessment of public policies (policy). Unitary, regionalized, and federal states throughout Europe are devolving tasks to lower-level administrations, strengthening the competences of subnational levels of government, or redesigning the balance between the federal government and the federated units (polity). Sub-state ebullience, in other words, is felt in all three dimensions of politics, policy, and polity. A growing body of literature is exploring the “unbundling of territoriality” (Ruggie 1993; Ansell and Di Palma 2004) both domestically and internationally and analyzing the structural transformations of the nation-state as prompted by the processes of globalization and European integration (Bartolini 2005; Ferrera 2005). In this chapter, I will examine the process of subnational differentiation at work in many contemporary European states and review the theoretical explanations offered for these developments. I will discuss whether these subnational stirrings should indeed be conceptualized as a threat to the modern state and whether they are due simply to internal dynamics or whether globalization and European integration are directly responsible for them.

Center versus Periphery

33

In abstract terms, if we were to reflect on the relevance of territory for cultural, economic, social, and political activities, we would find no qualitative difference between a region, a state, and a supra-state. This is probably what induces some scholars to conceptualize territorial dynamics—whether they are confined within state territories, within their component units, or beyond state borders—along one and the same dimension.1 Unless we can convincingly argue that there exist physical and relational thresholds below or above which certain activities cannot be sustained, the distinction between state, sub-state, and supra-state would appear to be wholly unjustified on purely theoretical (as opposed to historical and institutional) grounds. Thresholds do of course exist, yet they are rarely “natural,” but rather “socially” or “politically” constructed. While structural conditions (e.g. technology) may indeed magnify or reduce territorial externalities and interdependencies, thus allowing physical and relational activities to reach beyond or below what was possible in previous times, what makes thresholds “real” are actors’ strategies using efficiency and legitimacy arguments to bolster plans of state, sub-state, or supra-state activism. Historical and institutional factors obviously play a fundamental role in arguments about the scale of these activities, but, unless we pay particular attention, efficiency arguments run the risk of overshadowing what matters more. Embracing too tightly the efficiency arguments developed by other social sciences may lead us to overlook what is most genuinely interesting about political constructs such as the state, and the related notions of sub-state and supra-state. Neoclassical economics, though generally downplaying the importance of territory (other than distance, which is captured by transport costs) for the organization of economic activities, has proposed various “optimal scale” theories to highlight the “economies of scale” that can be reaped if economic (real or monetary) activities are undertaken at given spatial levels, and to explain why different organizations of production (cottage industry, small firm production, vertically integrated factory, multinational corporation) have dominated different epochs, depending on the available technology. But the terminology used makes it clear that “space” is entertained by neoclassical economics only in its abstract form as “scale” of activity, not as a particular “place” with its cultural, social, and political connotations. Greater and more self-conscious appreciation of the importance of territory, and the particular forms of social and political organization prevailing therein, has been shown by the new economic geography (see Krugman 1991, 1995), which has taught us that profitability depends on the social and political conditions that obtain locally (thus depending on non-economic factors!), and that place, and not just scale, is highly relevant to the specific forms of economic organization (North 1990). New economic geographers and development 1 Some scholars would render the territorial dimension along one axis extending from the subnational to the supranational. I tend to believe that, given the fundamental break imposed by the nation-state on an apparent spatial continuum, movements towards the two extremes should really be conceptualized as distinct. After all, political science cannot be reduced to geography.

34

The Theoretical Challenge

economists who face daily the difficulties of transposing economic recipes from their place of origin to different locations know very well how much these noneconomic factors matter.2 Notions of “center” and “periphery,” coupled with an authentic appreciation of local circumstances, have thus been reintroduced into the language of economics. Yet, once the territorial hierarchies implied by the notions of “center” and “periphery” are established, they strangely disappear from sight again and economic efficiency arguments end up lending legitimacy to those non-economic factors that had established the hierarchies to begin with. Economic efficiency arguments have the power to validate or invalidate discourses based on cultural, social, and political distinctiveness. Economic success and political effectiveness— often both simply measured by per capita gross domestic product (GDP)—bestow legitimacy upon cultural, social, and political institutions which would otherwise be considered quaint curiosities, particularly when they are spatially circumscribed.3 As anyone who has studied economic development knows, even the most peculiar cultural, social, and political practices acquire respectability—and are often presented as “models”—when they appear to sustain high rates of economic growth. The illusion of replicability is thus reproduced and the thick notion of territory as “place” is replaced by a thin notion of territory as “scale.” The developmental literature is full of examples of social practices and institutional settings which have been portrayed as “models of development” when they were coupled with high levels of growth, only to be ditched as inefficient and backward configurations when that was no longer the case. The Korean chaebol and the Japanese zaibatsu and keiretsu were suggested as models of trust-generating institutions in the 1980s when these countries were displaying high rates of GDP growth (Johnson 1982; Dore 1987; Amsden 1989) only to be deprecated as backward, opaque, and corrupt after the financial shocks and corruption scandals of the 1990s (e.g. Gerlach 1992). Conversely, the rich cultural traditions of the Italian south, of northern Norway, and of the Celtic fringe have been considered as quintessentially backward and corrupting so long as they were coupled with low growth rates. The spectacular growth spurt of the Republic of Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s was accompanied by a hasty and embarrassed shelving of those scorching stereotypes and the emergence of an altogether different discourse (“Celtic tiger”). The discourse on the relevance of territory and the significance of established levels and hierarchies normally contains reference to efficiency or superiority arguments which are used to challenge existing positions of power. Conversely, the discourse on the declining relevance of territory and the exhausted significance of established levels and hierarchies serves the purpose of fashioning new efficiency and superiority arguments which can then be used to bolster new positions of power. 2 A lively debate unfolded in the 1980s on the transferability of the “industrial district” organization of production which had been originally observed in parts of Italy, Germany, and Japan. See e.g. Piore and Sabel (1984), Pyke and Sengenberger (1992), Becattini (2004). 3 This argument was put forward by Bukowski et al. (2003, Introduction).

Center versus Periphery

35

Political science, though often borrowing ideas and arguments from economics, geography, and other social sciences, has its own specific conceptual and epistemological apparatus to define spatial continuity and discontinuity. To justify its constructs, political science has developed its own efficiency arguments that stress the advantages deriving from exerting control over people and activities at a particular territorial level. States are the lynchpin of territorial control, yet they cannot be reduced to mere efficient solutions for the problem of control. In the formation of states, what mattered was not only wielding the power to control people and activities within and across territorial borders (the efficiency argument), but also the authority to do so without being too frequently and too fundamentally challenged (the legitimacy argument). States managed to exert legitimate territorial control often by coming to terms with other systems of control (Caporaso 2000b). In political science, state, sub-state, and supra-state categories make sense only because a particular political formation, the state, has played and still plays such an important role in the political history of the European continent (and elsewhere) that we can hardly conceive of territorial space if it is not encompassed within or lying outside it. The debates on federalism and decentralization can also be viewed (but not only) as ways of theorizing how political activities are best organized at different territorial scales. They can be variously supported by efficiency arguments borrowed from other social sciences, but, ultimately, these arguments remain insufficient insofar as they do not touch upon the legitimacy arguments that can be used against decentralization of control or in favor of the right to self-government, autonomy, or independence. In principle, no two public activities—from garbage collection to provision of health services, from transportation to provision of education, to name just a few examples—are best organized at precisely the same territorial scale, so that countless articulations of functional jurisdictions coexisting on the same territory are in principle possible. But this is not all that MLG is about. Precisely because territory is much more than simply the scale at which functions are most efficiently performed, and tends to create commonalities of interests and of “destiny” bred by the many interdependencies and positive and negative externalities that occur across activities in a given space, territories may claim for much more than responsibility over the provision of one or two services and may want to constitute themselves as self-governing communities.4 The literature on federalism (e.g. Elazar 1987; Burgess 2006) discusses precisely the many ways in which territories constitute themselves as self-governing communities and what relations they should have with one another and with the super-ordinate territorial entity of the state. The state then lies at the intersection of numerous strands of empirical and normative discourses on the cultural, social, economic, and political grounds on which a given territorial scale acquires particular significance for the lives of the

4

This is why the otherwise intriguing theorization by Frey and Eichenberger (1999) appears somewhat naı¨ve to political scientists.

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The Theoretical Challenge

people that inhabit it. In this sense, the concept of state is central in political science, even (and, paradoxically, even more so) at a time when it appears to be under attack (Caporaso 1989b). Yet, the historical record suggests that the state was not the only solution to the problem of efficient territorial control, and that it was only human agency that bestowed significance upon these thresholds. Even more radically, it was not obvious that the specific set of states that currently occupy the European continent should emerge as the significant units of reference for cultural, social, economic, and political activities (Spruyt 1994). The current claims for sub-state and supra-state territorial relevance call into question the assumption of the future centrality of the (national) state in economic, social, cultural, and political terms. The state is being challenged, not just because new problems are emerging which cannot be adequately handled at state level—whatever that level is, given the wide differences in geographical extension and population size among equally “sovereign” states!—but because new (individual and collective, public and private) actors are pursuing strategies that imply the redefinition of the scale at which problems should be handled and are promoting the involvement of the level at which they are active in new decision-making arrangements. In this chapter, I shall review three arguments for a greater involvement of subnational levels of government in policy-making and for a redefinition of the very notions of “center” and “periphery”: (1) arguments supporting the recent trends in regionalization and devolution (polity); (2) arguments propounding the reemergence of regional economies and the new political economy of regionalism (policy); (3) arguments sustaining the new assertiveness of ethno-regionalist political movements (politics). Each of these developments has questioned the old territorial hierarchies and proposed new criteria that may sustain the creation of the territorial hierarchies of the future. Several studies have recently revisited center-periphery relations—and, more generally, sub-state dynamics—suggesting that changes in this realm are correlated with, if not due to, globalization and European integration. It is, however, difficult to disentangle the temporal and causal relations between these different dynamics. Given the difficulty of establishing and measuring cause-and-effect relations between these complex phenomena, the correlations are suggestive at most. In this chapter, I will first review theories of sub-state mobilization that do not appeal to external developments (depicted by movements along the X1 axis in Figure 2.1), as if they were unconnected with other parallel developments, and leave discussion of their possible interactions until later. I will then explore the merits of the theories that attribute the greater prominence of European peripheries to processes of globalization and European integration (rendered as movements along the X1X2 plane), and I will finally discuss the theories that attribute sub-state effervescence to developments within civil society (rendered as movements on the X1X3 plane; see Figure 2.1 below). Before I proceed, though, I must establish the baseline against which these arguments must be gauged, that is, the argument explaining the centrality of the

Center versus Periphery

37

X2

Economic efficiency argument

Administrative efficiency argument O

X1

Social efficiency argument X3

Fig. 2.1. The first axis: the center-periphery dimension Notes: X1 ¼ center-periphery dimension; X2 ¼ domestic-international dimension; X3 ¼ state-society dimension; O ¼ the sovereign state.

state and its being the appropriate scale at which “values,” be they material (policies) or immaterial (norms), are most efficiently and effectively allocated.

TOWA R D S A RE D E F I N I T I O N O F C EN T E R- P ER I P H E RY R E L AT I O N S State building in Europe is a story of peripheries that successfully claim a role as centers and, by so doing, relegate other would-be centers to the role of peripheries. The center-periphery dialectic has been an integral part of the vicissitudes of the European state and remains an integral part of the process of European integration. The literature on state building is vast,5 and has lately experienced a veritable revival. In particular, Stefano Bartolini and Maurizio Ferrera have reworked the Rokkan–Hirschman model to describe the transformation of the European (welfare) state as a consequence of the process of European integration (Bartolini 2004, 2005; Ferrera 2005). State building is described by both authors as a process of boundary drawing, center formation, and political structuring, premised on the use of the military and the police, the mobilization of national 5 See the fundamental studies of Otto Hintze (1975), Barrington Moore (1967), Gianfranco Poggi (1978), Stein Rokkan (1970), Charles Tilly (1975), but also Thomas Ertman (1997), Michael Mann (1990), Wayne ’te Brake (1997), Hendrik Spruyt (1994) and Joseph Strayer (1970).

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The Theoretical Challenge

sentiments, and the concession of citizenship rights. It is the contention of both scholars that this process, which started from the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and led to the formation of a system of European states in the seventeenth century, is currently being de- and restructured by a new process of center formation at the EU level. But the works of Michael Keating (1998) and Sergio Fabbrini (2007) have also charted much of the same conceptual and historical ground, proposing either an economic efficiency argument (Keating) or an institutional efficiency argument (Fabbrini) in order to explain why the historical experience of the European nation-state has exhausted its potential and has generated a process of European integration. Although rather different in approach, both authors present the process of European state reconfiguration as efficiency-driven. Agency, therefore, plays a proportionally lesser role in their accounts than in those of Bartolini and Ferrera.6 In what follows, I will recall the main features of the process of state formation to argue that the sovereign states crafted through this process harboured within themselves a variety of social, economic, cultural, and political sub-state configurations that were never completely assimilated into the larger whole. Some of these are “historical regions” that were not completely obliterated and survived until the present day to represent some of the most lively sub-state nations of Europe. Besides these more clearly identifiable entities, though, there are plenty of local “ecologies” (regions) that display social, cultural, economic, and political traits that differ from those prevailing in the larger entities (states) in which they are nested. These local ecologies must not be understood as altogether distinct from the wider unit in which they are inserted: it would be naı¨ve to assume that the cleavages that explain political structuration at the state level are mute here, and that regions are characterized by uniform territorial identities. This would amount to replicating, at the regional level, the mistake made by assuming that national identities are internally uniform. Territory does not explain everything, but it does explain something. Taking territory seriously should not lead us “to fall into the trap of geographical determinism. Physical space may condition social interactions but it does not determine them. Nor does physical space constitute the whole meaning of territory as a factor in politics. Its substantive meaning is provided by the activities which it encompasses, and by the sense of identity which it engenders” (Keating 1998: 7). Territory is being defined and redefined constantly, its meaning being more the outcome of a social and political process than a self-evident feature of space. Moreover, “ . . . the territorial effect is a complex and dynamic one. . . . Territory may need to be seen not as an independent variable conditioning social life alongside class, religion and other structural factors, but as a mediating factor through which other factors are perceived and given meaning”

6 Obviously both Keating and Fabbrini are too familiar with the details of European state formation to forget about the importance of agency in the construction of the modern state. Yet, the logical thrust of their argument remains pre-eminently functional.

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39

(Keating 1998: 5). Territory, in other words, acts like a prism that refracts and recombines in novel ways the same limited number of light beams: those cleavages that also explain the structuration of the larger whole, the state. Hence, the appropriateness of the term “ecology.” This is why, alongside more clearly identifiable “historical regions,” we find in Europe today a host of distinct local ecologies, such as pockets of minority nationalisms, enclaves of lesser spoken languages, areas of distinct religious traditions, industrial districts, and political subcultures that, while not immediately identifiable with any historically existing political entity, are nevertheless endowed with politically salient traits. Territoriality is the defining characteristic of the European state. Control of land was absolutely crucial for the emerging states of Europe, from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries, for several reasons (Tilly 1975). Particularly in continental Europe, the economy of the time was based on agricultural exploitation. Overland trade was also important, although risky, particularly in the absence of agencies that could effectively patrol routes and protect merchants from robberies and requisitions.7 Then, also this second source of economic wealth required control over territories. Some economies on the outer rim of the European continent (along the Atlantic coast, from Iberia to Scandinavia, and along the Mediterranean Sea) were equally importantly based on the exploitation of sea resources and seafaring, yet the hierarchies of power, in these parts of Europe too, were also based on land control. The primacy of land had two important consequences. First, as land control is made easier by territorial proximity, would-be central elites tried to extend control over contiguous territories, closing all intervening gaps. This imperative fuelled neighborhood feuds and prompted a simplification of the political geography, absorbing interstitial areas that often constituted distinct ecologies.8 Second, given the stability of most European populations in these territories and the relative scarcity of land relative to population, control over land implied control over people, and this too required effective patrolling and policing capacities (Tilly 1975).9 These two conditions together made territory a fundamental source of political power and inaugurated the center-periphery dialectic that still characterizes European political relations today. One conventional state-building argument has a functionalist undertone (e.g. Tilly 1975): inter-state wars weeded out the weaklings and promoted the “survival of the fittest.” The result of centuries of wars is the current European configura7 Bandits and agents of hostile political entities often coincided, as the well-known stories of the Saracens and of Sir Francis Drake illustrates (Thomson 1994). 8 To stress the importance of territory and physical geography, suffice it to note that these social, cultural, economic, and political ecologies are often found in mountainous and coastal areas, in valleys and fiords that naturally protect these communities from external “contaminations.” Examples are the religious and linguistic communities along the Norwegian west coast and in the alpine valleys. 9 For a useful contrast, let us recall how the nineteenth-century Balinese state (Negara) was based on the control of enough people necessary to stage complex ceremonial choreographies, but that these were not bound to the relatively abundant land (Geertz 1980).

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The Theoretical Challenge

tion, where some forty sovereign states occupy the area from Gibraltar to the Dead Sea and from the Aegean Sea to the Svalbard archipelago. Yet a few exceptional cases remain, mostly due to rather peculiar historical circumstances and agreements. On the one hand, the midget states of Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, the Vatican, and San Marino and the mini-states of Malta, Iceland, Luxembourg, and Cyprus survived; some of them are members of the European Union on a par with the larger European states. On the other hand, historically sovereign states such as Bavaria, Bohemia, Burgundy, Catalonia, Galicia, Sachsen, Scotland, Tirol, Wales, Wu¨rttemberg, and many others have been encompassed within larger territorial units and, despite their demographic and economic weight, are not separate members of the current Union. This uneven situation calls into question the notion of center and periphery, the map of sovereign states inherited from European history, and the very difference between state and region. Center and periphery are not geographical notions, rather political and cultural concepts. The state-forming centers were often not situated at the geographical center of the territories that they ended up controlling (with the exception, perhaps, of Spain whose capital, Madrid, was chosen precisely because it stood at the geographical center of this large country) nor were they necessarily cultural or economic centers. Centers became such because they commanded economic, military, and administrative resources and, in time, managed to impose their power, language, culture, values, and life-style on the rest of the territory. Language was often the first and most enduring marker of peripheral distinctiveness, one which still characterizes many regions of Europe today: “minority” languages are today present in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Basque Country, Catalonia, Galicia, the Azores, Brittany, Provence, Corsica, Flanders, Wallonia, Jutland, Schleswig-Holstein, Norway, Valle d’Aosta, Su¨d Tirol, Friuli, Bohemia, Istria, Trentino, Friesland, Limburg, and so on. As we know from the work of Lipset and Rokkan (1967), peripheries fought against their economic and cultural marginalization, thus mobilizing the center-periphery cleavage. Yet, not all center-periphery dialectic gave rise to an explicit, politically activated cleavage, as much depended on how the other lines of conflict intersected with it. The second cleavage that was activated during the “national revolution” was the state-church cleavage. As we know from Rokkan and Urwin (1981, 1983) and Rokkan et al. (1987), along the European periphery and in the north, state-building elites forged an alliance with their national (mostly Protestant: England, the Netherlands, Prussia, Scandinavia) churches. Where important pockets of dissident churches (e.g. the Catholic Church in Protestant countries, such as Prussia/ Germany) or reformed churches (such as non-Conformists in northern England, Presbyterians in Scotland, Reformed Protestants in the Netherlands, etc.) existed, these were often concentrated in peripheral areas, thus supplying religious and cultural fuel for the center-periphery warfare. In the continental core and in the south, instead, state-building elites either formed an alliance with the Roman Catholic Church (as in France and Austria), or chose a secular stance (as in Italy and Spain), despite the widespread diffusion of Catholicism among the population. In these countries, religion cut a deep cleavage in society, but this was

Center versus Periphery

41

generally not geographically concentrated and, therefore, did not contribute to the deepening of the center-periphery cleavage. The Industrial Revolution added new lines of conflict to this already complex pattern. The agriculture-industry cleavage overlapped with the center-periphery cleavage in some cases, while it cut across it in others. While in England, Prussia, and Spain, the center was originally agrarian and the peripheries (Scotland, Rhineland, and Catalonia and the Basque country, respectively) were industrial, in the case of Austria, France, the Netherlands, Italy, and Scandinavia, the center was industrial or commercial, while the periphery was agrarian. In those countries in which there already existed a center-periphery cleavage that had been deepened by the state-church cleavage, the agrarian-industrial cleavage further set centers apart from peripheries: Scotland (Presbyerian and industrial), the Rhineland (Catholic and industrial), Bavaria (Catholic and rural), and Catalonia and the Basque Country (Catholic and industrial) came to share almost nothing with their respective centers (often not even the language!) and kept considering themselves as authentic “minority nations.” The peripheries of Austria, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, on the other hand, experimented with different patterns of accommodation: federalism in Austria, regionalism in France and Italy, secession (of Catholic Belgium) and consociationalism in the Netherlands. Finally, the employers-employed (owners-workers) cleavage, also linked to the Industrial Revolution, is the most uniformly present cleavage of all, and yet it is the least significant in terms of creating local political ecologies. Working-class districts with a distinctive ideological outlook can sometimes be found in circumscribed areas, often characterized by the local prevalence of rather specific economic activities, such as extractive or fishing activities (e.g. Welsh and Scottish mining communities and Norwegian fishing communities), or by the presence of particular patterns of agricultural exploitation (e.g. share-cropping in central Italy). Rokkan’s thesis was that the early cleavages, in particular those connected with the National Revolution, most profoundly marked the European mosaic, whereas the cleavages linked to the Industrial Revolution, although more pervasive and widespread, contributed less markedly to the creation of territorial political differentiation. Indeed, we may say that in particular, the ownerworker cleavage, with its potential for creating linkages among very different categories of workers, has been responsible for the formation of inter-class alignments and has bolstered the creation of inter-party alliances that have sustained the process of national consolidation. The coalition between workers and farmers enormously helped national consolidation in the Scandinavian countries by sustaining the creation of a welfare state that has given substance to the meaning of social citizenship. More generally, social-democratic parties in northern Europe have managed to bridge inter-occupational divides and create large progressive fronts, in contrast to the more conservative forces in Austria, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands. Cross-class alliances in these countries have also been forged within confessional parties, which, for this

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The Theoretical Challenge

reason, have often called themselves “popular” parties (typically, Christiandemocratic parties in all of the above countries, plus France and Italy). The last, sometimes neglected, cleavage, that between the revolutionary Left and the reformist Left, which formed at the time of the Socialist Revolution, has in certain cases wrecked these alliances and was, in turn, a consequence of the slow incorporation of workers into the political system. In other words, cleavages are interconnected—the earlier ones determining the ways in which the later ones would intersect—giving rise to particular cleavage configurations. While peripheries existed in every European state, only some of them were politically mobilized. History does not end with state formation, though, and the European mosaic had just been completed when new developments started to scramble the picture again. Rokkan’s “freezing hypothesis” is well known. The Norwegian scholar believed that, with the concession of universal (male) suffrage and the often concomitant switch from single-member districts to proportional representation electoral systems which occurred practically everywhere in Europe by the end of World War I, the cleavage pattern characterizing each national state was frozen, having mobilized voters across the board. This held true perhaps until the end of the 1960s, when a giant “meltdown” occurred which put in question voters’ alignments in European countries. The diffusion of post-material values and the mobilization of new cohorts of first-time voters (everywhere in Europe the voting age was reduced in the late 1960s and early 1970s) thawed the frozen alignments and possibly added new lines of conflict to the existing ones (the dealignment/realignment debate was never really settled). In a time of postmaterial values, economic distinctiveness became, paradoxically, an important territorial marker: new local identities were created around industrial versus environmental values, new local alliances were forged around neo-liberal versus social-market ethics. The re-emergence of regional economies and the new political economy of regionalism went hand in hand with a rediscovery of the old linguistic, cultural, religious territorial markers to shape the new regionalism of the 1970s and 1980s.

T H E N EW CE N T E R- P E R I P H E RY C L E AVAG E It is not an overstatement to say that, once incorporated into political reflection as national territory, space disappeared again from the cognitive map of political scientists for quite a while. Territory had become “national territory”: the space over which nation-states exerted a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence. The system of states neatly divided the entire globe among sovereign states, leaving no “no man’s land” in between. Experiments at territorial co-habitation between different state authorities dwindled to the level of odd curiosities (e.g. the joint protectorate over Svalbard by Norway and Russia) (Young 1992), while territories contested between different authorities evolved into insoluble pro-

Center versus Periphery

43

blems (think of Northern Ireland, Cyprus, and Palestine, to name just a few). Just as states were supposed to cover the entire world surface, so they were expected to succeed in imposing their domestic rule. Thanks to powerful institutions like the schools, the army, the market, and the ballot, it was expected that nation-states would manage to homogenize culture, society, economy, and polity across the entire state territory. The link between state formation and enlightenment produced a portrayal of nation-states as the bearers of universalistic values and endowed the assimilationist theory of Deutsch (1953), Gellner (1983), and others with highly positive normative charges. “Peripheral” became synonymous with “provincial” (as opposed to cosmopolitan), “parochial” (as opposed to universalistic), and “backward” (as opposed to modern). “Theorists of modernization have often seen territory as a feature of ‘traditional’ society, whose significance would diminish under the influence of social and economic change. . . . If territorial distinctiveness remained, this was the result of an incomplete process of integration, and must refer to events and processes in the distant past, rather than present conditions” (Keating 1998: 2). “Whig histories” were produced in most nation-states to portray the process of national integration as the only possible and the only desirable outcome. Even where counter-histories were developed, as, for example, in the “meridionalismo” tradition in Italy (see particularly Gramsci 1966) and the “internal colonialism” thesis in the UK (see particularly Hechter 1975), they were mostly interpreted as recriminations over the unjust terms of the unification deal rather than as autonomous intellectual traditions, and hence remained intellectually subordinated to the main historiography. Social scientists largely ignored territorial factors during the postwar period because the dominant scientific paradigms prescribed drawing inferences from large samples of independent observations. The aspatial approach has long been dominant, with similar effects postulated for similar variables in different places. . . . Surveys and other studies become extremely expensive once territory is factored in, as sample sizes have to be very large. Conceptualization and model building are greatly complicated. Data tend to come in national sets, biasing inquiry again. . . . Unwillingness to recognize territory as a factor in human behaviour also stems from the intellectual commitment to universalist explanations in social sciences and the aspiration to scientific rigour, predictability and parsimony. It owes a lot to the normative association of universalism with liberalism and particularism with reaction. (Keating 1998: 4)

When territory was indeed considered, it was treated as a residual variable: that variable which explains the residual variance once all other independent variables have been correctly specified. In this regard, territory was treated pretty much like time, or technological innovation, or entrepreneurship have been treated by economists for a long time: as exogenous variables over which economic actors have no control or as “noise” (inducing fastidious problems of autocorrelation and heteroschedasticity) in otherwise fully specified regression equations. Political scientists have recently paid increasing attention to time and have begun to factor it into their explanatory models (Pierson 2000, 2004). This new awareness

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The Theoretical Challenge

has produced two outcomes. On the one hand, political phenomena have ceased to be treated as “efficient” answers to simultaneous demographic, environmental, social, or economic developments, instantaneously adapting to changed contextual circumstances. On the other hand, time has been theorized as powerfully conditioning subsequent choices, making some of them more likely, while foreclosing others, and as inducing social learning. While there exists an important tradition in the social sciences that takes space equally seriously—suffice it to think of the French tradition of political geography and micro-histories—the drive towards general propositions devoid of any reference to specific persons, times, and places (Przeworski and Teune 1970) inherent in comparative politics has done much to take space off the political scientists’ radar. “[I]t can be said that the methods of regression [analysis]—or, indeed, any parsimonious manipulation—destroy some of the implications of our data. The most important element in our data may be its diversity, a richness that is destroyed in the creation of mean values” (Kirby 1989: 207). The coincidence of the productive and reproductive processes of cultural values, social patterns, economic exchanges, and political accommodations accomplished by the nation-state in the postwar period started to unravel towards the late 1960s, and space acquired renewed relevance. A veritable rediscovery of regional identities, societies, and economies ensued and several regions began to claim greater political autonomy. This “new regionalism” (Keating 1998) was all the stronger the more these different processes coincided in one and the same territorial space, projecting the region as a plausible contender to the nationstate. Yet such coincidence seldom occurred. Part of the problem with the recurrent modernization thesis is that the relationship between function and territory is ill-specified, so that they are presented as alternative principles of organization. . . . In fact, territory and function are linked in complex ways and the territorial logic of functional processes is constantly reasserting itself, often at new and unfamiliar territorial levels. At the end of the twentieth century, economic technological and social changes are serving not to destroy territory, but to reshape its social importance and reconstruct territorial systems of action. (Keating 1998: 3)

What happens rather more often is that one of these elements—a distinctive cultural identity, a particular social configuration, a specialized economic profile, a special institutional status—is used as a lever by regional political entrepreneurs to claim greater resources and, ultimately, greater autonomy for their regions (Bukowski et al. 2003). Hence, regionalism, just like nationalism (Hobsbawn 1990), is less an objective phenomenon than a political project: making the above traits coincide within one and the same territorial space. Nothing, in theory, bars regions from becoming the level at which such coincidence takes place, provided that we are aware that this equilibrium is always precarious and subject to challenge. But is the regionalist project plausible? Do regions represent a viable scale for the coincidence of the above (cultural, social, economic, and political) processes at the current time? And is this project plausible today because of the presence of the

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protective umbrella of the European Union, which is able to manage the (logically more numerous) externalities and interdependencies that derive from such rescaling of territoriality? In other words, is a “Europe of the regions” a more plausible project than it has been considered so far? Three answers will be given in the remainder of the chapter, based of different efficiency arguments.

Administrative efficiency One important argument for articulating state structures at the subnational level is the sheer impossibility of controlling effectively large territories from a single administrative center. This administrative efficiency argument typically informed the design of the French state. After the French Revolution, the old territorial partitions were replaced with new de´partements, each supervised by a pre´fet who represented locally the entirety of the central government (Loughlin and Seiler 2001). While principally exercising police powers, the prefecture was really the central government’s base in the periphery and therefore dealt also with a wealth of other social, economic, and political functions. In an effort to turn “peasants into Frenchmen,” departmental offices were placed in central locations, originally chosen so as to be accessible in no more than a day’s horse-ride from anywhere in the de´partement (Weber 1976). A similar design was exported more or less directly by Napoleon to Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and parts of Germany (and something similar was also independently implemented in Hungary and Japan). Underpinning the French state design was both the will of the center to control the often rebellious periphery, which frequently sided with local notables and power-holders against the center (Tilly 1964), and its will to eliminate all intermediate powers between state and citizens and put each one of them on an equal footing (at least in theory). Historians who have studied both the original French system and its replicas in Italy, the Netherlands, and elsewhere (Fried 1963; Randeraad 1993; Piattoni and Brunazzo forthcoming) have remarked that prefects were much more than the mouth, ears, and eyes of the central government in the periphery. Through their periodic reports to the central government, they also communicated the ailments and wishes of the periphery, and thus steered governmental action towards the satisfaction of local needs. While formally, and often factually, independent of local interests, the prefects nevertheless served as an important link between state and citizens, in both directions. In the 1980s, France reformed its state once more, creating a new regional tier and a new level of “regional prefects” to supervise this new territorial articulation (Keating 1998; Loughlin and Seiler 2001). Italy and Spain, too, regionalized their state structure, while Belgium embarked upon a more complex and hazardous pattern of federalization which comprises territorial as well as linguistic sub-state formations. Portugal and the Netherlands, on the other hand, resisted this trend which however spanned across Europe, touching also, in different ways, Scandinavia and the UK. Germany and Austria remained federal. Efficient administrative and political control, then, is the first

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The Theoretical Challenge

theoretical justification for the existence of sub-central levels of government. Needless to say, once administrative or political levels are created, there is always a risk that they will tend to fill this space with greater meaning than the central government ever intended.

Economic efficiency A second argument refers to economic efficiency. Since the 1970s, several Italian scholars (Bagnasco 1977, 1988; Bagnasco et al. 1978; Trigilia 1986) began to study localized systems of production in areas characterized by the presence of small firms, specializing in the same branch of industrial production, which displayed unexpected rates of vibrancy and effectiveness. These “industrial thickenings” allowed small firms to reap “economies of scope” in contrast to the “economies of scale” that, until then, economic theory had assigned only to production organized in large, integrated corporations. Large numbers of small firms, specializing in similar or complementary segments of the same production process, represented an efficient response to the vagaries of markets that, since the mid1970s, had been characterized by increasingly variable and exacting demand and correspondingly required the manufacturing of small batch, flexibly designed products (Piore and Sabel 1984). Small firms with low fixed investments and highly qualified and versatile workers could adapt more quickly to rapidly changing consumers’ demands than large integrated companies, characterized by large fixed investments, relatively unqualified workers, and minutely detailed and strictly executed division of labor, thus turning on its head the until then dominant economic paradigm. Reviving a form of industrial organization more typical of the dawn of industrialization (i.e. the cottage industry as described by Alfred Marshall 1890), these small-firm industrial districts could demonstrate what, until then, had appeared to be an oxymoronic couplet: profitability and flexibility. As Michael Piore and Charles Sabel (1984), Michael Storper (1997a), and others theorized, “flexible specialization” or “specialized quality production” was one of the responses to the challenges of the 1970s, which had rendered large integrated firms non-viable—another being a new type of corporation capable of switching from one type of production to another fairly rapidly, thanks to computer-managed systems of design, manufacturing, and marketing. The viability of the industrial districts thus created, it was argued, crucially depended on the presence of local constellations of highly specific factors such as traditions of craft production, high levels of social capital, semi-urban, semi-rural settlement patterns, the presence of mid-sized towns, widespread entrepreneurship, and dense networks of civic engagements that also spilled over into the political sphere to produce a highly responsive local government (Bagnasco 1977, 1988; Bagnasco et al. 1978). In other words, one of the most successful recipes for economic success in the 1980s was made possible only thanks to well-rooted, locally based factors. Identifying the potential for, and helping the birth of,

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regional economies was considered in the 1980s to be an efficient response to the economic upheavals of the 1970s. Local governments appeared to be best placed to favor these developments. Small was suddenly beautiful again (Schumacher 1973), and regional and local no longer meant backward and inefficient.

Social efficiency A third general argument for asserting the viability, indeed superiority, of regional territorial articulations has to do with social effectiveness. Political sociology tends to see political institutions as epiphenomena of social arrangements: institutional design, performance, and change, according to this tradition of thought, are prompted by social configurations, norms, and transformations (Polanyi 1960). The myth of the self-regulating society is still central to this tradition of thought. Primitive societies allegedly regulated all the various aspects of social existence through multi-purpose structures. Economic accumulation, justice administration, social control, medical assistance, religious worship, scientific production, political rule, military defense were originally administered through traditions and creeds that were treasured and interpreted by a restricted circle of persons. Often, one and the same person was requisitioner, judge, censor, medicine man, priest, scientist, ruler, and commander. Modernization implied the progressive separation of these functions and their regulation through principles pertaining to each (juxta propria principia, as Bernardino Telesio (1565) would have put it). As a consequence, economic exchanges no longer served to secure the reproduction of the community, but to allow profit accumulation, and were consequently regulated not by tradition and conventions but by a price system. Justice was no longer aimed at preserving the cohesion of the community, but at establishing individual responsibilities and adjudicating punishments and compensations according to a system of rules. Religious ceremonies, which once served as much to instill a sense of the sacred and the supernatural as to reinforce the unity of the community and to redistribute wealth, increasingly became purely occasions for worship and spiritual regeneration. And so on. Modernity implied the progressive differentiation of the various spheres of human action, as well as their being ruled by their own criteria and principles. Still, it is often observed that these spheres have not become completely independent of one another, and that engagement in one sphere of interaction may prompt the activation of other spheres and the utilization of other criteria. These hybrids are sometimes seen as negative interferences and sometimes as positive reinforcements. To give but two telling examples, attention to family, friendship, and neighborhood ties in politics is considered a source of corruption of political exchanges which, in theory, should be solely regulated by programmatic and ideological considerations (Piattoni 2005), while the existence of norms of reciprocity and traditions of social engagement are considered highly beneficial both to efficient economic development and to effective institutional

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performance (Putnam 1993), although economic principles prescribe that only the price system should orient people’s economic choices. As we can see, two comparable infringements of modern principles are assessed rather differently by the current literature. Why is that? Whether the object of positive or negative stereotypes, blends of different spheres of human interaction and of their respective principles are frequent in practice. From this point of view, regional societies are often seen as uniquely capable of sustaining systems of economic accumulation (e.g. the industrial districts described above) as well as systems of political regulation (Trigilia 1986; Messina 2001) precisely because, locally, relations and motivations other than mutual economic convenience or the pursuit of political power can be invoked. Particularly when characterized by distinct cultural traits—language, ethnicity, religion, history—regional societies may be considered as more viable communities than the larger political units which, at some point in time, presumed to encompass them (Bukowski et al. 2003, Keating et al. 2003). So far, I have considered only “top-down” justifications for the presence of regional and local tiers of government. In other words, I have for the moment adopted the point of view of the central state and argued that it is plausible, indeed convenient, to devolve or otherwise delegate implementation or decisionmaking powers to levels of governments below the central one. Clearly, there exists also another set of arguments that take the point of view of the periphery and propose “bottom-up” justifications for the existence of regional and local governments. These arguments inform the new regionalism literature and the debate on national identities. Two bottom-up arguments are particularly powerful. Regions are seen by some (e.g. Loughlin 1996) as more authentic societies than the nations in which they are nested. At the local and regional level, men and women can develop those links of trust and reciprocity that are the essence of “communities.” The communitarian view puts the “person” at the center of its analysis: a human being cannot be a “person” unless he/she is a member of a community. The community is logically prior to the person; hence a person cannot exist outside of a community. From the liberal point of view, the “individual” is logically prior to the political community of which he/she is member. Indeed, according to liberal, contractual theory, individuals create societies by compact. Societies are created by individuals, while communities create persons. A first bottom-up justification of regionalism, then, is associated with a communitarian view of society. A second justification for the existence, indeed the superiority, of regions has a rationalchoice ring to it. At lower levels of government, individuals have a better chance of realizing their preferences without having to compromise too much with the preferences of other individuals. Interpersonal preference maximization is statistically less costly (in terms of the preferences of each individual) at the regional level than at the national or supranational level (Scharpf 1994b, 1997a). This is particularly true, the more culturally, socially, and economically homogeneous the region. While this justification may appear somewhat far-fetched, it is often an underlying argument in much of the regionalist literature.

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For all the above reasons, regions and other sub-central articulations cannot be considered as minor or lesser levels of government relative to states, as they potentially fulfill all the functions and encompass all the capacities that would allow us to consider them as a viable level of government in much the same way as we currently consider viable what we call “sovereign states.” A quick look at the highly variable size of “sovereign states” should suffice to confirm that there is no truly “optimal governmental size,” despite what the theorists of nationalism at one point seemed to imply (cf. Hobsbawn 1990 for a critique of this position) or economists still may want us believe. Yet, efficiency arguments alone, no matter how widespread, cannot settle the issue. That some regions have ended up being encompassed within larger national borders and have lost the sovereignty that, in theory, they could have legitimately claimed has therefore been the result of favorable external circumstances, successful human agency, skillful manipulation of arguments and, to some extent, serendipity.

C O N C LU S I O N Political science has acknowledged the relevance of size for the organization of domestic political activities, as well as for the types of actions that a state may be called upon to perform internationally. To start with, it has been argued in international relations that small states confront different sets of problems than large states and that therefore policy prescriptions deriving from neo-realism should apply only to the latter (Waltz 1979). Studying domestic politics, in turn, Peter Katzenstein (1985) argued that, since small states are, in both foreign and trade relations, “policy takers,” they must concentrate on responding or adapting to conditions set, internationally, by much bigger players. This—it is normally understood—simplifies governmental choices, as small states can free-ride on regimes that are set up and maintained (often at great cost to their domestic economy) by the bigger states. In addition, large states are normally articulated into smaller sub-units, to which governmental tasks are normally devolved, while small states can do without internal articulations. These peripheral articulations may vary enormously in terms of size (both territory and population), number, and competence. Peripheral sub-units may be nothing more than the local outposts of the central government, deprived of any autonomous decision-making power, or they may enjoy extensive decisionmaking powers, which they can exercise autonomously (wholly or in part) from central supervision. The internal articulation of European states often consists of several tiers of such units that coexist simultaneously to fulfill different functions. Some of them allow central government to reach its citizens; others allow citizens to decide on local matters according to their local preferences. The dialogue between center and periphery, in European states, is consequently complex, consisting of multiple exchanges of information, decisions, resources, pressures.

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The particular configuration of each state is due in part to historical contingency and in part to voluntary design. As noted, there is a wide variety of state structures in Europe today, blending in different ways autonomous and nonautonomous articulations. Whether or not a subnational (or, rather, sub-central) governmental tier has autonomous legislative power makes a lot of difference for the state as a whole. We normally speak of unitary states, regionalized states, and federal states (see Loughlin et al. forthcoming). Generally, we consider governmental tiers with legislative powers a source of differentiation, while governmental tiers without legislative powers are a source of homogenization. The former complicate and fragment state power, the latter streamline and thicken it. I have considered above some of the theoretical arguments about “optimal” levels of government that often underlie the debates about state structures and that may also inspire the voluntary design of state-builders. From the previous discussion, it should be clear that what counts most is not the sheer number of competences that have been devolved to lower governmental units, but rather the degree of autonomy that these have in setting their own goals. In calling for greater autonomy, many economic, social, and administrative efficiency arguments can be produced, but ultimately it is the skillful manipulation of political opportunities that may lead to authentic devolution of competences.

3 Domestic versus International If, on the other hand, emphasis is placed on the diminished competence of states, the globalization of national economies, the fragmentation of societies into ethnic, religious, nationality, linguistic, and political subgroups, the advent of transnational authorities, and the greater readiness of citizenries to coalesce in public squares, then the end of the Cold War and the emergent arrangements for maintaining global life are likely to be viewed as the bases for a wholly new order. States are still active and important, to be sure, but their participation in the processes of world politics is nevertheless of a different, less dominating kind, thereby leading to the interpretation that fundamental systemic change has occurred. (Rosenau 1989b: 23)

THE SECOND AXIS The second challenge to state autonomy comes from “the top,” from developments beyond the reach of state control. Far from being the autonomous entities conventionally theorized by international relations (IR) theory, states find themselves trapped in a cobweb of mutual interdependencies that powerfully limit their capacity to act autonomously. In part, these interdependencies are created by zillions of autonomous individual and corporate decisions regarding where to invest, work, study, vacation, protest, and so on. Obviously, what makes these decisions possible is the willingness of states to open up their markets, schools, resorts, and institutions, but the actual intensity of these activities is also dependent upon developments in spheres of action that are not immediately controlled by states such as culture and technology, production and reproduction, work and leisure (Omae 1995a, 1995b; Castells 1996). In part, these interdependencies are willfully created by the states themselves, often in an effort to regulate the developments described above. States enter various forms of cooperation aimed at controlling migration, countering terrorism, facilitating exchanges, protecting property rights, checking pollution, regulating communication, and so on. By doing so, they shift sovereignty upwards because they enter agreements that, while allowing them to control flows that clearly exceed their individual capacity, at the same time limit their freedom to

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act alone, even domestically.1 Eventually, the web of interdependencies becomes so thick that severing only one tie becomes impossible, short of causing a cascading “run” on all other ties. And no state, no matter how big and powerful or how small and powerless, is ready to do this. The literature on globalization has described and analyzed precisely these varied developments, seeking correlations between developments in the economic, social, cultural, technological, environmental, and demographic spheres, and trying to identify the consequences for state autonomy and sovereignty. We can visualize theorizations that posit states’ increasing interdependency and their response in terms of the creation of binding agreements as outward movements along the X2 axis, particularly when these are seen as deriving from the autonomous decisions of the individual states in response to rather impersonal trends. One of the most significant of these “agreements” has been the creation, deepening, and widening of the European Economic Communities into today’s European Union. The intensification, in both width and depth, of the interdependencies among European states continues to be the example of willing surrender of autonomy and increasing upward shift of sovereignty that has attracted the greatest attention and has produced the greatest number of scholarly contributions. Theorizations that pin this development on the mere operation of impersonal forces (functionalism) or on the sheer will of autonomous states (neo-realism) would find their collocation on the X2 axis. As soon as other agents—particularly social actors and subnational authorities—are acknowledged as being driving forces of integration, theorizations are better placed on the planes together described by the axes X2X3 and X2X1. In what follows, I will briefly review how the field of international relations has come to grips with the developments described above and how it has theorized the loss in autonomy and the upward shift in sovereignty that they have entailed. Against this background, I will then discuss those theories of European integration that have explained this particular case of regional integration as selfcontained (upward movements on X2 in Figure 3.1) or as correlated with other developments (outward movements on X2X3 and X2X1).

T H E C H A L L E N GE TO S TAT E AU TO N OM Y The international relations literature has of late witnessed an intense debate about the nature of the international order (and disorder) and the role of

1 “Sovereignty” is a polysemic term. Krasner (1999: 3–4) identifies four meanings or dimensions of sovereignty: international-legal, Westphalian, domestic, and interdependence sovereignty. In this chapter, I lump together the external dimensions of sovereignty (Westphalian, international-legal, and interdependence sovereignty) which I term “autonomy” to indicate the capacity of states to decide and act unilaterally outside their borders, while I reserve the expression “sovereignty” to indicate the capacity of states to decide and act as they please inside their borders (Krasner’s domestic sovereignty). The European Union has, so far, chipped away both at states’ sovereignty and at their autonomy.

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External governance Transnational mobilization Spontaneous coordination

State-centrric regime theories

X2

Commission-prompted regional mobilization

Competition among localized systems of production

X1

O

X3

Fig. 3.1. The second axis: the national-international dimension Notes: X1 ¼ center-periphery dimension; X2 ¼ domestic-international dimension; X3 ¼ state-society dimension; O ¼ the sovereign state.

states and other actors within it (e.g. Rosenau 1992). This debate took place against the backdrop of fairly uncontested economic, cultural, and social developments such as the growth of economic interdependencies, the faster circulation of information, cultural models, and fashions, and the increased frequency of contacts between sometimes distant and different societies through migration. The increasing interdependence of supposedly autonomous and sovereign states was perceived as challenging existing international relations theories and stimulated a wealth of novel theorizations. The models that were produced to interpret the postwar order—most prominently, Waltz’s (1979) neo-realism, which employed the metaphor of the market to model the pursuit of preservation, power, and prestige on the part of states interpreted as individual units—have increasingly failed to capture some of the more interesting dynamics at work not just in the fields of security and defence, but also in the spheres of economic interaction, societal mobilization, and cultural exchanges. In a manner that students of European integration recognize as familiar,2 the debate unfolded by chal-

2 This should come as no surprise, really, since European integration was one of those instances of regional integration that students of international relations became very interested in and studied in depth before most other political scientists. The comparative approach to the European Union came only later (Hix 1994). As a demonstration that political science is, after all, not so internally divided, most of the theoretical debates and methodological questions that stirred international relations also moved comparative politics.

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lenging sequentially most of the assumptions underlying the neo-realist model. To begin with, but still within the theoretical assumptions of the neo-realist approach, it was doubted that all states could be conceptualized as pursuing the same fundamental objectives. While it was plausible to assume that all states primarily wanted to preserve their territorial integrity and general security, it did not follow from this that they would make the same military or commercial choices given the same options. Even discounting for the important difference between big and small states—these latter allegedly not having the same options as the larger ones, and therefore normally ignored by neo-realists in their theorization—it was still apparent that not all big states would make the same choices. The examples of France and Germany in the pre-war period, and that of the United States and Canada in the postwar period, have been used to prove that equally positioned states may choose different courses of action. More than simple “power politics” must have informed states’ choices. The mounting surge of constructivism, particularly in the field of international relations (Kratochwil 1989; Kratochwil and Lapid 1996; Wendt 1992, 1999), highlighted how, particularly in the European Union, socially constructed conceptions of “the national interest” (Checkel 1999, 2006) would color governments’ apprehension of the facts and evaluations of the options, and hence influence their choices. But the criticism probed even further and struck at the core of the neo-realist paradigm. If the international context is like a market, in which the states with the greatest power manage to obtain what they want (the “billiard balls” metaphor), how do we know which state wields more powers without observing whether it is capable of moving the others off course? How can “capabilities” be measured independently of the proven capacity of a state to have its own way? What, short of success, can serve as a measure of power and, more fundamentally, what should be accounted as success? If power is “revealed” by the outcome of the interaction—much as, in economic theory, preferences are “revealed” by the choices of consumers and firms— is not the neo-realist argument circular and void of any predictive validity (Baldwin 1989)? Clearly, what was at stake was the understanding of international relations in which the direct application of power was no longer appealing or perhaps at all possible. Rather, what could be observed was the multiplication of instances of interstate coordination, regime building, and regionalism. This initial volley of criticisms led in two directions. On the one hand, it was acknowledged that the process through which states set their objectives was much more complex than originally assumed and that it was irreducible to mere power politics. This, in turn, induced scholars to pay greater attention to the way in which national priorities were set and, therefore, to study the influence of domestic politics on international relations. On the other hand, it was recognized that the international arena was populated by many types of “transnational” actors engaging in a great diversity of relations and exchanges that channeled information, commitments, money, and prestige and yet could not be encompassed under the simplifying rubric of “power resources” (Keohane and Nye 1974, 1977, 1987). Maximizing calculations could perhaps be applied to the area

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of security policy, but not necessarily to those of commercial policy, environmental policy, or cultural policy—to name just a few “issue areas.”

T H E R I S E O F I N T E R NAT I O NA L O RG A N I Z AT I O N S AND R EG IM ES A variety of actors populated both the domestic and the international stage, and all appeared to influence some policy decisions by supposedly autonomous sovereign states (Sandholtz and Stone Sweet 1998). While, domestically, it was still possible to assume that, once all the interests affected by a given policy issue had been heard and the various resources exchanged, the executive would still set the priorities and carry out the “national interest” (a staple assumption of liberal intergovernmentalism that did not challenge neo-realist assumptions), internationally this simplification could no longer hold and, at most, the neo-realist model could still be applied only in the restricted area of security and defense policy. Power resources of different types were dispersed among an increasing number of actors not directly under the control of national governments. Unless the coercive power of the latter to apply pressure in various ways on other actors so that their preferred solution would result could be considered as equivalent to money—that is, a medium capable of influencing all other exchanges—then the simple power resource model would have lost much of its purchasing power. Only if this were true would the simplifying assumption that richer and stronger states were capable of realizing their preferences in all policy areas hold, but this was unfortunately refuted by developments in trade and environmental policy. Baldwin (1989), for example, rejects the power-money analogy, and particularly, its fungibility, multi-dimensionality, and relational character. “ . . . there is no standardized measure of value that serves as medium of exchange for political power resources . . . power can rest on various bases, and no single power base (military resources, for instance) can be held a priori to be the most decisive in any attempt to exert influence” (Guzzini 1993: 453–4, with quote from Baldwin 1989: 134 in italics). Most policy areas were populated, and influenced, by a plethora of diverse actors exchanging a host of resources not directly convertible into “power.” These relations were regulated by principles and goals different from the simple triad of preservation, power, and prestige (e.g. certain substantive goals like the preservation of the environment would be considered by many environmentalists as far more important than the survival, consolidation, or prestige of their own particular organization or state). Increasing numbers of international and non-governmental organizations have populated the world of international relations. And, in fact, since the end of World War II, IR scholars have devoted increasing attention to studying intergovernmental organizations (IGOs): their official missions, internal composition, and formal attributes. From the 1960s, they also began to

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study non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and elaborated the concept of “regime” (Krasner 1983a, 1983b; Young 1989; Kratochwil 1989; Breckinridge 1997) to take into account the force of “prescriptions” and “norms” (Kratochwil 1984). While initially only the formal organization and competences of IGOs and NGOs were analyzed, in line with the practice in Comparative Politics (old institutionalism), attention later switched to how they really functioned and to the political interactions that occurred within and around them (new institutionalism). The behavioral revolution had meanwhile taken place and it influenced the study of both comparative politics and international relations. When attention was directed again towards institutions and regimes, understood as “sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge” (Krasner 1983a: 2), the focus inevitably involved all the interactions that, formally or informally, spun within or around them, and the question became how coordination could emerge among disparate actors in the absence of formal regulation (cf. Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986). Put differently, the main question became: how “governance” was possible “without government” (Young 1986; Rosenau and Czempiel 1992). With an extreme simplification, we could say that regimes are to international relations what institutions are to comparative politics. In both cases, the definition of regime/institution proves difficult, though necessary, as the concept is broadly conceived as patterned behavior. In both cases, scholars investigate how “patterns” come about, whether norms or rules or formal organizations emerge and shape states’ or people’s expectations and actions to the point of impressing regularity on both. The issue of enforcement—whether secured by the sanctioning power of a formal organization, or exerted through informal peer pressure and withdrawal of cooperation, or else internalized and working through legitimating and inhibiting values—also became crucial. More than brute power must clearly be involved in the working of regimes and institutions. Indeed, the very notion of power is inevitably questioned by a focus on regimes and institutions. Once again, similarly to what happened in comparative politics, three “faces of power” were hypothesized to be at work also in IR (the classical references for both are Bachrach and Baratz 1970 and Lukes 1983). The first was the conventional notion of power as direct coercion over the powerless. The second could still be understood in fairly conventional terms as restraint, on the part of the powerless, from actions undesired by the powerful for fear of retaliation. The third was more subtle and implied the willing endorsement, on the part of the powerless, of the regime/institutional arrangement that created and enforced the existing power hierarchy. Scholars called this capacity of existing regimes to cast the dice in favor of some and against others “structural power.” Structural power is institutional, unintentional, and impersonal (Guzzini 1993). As theorized by Steven Lukes (1983), the powerless are as much part of the mechanism that reproduces power relations as the powerful. In other words, regimes and institutions are, at the same time, outcomes and instruments of power relations.

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Although, and perhaps because, invisible, this third face of power was all the more fearsome. According to Susan Strange, “the international system appears as if run by a ‘transnational empire,’ whose exact center is difficult to locate because it is not tied to a specific territory” (Strange 1989, as quoted by Guzzini 1993: 456–7). Normative structures and regimes can be envisaged as a particular type of power source and their potential control as a particular form of power resource. Stephen Krasner (1985) introduces a similar differentiation by defining two levels of power relations: relational power and meta-power. Relational power “refers to efforts to maximize values within a given set of institutional structures. Meta-power refers to efforts to change the institutions themselves. Relational power refers to the ability to change outcomes or affect the behavior of others within a given regime. Meta-power refers to the ability to change the rules of the game” (Krasner 1985: 14). The shift to regimes and institutions, then, implied also a shift towards more cognitive and cultural instruments of domination (Cox 1983). The Gramscian concept of “social block” was rescued to give a name to the strange cooperation that emerged between those who benefited from power relations and those who suffered from them. Also Gramsci’s, and later Foucault’s, notion of “hegemony”— power exerted primarily through social interactions and cultural norms, rather than through economic and military relations—was utilized.3 Because they could function only insofar as naked power relations were obfuscated, by their very nature regimes and institutions required the collaboration of a great many actors of a different kind. To capture the difference between power as human, intentional, personal agency and power as institutional, unintentional, impersonal structure, Guzzini (1993) argues that we need a conceptual dyad: power and governance. Waltz’s [neo-realist] formulation practically rules out change at the structural level. By limiting structural change to the first level (anarchy v. hierarchy) and by defining anarchy as the lack of international government, the model constructs a thinking space for change in only one direction. There is change if and only if power becomes concentrated in the hands of one actor and if and only if this hegemony produces a unique sovereignty. This leaves untouched the constitution of the realm we take for granted as “international” and its significant changes. . . . To account for governance requires a focus on the social construction of such relations and, indeed, the identity of the relevant actors. Thus a dyadic power analysis will inevitably problematize the basic anarchy/sovereignty on which neorealism is built. (Guzzini 1993: 475)

States are as much part of this governance system as are international organizations, multinational corporations, non-governmental organizations, transnational social movements, associations of regional authorities, and so on. In different issueareas, states interact with different sets of such actors and are subjected to the same 3

This idea of “hegemony” is different from the notion implicit in “hegemonic stability theory,” whereby world order is best secured by the presence of a “hegemon” that provides the public good of international peace because it is large enough to have a preponderant and direct stake in the world order and is willing to sustain the cost of enforcing it—which is a direct application of Olson’s collective action theory (Olson 1971).

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constraining forces of the regimes as are these other actors. The IR debate in the postwar period, thus, suggests that states are becoming “increasingly enmeshed in a network of interdependencies and regulatory/collaborative arrangements from which exit is generally not a feasible option” (Zacher 1992) and that this situation strips them of that specific power that they once believed they had. IR then theorizes the transformation of state sovereignty and acknowledges the presence of transnational groups and international organizations side by side with “sovereign” states. This co-presence is felt both in polity restructuring and in policy-making. At the end of this cursory review of IR theorization in the postwar period, I can now begin to explore how these dynamics were picked up by the literature on EU integration and governance, and particularly by multi-level governance (MLG).

T H E O R I E S O F E U RO P E A N I N T E G R ATI O N Theories that attribute European integration to impersonal forces—such as the microelectronic revolution that allowed the rapid circulation of large amounts of information and the movement of large amounts of financial capital across great distances, or the increasing disparities in wealth across the globe that triggered momentous migration waves from the South to the North—and theories that depict processes of regional integration as responding to the growing functional interdependency among groups and states, can be rendered simply by outward movements along the X2 axis. Functionalist theories of regional integration, for example, can be placed along this axis, because they posit that the same forces that create new global interdependencies also trigger institutional solutions, whereas neo-functionalist and neo-neofunctionalist theories should be placed farther away from the X3 axis on the X2X3 plane (Haas 1958, 1964; Lindberg and Scheingold 1971, 1976; Schmitter 2004; see Figure 1.1). Realist and neo-realist theories of European integration can also be placed on the X2 axis, because they do not need to summon up anything more than the free will of autonomous states in order to explain why they reacted to those developments by surrendering part of their autonomy and by pooling their sovereignty (Hoffmann 1966). At the same time, there are clear differences between the two, of course. Functionalism sees state executives as maximizers of society’s utility and devoid of preferences of their own. Taking their cues directly from societal pressures, state executives enact the prevailing will. The conception of the state underlying functionalism is liberal, in the sense that the state does not filter, weigh, prioritize, or in any other way massage societal preferences, but rather acts upon the will of the majority (Wolf 1999). The liberal state is indeed a black box or, rather, an empty box: the sole source of agency is society. However, in functionalism, society is also somewhat under-theorized, in the sense that society ends up wanting what impersonal market and technological forces dictate. Both state executives and social groups, in the end, do nothing more than adapt to

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impersonal forces, and these point in the direction of pooling resources and sovereignty at the (macro) regional level in order to take advantage of the economic, social, and cultural developments under way. In a globalized world, the efficiency of national systems of production, the strength of national currencies, the efficacy of national migration laws, and so on are very small indeed, and it is only when these flows are regulated, at least at the (macro) regional level, that states can hope to tame the forces of globalization. Neo-functionalism (Schmitter 1969, 1970) adds the agency of the newly created institutional tier to the push of impersonal market forces: it is the agents operating at this level that become the interpreters of market imperatives and point to the additional areas in which sovereignty must be pooled in order to better respond to the challenges of the time. There is an ingrained expectation that interdependencies and the pooling of sovereignty will continue to grow (Schmitter 2004). Realism, in its turn, sees state executives as pursuing single-mindedly the national interest, which is identified with the defense of national borders, the national economy, the national culture, and so on. They do not need to consult with society in order to know what the national interest is, as this latter is not equated with the interest that prevails at the moment, but rather with the immutable preservation of national integrity. Paradoxically, in this case, too, the state is rather an empty box, without preferences or priorities of its own other than the preservation of the nation-state itself. Nor, in this case, does agency matter much. If a particular interest can be imputed to state executives, it is perhaps that of preserving their institutional role, but realism predicts that state executives will be willing to relinquish (some of) their institutional powers if that would better serve the purpose of promoting the national interest. Regional integration is then explained as the necessary pooling of sovereignty with a view to better preserving the integrity of each state and nation. Integration is purely instrumental and commensurate with utility: should convenience point in the opposite direction, state executives would be expected to slow down, halt, and even reverse the process of integration. State executives always remain in control of this process. On the planes defined by X2 and its neighboring axes, we can find instead theories that posit a correlation between developments in the domestic-international dimension and developments in one of the other two dimensions (center-periphery and state-society) and the agency that is therein expressed (by subnational authorities and by societal groups). In each case, two causal relationships can be hypothesized. According to one narrative (X1!X2), in a globalized world, production will take place wherever locational advantages are stronger. Globalization has de facto already torn down national borders: it is now localized systems of productions, and not entire nations, that compete with one another. Because competition for global profit takes place among localized systems of production, these must be endowed with commensurate political powers. Local authorities must, therefore, be capable of creating the necessary productive infrastructure, helping local production, supporting the local population, and distributing the corresponding

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costs: that is, they must enjoy a certain degree of decision-making autonomy (Keating and Jones 1985; Jones and Keating 1995; Rhodes 1995; Keating and Loughlin 1997). Global competition among localized systems of production is all the more successfully met, the more subnational authorities are in charge of their own destiny and the more the local citizenry and local authorities cooperate in the definition of their common destiny (Storper 1997b). In a somewhat functionalist mode, scholars have suggested that local authorities and societies rise to the task and request to take their productive destiny into their own hands. Globalization, then, triggers various forms of regional mobilization which, in turn, further probe the controlling capacity of the national state. Moreover, as subnational authorities and societies find ways of collaborating across borders with other similarly positioned regional and local entities highly productive, they request the freedom to interact across borders and to converge in Brussels to receive funds, share experiences, devise cooperative agreements. States respond by allowing integration and by giving in to subnational requests. The new dynamism of subnational authorities is thus responsible for poking holes in the fences of autonomous sovereign states that have already agreed to the creation of a Single Market, to opening up their national markets, and to allowing the free circulation of goods, services, capital, and workers. They are, therefore, increasingly less autonomous and less unitary. A second narrative points in the opposite direction (X2!X1) and suggests that it is, rather, the newly created supranational institutions that try to lure subnational authorities to the other side of the national fence by offering them the instruments with which they can face the global challenge. In this quasi-neofunctionalist narrative, the Commission is always looking for allies to fulfill its own integrative mission. In the 1980s, as it was trying to complete the Single Market and revive the integration process, it found willing and legitimate support in several particularly assertive regional authorities (Hooghe 1996a). In the first decade of the twenty-first century, as it tries to foster the creation of the most competitive, knowledge-based society (Lisbon Strategy) and to metabolize the 2004 and 2007 enlargements, it is seeking the cooperation of the Committee of the Regions (CoR), an institution considered by many as secondary, but one that is increasingly acquiring a political profile (Scherpereel 2005, 2007; Brunazzo and Domorenok 2008). The Commission is not only seeking allies among secondary governmental authorities: it has realized that subnational actors can act as direct and often crucial links between themselves and the member-states. Many regional and local politicians are high in the ranks of governmental party hierarchies and have direct access to, and immediate attention from, state executives: they can effectively act as communication conduits, but also apply direct pressure on national governments, bypassing the more complex procedures that regulate formal contacts between national executives and Commission functionaries. Particularly in times of crisis—such as the Eurosclerosis period of the 1970s and the current Constitutional/Lisbon Treaty ratification stalemate—the Commission uses the subnational channel to strike at the heart of national governments. An institution like the

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Committee of the Regions, by most considered as of little importance, can find a new centrality in times like these (Piattoni 2008b). It is after all composed of regional and local representatives, some of them high-level figures in the parties which rule their respective countries. Important messages can be delivered to national governments by powerful local and regional representatives, particularly if the Committee ends up gaining institutionally from this mediating role (the CoR becomes one of the guardians of subsidiarity with the Lisbon Treaty). Regions and municipalities can put their closer control of the territory at the service of member-states in the attainment of desired goals. When occupational, migration, neighborhood, environmental, educational, and other objectives are at stake, regions and cities can serve as “willing executors.” Other authors rather correlate the “cascading interdependence” (Rosenau 1989: 23) described by movements along the X2 axis with the increased international dynamism of multinational corporations, global firms, international social movements, transnational advocacy coalitions, and so on.4 Here, too, relations can go in both directions. Functionalist theories of European integration (Haas 1958; Lindberg 1963) argue that it is the spontaneous forces of the market and of society that create those links and interdependencies to which states respond by creating an institutional framework, the Common Market, within which those interactions can safely take place (X3!X2). Miche`le Knodt (2004) describes instances of “external governance” spilling onto the EU system. In external trade relations, for example, the Commission gained de facto competence when the GATT system was reformed and dispute settlement became more of a court-like system. Although it was unclear whether the individual member-states or the Commission were supposed to have standing in court (and they both participated in the proceedings and consulted frequently with one another within the Article 133 Committee), it turned out that, because of the complexity of fact finding and proof giving, the Commission ended up playing the leading role as often no state was capable of providing all the necessary evidence. A direct link between industry and the Commission developed also within the Trade Barrier Regulation (TBR), which gave individual enterprises and industry associations the right to directly address the Commission with a complaint and to request it to take up their case. The direct involvement of civil society in European decision-making in trade issues is, according to Knodt (2004), a direct consequence of “discourses at the international level [which] find their way to the European level, and EU actors [who] try actively to introduce their guiding ideas into the WTO context” (Knodt 2004: 711). Civil society found ways to enter the international trade decision-making process, and from there these practices were extended to the EU. For example, after 1998, the Directorate-General (DG) Trade started a consultation dialogue

4 For the moment, I lump together for-profit and non-profit expressions of society. Chapter 4 will be dedicated to the exploration of the increasing assertiveness of civil society and its role in fashioning MLG.

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with civil society (the Civil Dialogue Meetings on Trade and Investment) in the area of foreign direct investment (FDI), which involved both the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), when “during MAI negotiations representatives of civil society had opposed the inclusion of investors in state dispute settlements because they perceived this mechanism as giving multinational enterprises an undue right to sue foreign governments” (Knodt 2004: 712). She goes on to detail how NGOs’ activism penetrated member states’ external barriers and opened doors that had up until then remained shut: “For the EU it has become clear that governments cannot negotiate any longer behind closed doors and have to explain to representatives of civil society which goals they are pursuing while negotiating. Submitting the result of these negotiations to the legislators for their final approval will no longer be sufficient” (Knodt 2004: 713). In this case, it was the direct activism of civil society representatives and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the international scene that not only pushed forward the process of integration, by making foreign trade into an exclusively EU matter (Meunier 2007), but also modified the conventional way of doing things in Europe by intensifying its governance character. According to other authors (StoneSweet 2004), the spontaneous forces of the market would even be capable of fashioning their own institutional solutions to problems of international contract enforcement, thus undercutting states’ attempts at providing solutions that prove less satisfactory than “spontaneous coordination.” In this case, the European Union provides its own institutions for international enforcement which, although technically more cumbersome and therefore more inefficient than the spontaneous instruments, still manage to rule the day. What lends credibility to the multi-level narrative is the prevalent discourse on declining state sovereignty rather than its reality (Aalberts 2004, 2005). Yet other scholars (Marks and McAdam 1996) consider the EU and other international organizations as providing novel structures of opportunities which induce international social movements and transnational advocacy coalitions to make their claims against these highly visible institutional forums which, because of their thirst for legitimation, are more than willing to listen (X2!X3). In general, when the source of regulation (in the broader, “regulation school” sense of the term; Lipietz 1987, 1992) changes, corporate lobbies, social movements, transnational advocacy coalitions, and, more generally, mass politics reorient themselves towards the new institutional centers: “to the extent that European integration results in the replacement or, more likely, the decline in the importance of the nation-state as the exclusive seat of formal political power, we can expect attendant changes in those forms of interest aggregation/articulation historically linked to the state” (Marks and McAdam 1996: 96). Moreover, the distinction between these different forms of mobilization that were created within a nation-state context, in response to the institutional formats and political opportunity structures provided by each nation-state, lose much of their significance when the context changes (Keck and Sikkink

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1998). Some of what we used to consider as the causes of increasing direct mobilization—alienation from politics, membership decline, disenchantment towards political parties (Dalton and Wattenberg 2000)—may be seen as simultaneous consequences of the shift in the “structure and geographic locus of institutionalized power” (Marks and McAdam 1996: 96). So the different types of organization for political mobilization—territorial parties, trade unions, social movements, local lobbies, etc.—may become increasingly indistinguishable when this shift takes place. [T]he distinctions that we associate with these forms are inextricably linked to the historical rise and refinement of a national system of politics within which these distinctions were negotiated and subsequently institutionalized. . . . Just as the guilds, religious orders and other politico-organizational artifacts of the ancien re´gime had no standing in the emerging nation-state, neither do the rigid distinctions between interest groups and social movements mean much in the context of the EU. All stand in much the same relationship to the integration process. They share the status of “challenging groups” which hope to contest and shape the emerging institutions and philosophy of the EU. (Marks and McAdam 1996: 96–7)

Exchanges of information and legitimation, from civil society organizations, for financial support and acknowledgment, from international organizations and the EU, constitute the essence of the interactions between the two.

C O N C LU S I O N While on the X2 axis we find agentless (functionalist and realist) theories of European integration, on both planes (X3X2 and X1X2) we find theories that inject the agency of supranational actors, transnational groups, and subnational authorities into the rather lifeless landscapes portrayed by realism and functionalism alone. All of these theories point to the increased need for formally sovereign states to seek the collaboration of other states in order to achieve desired goals, from physical preservation to more intense trade, from peace and security to growth and stability. The international organizations created to consolidate international cooperation end up influencing the mobilization of subnational authorities and social groups, thus creating the premises for further international coordination. Irrespective of whether this happens at the expense of, or in addition to, the more conventional mobilization directed at national institutions, an intensification of mobilization occurs. Trans- and international mobilization is easily observed. But even when taking place at the national level, which continues to be the level with which parties, associations, unions, and movements are most familiar and on which they are better organized, the target of mobilization is increasingly supranational. The shift, though, is not only quantitative but also qualitative. Some organizational forms of mobilization are favored and others relatively inhibited by the

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new structure of political opportunity that gets created at the EU level. So, whereas some subnational actors, for example subnational regional authorities, find it relatively easy to mobilize their institutional powers and distinctive identities in this larger and more crowded world, others, for example trade unions and craft associations, have a harder time making their presence felt at this new level. As Marks and McAdam conclude with reference to a variety of movements (from trade unions to employers’ associations, from ethno-regionalist parties to new social movements): Whereas the classic nation-state tended to define the “structure of political opportunities” for all challenging groups, the emergence of a multi-level polity means that movements are increasingly likely to confront highly idiosyncratic opportunity structures defined by that unique combination of governmental bodies (at all levels) which share decision-making authority over the issues of interest to the movement. So instead of the rise of a single social movement form, we are more apt to see the development and proliferation of multiple movement forms keyed to inherited structures and the demands of mobilization in particular policy areas. (Marks and McAdam 1996: 119)

4 State versus Society Scholars of European integration focused mainly on elites, got most of their information from them, and studied their interaction with other elites— mostly within the EU’s institutions. We know much more about participation in consultative committees in the five square kilometres of Euroland in Brussels than we do about contention over the effects of their decisions among the 375 million people who have to live with their consequences. (Imig and Tarrow 2001: 7)

THE THIRD AXIS Along the third axis we measure the blurring of the distinction between state and society, or, as others would prefer to put it, between public and private or, to put it another way, the general and the particular. This is a very old and very European distinction that dates back to the process of state formation and refers to sets of ideas and boundaries that were created to justify that process (van Gelderen 2003). The European territorial state emerged by differentiating itself from existing and competing authorities and by claiming pre-eminence over them: the Catholic Church (a global theological order based on the acknowledged superiority of religious authority), the Empire (a global temporal order held together by the unifying effect of Roman law and Germanic institutions), the feudal element (a reticular order based on mutual bonds of personal allegiance), the leagues of cities and the city-states (also reticular orders connected by bi- and multilateral commercial agreements) (Tilly 1975; Spruyt 1994: 3). The struggle was long and mobilized both physical and normative weapons. Bits and pieces of these competing orders could eventually be found in the emerging national states, just as bits and pieces of the monuments of conquered civilizations are often found in the make-up of the monuments of conquering ones. States skillfully used the legitimating endorsement of the Catholic Church and of the Protestant Churches; royal dynasties drew their lineage from the bonds of loyalty and service with the Emperor established by their ancestors; city elites negotiated their special status by lending their wealth and management skills to the new territorial princes. The first few states were idiosyncratic juxtapositions of institutional structures and

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normative principles that had once enjoyed their own distinct sphere of authority and that were now amalgamated into the new constructs. The territorial state had to forge its own institutions and distinct normative principles. The territorial dimension suggested wresting full control of (possibly contiguous) lands and seas and did not tolerate the coexistence within these territories of any other sphere of authority. State and Church fought long and hard for control over the people, and settled (though the struggle is far from over) on a functional division of labor: the care of bodies is the specific task of states, that of souls the specific task of churches. The state also fought a protracted battle against the old feudal orders, which attained a temporary equilibrium in the precursor of the absolutist state, the Sta¨ndestaat (Poggi 1978). However, in their attempt to establish a single sphere of authority over their territory, absolute sovereigns sought to connect directly with their subjects, skipping the mediation (hence disavowing the legitimacy) of all intermediate bodies (church, nobility, and city elites). The normative weapon that was used to this end was the establishment of a stark distinction between the interests served by the state—the public (later, national) interest—and those pursued by all intermediate bodies—particular (or special) interests. The legitimacy of the state was increasingly associated with the public nature of its rule and the general character of the interest that it served. All other interests became by definition private—for example, that of the Catholic Church—or particular—for example, that of the producing classes—or, again, special—for example, those belonging to other nations living within the borders of the same state. The establishment of a state bureaucracy that administered the laws of the state in an impersonal, uniform, and impartial way towards all citizens (including, theoretically, the rulers) sealed the formation of two opposed triads: state/public/general versus society/private/particular (Dyson 1980). The pursuit of private or the promotion of particular interests on the part of public officials eventually came to be considered an aberration.1 The statesociety, public-private, general-particular boundary was thus established, a boundary that we still have great difficulty crossing even today, if only mentally (Poggi 2003). Without presuming to delve too deeply into the fascinating but complex body of theory, Europeans are overwhelmingly indebted to a Bodinian and Hegelian conception of state, even though alternative traditions, such as Althusius’, made their mark as well (Skinner 2003). “The modern state is based on these two key elements, internal hierarchy and external autonomy” (Spruyt 1994: 3). We have seen how multi-level governance (MLG) questions both elements in the previous two chapters. Even though Spruyt himself claims not to be interested in exploring the increasing distinction between politics and society—what he calls the “growth of formal government” 1 This rendition of the vicissitudes of the European nation-state borders on the ideal-typical. Clearly, the reality is much more contested. The development of state administration is particularly messy: many patrimonial exceptions to the bureaucratic ideal-type characterized the early phases of state development in particular (Ertman 1997).

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(Spruyt 1994: 3)—his study is very much about the correlation between the “development of hierarchy within polities and the effects of sovereignty on the relations between states” (Spruyt 1994: 3), on the one hand, and the particular internal articulation of interests, formation of alliances, and development of institutions that take place within alternative polities, on the other. Different types of societal alignments and institutional accommodations gave rise to different political forms, each providing a different solution to the problem of “feudal anarchy” (Poggi 1978). An interest in the interrelation of domestic and international development is, in fact, a staple of much of the literature on state formation, including classical authors such as Barrington Moore, Otto Hinze, and Charles Tilly. Spruyt’s contribution lies in showing that the selection among these different forms was governed by other mechanisms than those which presided over polity differentiation, and among these the interrelations among polities were particularly crucial. Domestic and international politics are, therefore, simultaneously and mutually constituted.

F RO M P R I VAT E TO PU B L I C I N T E R E S T M O B I L I Z AT I O N The boundary between state and society (public and private) has recently been challenged not only by novel practices, but also by new theory. At least since the 1970s, scholars have begun to observe and theorize the various ways in which societies shared governmental tasks with governments. A fundamental breakthrough came with the theorization on corporatism, labelled “new” corporatism, to distinguish it from “old” corporatism regimes, or as “societal” (bottom-up) corporatism, to distinguish it from “state” (top-down) corporatism practiced by fascist regimes (Offe 1981; Schmitter 1981; Lehmbruch and Schmitter 1982). In neo-corporatist countries, trade unions and employers’ associations had such extensive membership and commanded so much consensus that they could commit their own members to deals, brokered by the state, that combined wage restraint with investment and active labor market policies. In the 1970s, these countries were spared the experience of stagflation (stagnation, due to insufficient investment, and inflation due to growing prices and salaries) and could instead enjoy reasonable stability (Katzenstein 1985; Streeck and Schmitter 1985a; Gourevitch 1986). As efficiency gains were redistributed, both employers and workers could claim to have won. Workers and employers behaved like “limbs of the same body” (hence, the word “corporatism”), both equally vital to the well-being of the entire society. This “new” corporatism was “societal” and “bottom-up” because it derived from a long and spontaneous process of interest aggregation within society, while “old” corporatism tried to impose the same type of behavior “top-down” and through “state” intervention by commanding association and repressing dissent. The important lesson that was drawn in the 1970s was that the state cannot often govern against society, but must rather enlist its cooperation and devolve some governmental tasks to society itself.

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This lesson proved more important and lasting than it seemed at first sight. While in the 1970s, the problem was fighting stagnation and inflation simultaneously—a double challenge against which the weapons of the state on its own were blunt—in the 1980s and 1990s, the problem became one of delivering satisfactorily the many tasks that the state had taken upon itself. The “return to society” took different forms and acquired different accents. On the one hand, there was a genuine desire to reduce the excessive interference of the state in certain domains and to cut down its excessive costs. On the other hand, there was a desire to re-appropriate certain spheres of human action and to improve the quality of public life. The state was doing too much, too inefficiently, too bureaucratically. The critique of the state, thus, came both from the right— protesting against the excessive interference of the state and excessive taxation, and claiming a greater role for the market—and from the left—disappointed about the alienation that citizens felt vis-a`-vis some of the fundamental state services such as health and education and motivated by a desire to participate in public decision-making.2 Efficiency and authenticity were the two springs that led to an epochal reorientation of the roles of the state and of society. In both cases, the solutions pointed in the direction of a rebalancing of the relative weight of state and society and to their de facto collaboration in defining the general interest and in providing public goods. There are three types of analyses that can be used to investigate these developments. The first concentrates on the self-driven reawakening of civil society and the spontaneous diffusion of a new awareness of civil society’s centrality and autonomy in everyday life (movements along the X3 axis). A second line of investigation analyzes the emergence of transnational social movements as encouraged by new supra- and international structures of political opportunity (X2 ! X3 movements on the X2X3 plane) or, conversely, the creation of supraand international organizations due to the spontaneous mobilization of transnational civil society (X3 ! X2 movements on the X2X3 plane) (this latter dynamic has already been explored in Chapter 3). Finally, a third line of inquiry investigates the role that civil society organizations can play in policy-making locally, nationally, and supranationally (X3 ! X1 movements on the X1X3 plane) or, conversely, on the effect that newly formed subnational authorities have on the emergence of local civil society organizations dedicated to the promotion of local interests (X1 ! X3 movements on the X1X3 plane) (this latter dynamic has already been explored in Chapter 2). As movements along the X3 axis—capturing the spontaneous mobilization of civil society—have been cursorily recapped in this section, the following two sections will concentrate on the theories rendered by movements on the two planes. This chapter, then, will look at the transformation of this triple interrelation—between the public-private dimension, on the one hand, and the domestic-international and the center-periphery dimensions, on the

2

See Chapter 1 nn. 1–2 on the demands brought by the Danish and Norwegian Progress parties, on the right, and the Dutch D66 and the German, Swiss, and Austrian Greens, on the left.

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X2

Transitional advocacy coalition European NGOs Domestication O

X1

Neo-corporatist arrangements Local corporatism arrangements Local mobilization of civil society X3

Fig. 4.1. The third axis: the state-society dimension Notes: X1 ¼ center-periphery dimension; X2 ¼ domestic-international dimension; X3 ¼ state-society dimension; O ¼ the sovereign state.

other—by focussing on the dynamics that take place on the X3 axis and on the adjacent planes X2X3 and X1X3 (Figure 4.1).

P R I VAT E A N D P U B L I C I N T E R E S T S I N E U P O L I C Y- M A K I N G Societal groups are not necessarily the bearers of particular or private interests that only the state could aggregate into the “general interest.” These groups are also capable of expressing public interests, that is, interests widely shared by the population but left unattended to by the pursuit of the “general interest” traditionally understood.3 Similarly, state actors are not, by definition, solely interested in the “general interest,” but might instead pursue special and sectoral interests of their own. Neither state nor society can govern effectively in isolation from the other: efficiency and authenticity would equally be lost. In the 1980s, scholars witnessed the explosion of a long wave of societal mobilization that had started in the 1960s and had affected all societal groups, 3

Ruzza (2004) uses the term “public-interest association” to denote non-governmental organizations that lobby in Brussels on behalf of interests that are conceivably so widespread in society as to be considered “public.” Aspinwall and Greenwood (1998: 5) measure the presence of private business and public interest groups in the EU, giving a feel for the relative predominance of the former over the latter (roughly 4:1).

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from students to retirees, from women to oppressed minorities, from environmentally aware citizens to peace activists. New social movements became the object of several studies that sought to understand why, how, and with what effect civil society—“civil” because self-conscious about its claims and organized to act upon them (Hall 1995)—mobilized nationally and transnationally. It was discovered that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had a lot to offer governments in terms of identifying problems, implementing solutions, and evaluating outcomes. Civil society organizations (CSOs), mobilizing in support of minority languages and cultures, marginalized segments of society, or single issue movements became staple protagonists of political mobilization and policy-making (Cohen and Arato 1994). Meanwhile, conventional interest representation proceeded unabated and indeed found new organizational solutions in order to be present in Brussels and lobby at the EU level (Greenwood and Ronit 1994). Some of these industry-wide pan-European organizations managed to offer selfrestraint and member enforcement in exchange for “friendly” regulation that they helped to draft. The contribution of private interests to soliciting EU regulation, to devising regulatory solutions, to filling in regulative details, and to helping implement EU regulation has been long acknowledged. Through conventional lobbying and expert advice, private interests, particularly business interests, have managed to stimulate and shape many policy decisions, particularly in the field of product and process regulation (Greenwood 1997; Greenwood and Ronit 1994; Greenwood and Aspinwall 1998). Other expressions of civil society—such as voluntary associations, NGOs, think tanks, etc.—have not only contributed ideas and expertise, but have also helped implement some policies on the ground (Heinelt and Meinke-Brandmeier 2006). Voluntary associations of all kinds contribute to combating social discrimination and compensating for social exclusion by providing ideas and “frames” for policy intervention (Ruzza 2006). NGOs and CSOs help monitor on a daily basis the implementation of EU policies and often act as the eyes and ears of the Commission, prompting it to initiate infringement proceedings when member-states or private companies fail to abide by EU legislation. Although they have not been granted the right to standing in court in defense of the correct implementation of EU policies (De Schutter 2006), they can nevertheless assist in private litigation (Chicowski 2007) and they can bring issues to the attention of the European Ombudsman (Bonnor 2006). In the fields of social and labor legislation, the Social Dialogue framework has assisted national trade unions and employers’ associations to regulate various aspects of work relations on a voluntary basis, which is then offered to other national “social partners” as a blueprint for possible solutions (Smismans 2008b). Clearly, not all these expressions of civil society perform the same broad representative functions. Some of these groups, particularly the industrial ones, would still be considered by most as promoting a “private,” “particular” interest even though, by having to trade influence for self-restraint, they are implicitly

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forced to consider also the interests of the larger public.4 NGOs and CSOs are more genuinely moved by a concern for “public,” “general” interests or the interests of marginalized and disenfranchised groups—thus standing for values that everyone can support. Moreover, by being involved in policy-making, they have to develop a broader conception of whom they are representing (Eising 2004; Finke 2007; Beyers et al. 2008). Still, it is sometimes unclear whether these groups are truly promoting the wide interests they claim to be speaking for or rather the very “private” and “particular” interests of their leaders, activists, lobbyists, advocates, and employees who make a living out of interest representation (Saurugger 2006, 2008). Sometimes these organizations are brought into EU policymaking mostly as a counterbalance to the preponderance of industrial groups. Their presence is seen as the voice of an emerging European civil society—a voice to be encouraged because it addresses a perceived isolation of the European level of governance—and as a potentially useful counterbalance against the power of organized private interests. However other observers have grown weary of advocates without the legitimacy that springs from participation in electoral contests, and dispute the claim by public pressure groups that they represent public interests. (Ruzza 2004: 2; emphasis in original)

Advocacy has become the new term that subsumes these varied activities under a single label. It draws attention to the fact that, in a more complex policy-making environment that does not end at the nation-state’s gates but continues well beyond its borders and is populated by numerous supranational (EU) and international organizations (WTO, OECD, WHO, etc.), the promotion of public interests involves both governmental institutions and non-governmental organizations. As Fairbrass and Warleigh (2002) argue with reference to the EU: the recourse of decision-makers themselves to lobbying in order to secure their desired outcomes is a novel but entrenched feature of EU policymaking, thereby reversing the usual focus upon institutional actors as mere recipients of interest representation. . . . lobbying and other forms of interest representation have become crucial to all those who seek to influence EU decision making. Thus, it is mistaken to view interest representation simply as a process by which non institutional or non-state actors such as organized interest groups seek to influence policy makers “behind closed doors”. (Fairbrass and Warleigh 2002: 7)

Therefore, because the expanding scope of governmental problems involves a new definition of “the general interest” which can no longer simply coincide with “the national interest,” and because of an institutional drive towards “centre formation,” as Bartolini (2005) would put it, the boundaries between state and society at the European level have been torn down and the distinction between public and private questioned. This investigation, then, starts from a heightened sense of what civil society can contribute to policy-making; from the observation that 4

For a historical account of how a system of interest representation evolved and how it established conventional boundaries between public and private interests, see Maier (1981).

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governmental institutions increasingly use some of the same advocacy mechanisms that have been traditionally associated with the activities of interest groups, NGOs, and CSOs; and from a balanced assessment of the contribution that these societal groups can make to EU policy-making (Balme and Chabanet 2008). That is, from a perception of the reduced qualitative difference between public and private, Institutionalized social movements are performing some of the functions of the state, channelling policy advice, policy analysis and advocacy in a variety of political arenas. As different territorial levels of political authority become increasingly nested in the EU system, the European level is becoming a significant target of these advocacy coalitions. EU public-interest lobbying consequently acquires ever-greater importance in the multiple avenues of a dispersed political authority. (Ruzza 2004: 3)

The mobilization of civil society does not only contribute directly to EU policymaking, but it also contributes to creating a space for European political contention and to setting the European political agenda: in other words, to creating a European state.

T H E M O B I L I Z AT I O N O F T RA N S NAT I O NA L S O C I A L M OV EM EN T S Is the mobilization of civil society, then, just a question of epochal change? Or is the process of European integration adding its own momentum to the process and giving it a particular spin? And, vice versa, can the process of European integration be understood without taking into account the mobilization of civil society at the trans-national level? When Doug Imig and Sidney Tarrow wrote the words quoted at the beginning of this chapter, the European Union had 375 million inhabitants. Today, after the 2004 and 2007 enlargements, the inhabitants of the Union number 495 million, but the essence of their remark remains true. The study of the European Union still revolves mostly around governmental institutions and their elites, even though the “governance turn” in European studies should have engendered an interest in the participation of private actors in the policy-making process, whether formally or informally. The main theories of European integration provide little space for private actors and for political contention. Intergovernmentalism assumes that societal pressures are filtered by national governments and then brought to bear on EU policy-making through negotiations by their representatives in pursuit of their respective national interest. Neo-functionalism hypothesizes direct spillover mechanisms from policy decision to policy decision involving mainly supranational legislators and interest groups—primarily business, trade, and, occasionally, consumers’ representatives. Even multi-level governance, preoccupied with theorizing the role of multi-level governmental authorities in policy-making, sometimes loses sight of its governance role and does not pay sufficient attention

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to the mobilization of civil society, public interests, and non-governmental organizations at all possible levels, as well as across levels (Smismans 2006a). Other governance theories are too focussed on the problem-solving capacity of the networks created around policy issues to really consider contention and protest or to uncover instances of “un-politics” (Kohler-Koch and Eising 1999; Marcussen and Torfing 2007; S
rensen and Torfing 2007). The literature on new social movements and advocacy coalitions, in turn, investigates whether the new supranational institutions and international trends are indeed “creating new opportunities and threats, and possibly linking social actors in different European countries to one another in transnational social movements” (Imig and Tarrow 2001: 6), but their investigations remain mostly decoupled from theorizations of European integration, thus failing to take the specific incentives and obstacles created by the ever evolving European institutional construct sufficiently into account. Moreover, this literature has privileged the study of new social movements traditionally defined and has not devoted enough attention to other actors such as trade unions, public interest groups, and volunteer organizations that populate the European scene. There seems to exist a sort of disconnect between the citizens of Europe who engage in contentious politics and the European-level interest groups or subnational authorities that operate at the summit (Imig and Tarrow 2001: 10). Questions relating to the representativeness, transparency, and accountability of these European lobbies have consequently emerged. Exploring the link between integration and contention, according to Imig and Tarrow, has become all the more necessary, the more pressing are questions about the EU’s supposed “democratic deficit.” For “if more and deeper integration was co-occurring with a shift of contentious politics towards European issues, then in at least one respect Europe could be said to be moving towards a mass-based polity” (Imig and Tarrow 2001: 7). Moreover, if forms of contention were becoming more similar across European member-states—in particular if they were becoming increasingly “soft” and better managed (“well-oiled mass demonstrations, media-aimed events mounted by professional movement organizations, and growing cooperation with authorities”; Imig and Tarrow 2001: 8)—then this would reveal the formative power of European institutions. Finally, “to the extent that Europe is becoming an integrated polity, European integration might create an opportunity structure for the formation of transnational social movements” (ibid. 8; emphasis in the original). European integration could thus be expected to shape political contention in three ways: (1) by shifting contention towards European issues, (2) by inducing transformation of the “harder” forms of contention towards “softer” and more responsible types, (3) by encouraging the emergence of European social movements. Issues, forms, and subjects of contention, in other words, could be expected to “Europeanize” as European integration proceeds. These plausible expectations become the hypotheses for the study of European contention. Imig and Tarrow’s analysis is process-based (or, rather, transactional) just like multi-level governance and network governance, but unlike these theories it does

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not preconfigure any particular jurisdictional boundaries for political mobilization, which can occur at different governmental levels as well as across them, and within policy networks as well as outside them. Moreover, it can contribute to creating functioning governance solutions as well as disrupting them. This complex mobilization configures a “composite polity,” that is: A system of political relations in which actors at various levels and in different geographical units within a loosely linked system face both horizontal and vertical interlocutors and find corresponding opportunities for alliance building across both axes. . . . Europe is a composite polity composed of semisovereign states, quasi-autonomous European institutions, and virtually represented citizens. (Imig and Tarrow 2001: 15–16)

The literature on new social movements has forged the concept of “political opportunity structures” (POS) (Eisinger 1973: 25), indicating “the degree to which groups are likely to be able to gain access to power and to manipulate the political system” (see McAdam 1996 for an updated discussion). The underlying idea is that social movements will be all the more successful depending on the allies that they can find among the political actors that are already entrenched in the political system, and that these actors will be all the more available to strike alliances depending on the specific circumstances of the time (crisis or stability) and the general openness or closure of the political system to societal influence both in normative and in institutional and physical terms. The European Union appears to be a particularly favorable structure of political opportunity for transnational mobilization because: (1) the system is notoriously porous and easily accessible; (2) its elites keep shifting and, with them, the political programs and visions that they promote; (3) it is highly likely that, at any one time, at least some of these elites will be favorable to the claims of the social movements currently seeking allies; (4) the capacity of the EU for repression is minimal. Nevertheless, since it is costly and difficult to organize transnationally, mobilization will occur less frequently than expected and will not necessarily occur at the level at which the POS is most favorable. Among the costs of mobilization are: (1) those related to forming a group in the first place; (2) those related to keeping up the initial momentum and investing time, effort, and resources; (3) those related to understanding who is in charge and, therefore, to whom one’s claims should be addressed; (4) those related to organizing for action in a manner compatible with the institutions addressed; (5) those related to withstanding eventual setbacks and regrouping (Lipksy 1969). Quite understandably, movements will form and act where pre-existing social networks provide that minimal basis of mutual trust that allows would-be members to overcome the “collective action” problem, and these networks will continue to be mostly national and local. As there may be a mismatch between the conditions that favor the emergence of collective action and those that would make it effective, we sometimes observe instances of non-mobilization even when it would be effective and instances of mobilization even where it has little hope for effectiveness. Over time, however, social movements should be capable of reorienting their action in order to

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mobilize where the “structure of political opportunity” is most promising, that is, at the EU level. According to this theory, there is mutual attraction between new institutional formations and novel instances of mobilization, which simultaneously and mutually constitute one another through a complex game of contestation and legitimation (Banchoff and Smith 1999). Among the most common strategies to overcome the potential mismatch is that of applying pressure to intermediate targets—a more accessible and responsive institution, the media, the public at large (Lipksy 1967)—in order to reach the more remote and impenetrable institutions. In a world without important transaction costs or variations in resources, citizens would automatically bring their claims to the agents most directly responsible for their grievances. But when these agents are distant, indirect, and often obscure, claims are more likely to be directed to where people possess dense social networks, organizational resources, and visible political opportunities. (Imig and Tarrow 2001: 17)

This could explain why, although in theory subnational social groups could benefit from applying pressure at all governmental levels and also from leapfrogging over their national governments and forming European advocacy coalitions, mobilization may still occur predominantly at one level, and sometimes not even the most appropriate or promising level. A situation of “sub-optimal” mobilization, both in terms of level and in terms of intensity, can be observed. Yet, the expectation of the literature is that, given a sufficient motivational push, social groups will find ways of bridging the gap between levels and will form “movement advocacy coalitions” that operate at the appropriate institutional level. Imig and Tarrow thus develop a typology (Table 4.1) of forms of protest (below) that plots the scope of the issue (target) against the scope of mobilization (actor). When surveying instances of protest in Europe between January 1, 1984 and December 31, 1997 (i.e. for fifteen years), Imig and Tarrow found that most contentious action still took place at the national level, as it corresponded to “the routine domestic protest familiar from the literature on national social movements” (ibid. 18). But even when the target of protest was clearly European, actors still mobilized most of the time (83%) at the national level, thus giving rise to instances of “domestication.” This would indicate that people can still best organize and hope to have an impact at the national level or that they use domestic targets to put pressure on EU institutions. This outcome, however, Table 4.1. A typology of European protests Target of Protest

Actors in Protest

National Transnational

Source: Imig and Tarrow (2001: 17).

Domestic

European

Routine domestic protest Cooperative transnationalism

Domestication Collective transnationalism

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does not necessarily tell us that the national level continues to have gate-keeping capacities (as intergovernmentalism would lead us to conclude) nor that people have not yet developed enough transnational “social capital” to mount a protest at the European level (as functionalism would claim). Factoring in the difficulties of mobilization, not just at one level but across levels, does not amount to disconfirming MLG: it may rather signal a realistic appreciation of the relative costs and benefits of mobilization at different or across levels and the strategic decision to maximize impact by putting pressure on domestic targets. This situation may well change, as conventional modes of mobilization should reveal their limitations, the scope of the problem and of the institutional solutions should shift to higher levels, and growing contact among social groups should breed better reciprocal knowledge and greater trust. What it does not tell us is that mobilization at different or across levels is futile. What emerges from Imig and Tarrow’s research is that European institutions are also capable of keeping the most raucous type of contention outside their gates, while inviting in those groups and experts that help them make policies and contribute to their legitimation. While this is certainly convenient for the time being, it also implies certain dangers. “The risk for them is that the differentiation between contentious politics at the periphery and lobbying and expertise at the centre will isolate Brussels-based public interest groups from those they claim to serve. Such groups do excellent work on behalf of the interests they claim to represent, but their disarticulation from domestic political struggle is unlikely to advance the formation of European collective actors” (Imig and Tarrow 2001: 21). The groups engaged in Euro-protests differ according to whether they are occupational or non-occupational. To begin with, most instances of truly European protest come from non-occupational groups, such as ecologists, who “find the transition to the European level easier” (Imig and Tarrow 2001: 38). Moreover, while in general occupational groups (particularly farmers, but also fishermen, construction workers, and miners) protest at home against the EU, non-occupational groups protest in Europe against domestic grievances. Domestic protests against EU grievances, therefore, seem to come mostly from local occupational groups, whose occupation is tightly linked to the territory (land or sea) and who cannot easily be retrained. These groups are among those most willing to engage in overt protest, while non-occupational groups (representatives of the environment, of migrants, and of women’s sectors) prefer to engage in quieter lobbying of EU institutions or in judicial litigation (Chicowski 2007), through which they can presume to obtain greater benefits without necessarily having to manifest their distance from their grass-roots membership. It would therefore appear that “forms of protest become more routine and less contentious as groups approach the European Union” (Imig and Tarrow 2001: 40; Marks and McAdam 1999). The trend observed by Imig and Tarrow is on the increase: “European grievances are provoking more frequent but also less contentious protests” (2001: 46). A rapid development of truly European contention is still out of sight. First, “most individuals continue to have difficulties ascribing the sources of their

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grievances directly to the EU, and significant transaction costs impede their efforts to coordinate collective action across national boundaries” (Imig and Tarrow 2001: 47). Second, “national governments continue to play a primary role in policy-making . . . , and tried-and-true routines of collective action and familiar institutional patterns attach citizens to their national political systems” (Imig and Tarrow 2001: 47). Third, as occupational groups have been the most proactive, because of the non-localized nature of their jobs, they have tended to protest against EU targets in their own homes, that is, in the territories in which they are rooted. Imig and Tarrow can conclude that “although Europeans are increasingly troubled by the policy incursions of the EU, they continue to vent their grievances close to home—demanding that their national governments serve as interlocutors on their behalf” (Imig and Tarrow 2001: 47). What is the significance of European contention? That of an “entertaining sideshow” or “part of a broader system of protest . . . that extends from grassroots social actor and their organizations through national governments and European interest representatives to European institutions” (cf. Ruzza 2004)? What parallels can one draw between what is going on in Europe today and the other instances of transnational contention that can be observed in other contexts? To start with, interpretation of instances of truly European protest is not simple. Certainly the social groups that protest most against European institutions and decisions, whether in Brussels or at home, are the weaker groups in society: workers in non-footloose activities that see their jobs disappear and their place in society questioned by the creation of a single market and by the enactment of liberal policies. They still often protest “on native ground because that is where their political resources and opportunities are the greatest and where they play at the least disadvantage against the powerful actors who wheel and deal in Brussels” (Tarrow 2001: 235). Their greatest political opportunities—it is important to stress—are of a democratic, representative type. Particularly in the case of concentrated areas of production (agricultural districts, fishing communities, mining areas, etc.), their best defenders are elected representatives from their electoral districts who can make their voices heard and organize their grievances through national party organizations and apply pressure on national parliaments. European direct territorial representation is too wide (electoral districts are too large, thus diluting the incidence of any concentrated area of production and of its problems) and, of course, still lacks some of the perquisites of national parliamentary representation. To overcome these difficulties, Europeans have learned to cooperate across national boundaries and to bring their common or parallel grievances to bear on European institutions, the media, and the public at large, but they still most frequently engage in parallel competitive protest, thus checking each other’s efforts at redress. If these difficulties mar the efforts of the best organized social groups, like farmers and workers, one can only extrapolate the difficulties that more widely dispersed groups such as “welfare clients and pensioners, . . . not to mention immigrant workers, minority ethnic groups, and the unemployed” (Tarrow 2001: 235) face.

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Non-occupational groups, which often encounter the same difficulties at home and in Brussels, seek to overcome such difficulties by means of “virtual representation”: environmentalists, women activists, and migrants’ advocates represent “the interests of their chosen constituents groups at the center of the European Union rather than attempting to mobilize them transnationally. . . . Lacking the ‘punch’ that comes from being able to mobilize mass organizations within the member-states behind their proposals, we see public interest lobbies in Brussels occupy a weak position vis-a`-vis both member-states and European institutions and depending for their influence on special ties with sectors of the Commission or the European Parliament” (Tarrow 2001: 236). Although they deploy “weak weapons for the weak” (Guiraudon 2001), they have on occasion been extremely successful in playing “multilevel action coordination” and have obtained European legislation that was subsequently adopted by all member-states. The institutional locus for dialogue with social partners are civil society in the Economic and Social Committee (ESC) and the many “dialogues”—social and civic—that EU institutions have inaugurated with various representatives of civil society. Although perhaps still found wanting when compared with more tried systems of concertation in neo-corporatist countries, the ESC dialogues are yet beginning to structure state-society consultation in the EU. The general conclusion is that: Europeans are beginning to recognize more and more that the sources of many of their claims—especially occupational ones—are increasingly found in Europe’s integrated market and institutions. And in some cases, they are beginning to organize themselves transnationally. But while business associations have found it relatively easy to influence European decision-making in Brussels, weaker social actors continue to face imposing transaction costs when they attempt to organize across borders. Thus they continue to rely on mainly domestic resources and opportunities to target national decisionmakers when they seek redress for their claims against European policies. (Tarrow 2001: 237)

C O N C LU S I O N The dynamics that we have analyzed in this chapter suggest, as Wayne ’te Brake (1997), Zielonka (2006), and Tarrow (2001) have argued, that Europe is acquiring the characteristics of a “composite polity.” This construct is derived from a familiarity with processes of state development on the European continent and highlights interesting historical parallels between what took place between the twelfth and the nineteenth centuries and what is happening today. At the beginning of the early modern period, most Europeans lived within composite states that had been variously cobbled together from pre-existing political units by a variety of aggressive “princes” employing a standard repertoire of techniques. . . . Since the dynastic “prince” promised to respect the political customs and guaranteed privileges of these constituent political

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units, ordinary political subjects within composite states acted in the context of overlapping, intersecting, and changing political spaces defined by often competitive claimants to sovereign authority over them. (’te Brake 1997: 14)

The alliances between territorial princes, local political elites, and citizens have historically taken a variety of forms, configuring local alliances against the would-be center (local consolidation), alliances between the would-be prince and the local elites (elite consolidation), alliances between the territorial prince and the citizens (territorial consolidation), and alliances of independent local societies with both the local elites and the territorial prince (cross-territorial alliances). Similar patterns have also been described by Barrington Moore (1967) and other state scholars (Tilly 1975), who have emphasized the lasting consequences that the forging of one or another alliance has had on the democratic temper of the nation-state that eventually ensued. Tarrow draws some very interesting parallels between ’te Brake’s description and the current situation in Europe, reminding us that “even in a period of history more dominated by elites than ours is today, ordinary people could occasionally gain the resources and opportunities to exercise influence over their fate. . . . Early modern Europe possessed an overlapping checker-board of political jurisdictions that is analogous to the ‘variable geometry’ of today’s Europe. As in early modern Europe, this produces ‘multiple and overlapping structures of opportunity’” (Tarrow 2001: 242). And concludes that “though the leagues of cities are unlikely to become governments of today, regional governments, political parties, and even social movements are reaching across territories to increase their leverage against both national states and supranational authorities” (Tarrow 2001: 243). It is not difficult to see in these patterns of transactional politics the type of mobilization and shifting policy arrangements that is predicted by MLG. As Tarrow acknowledges, “the European Union is developing more than a ‘multilevel’ polity; it is at the same time cross-territorial, intergovernmental, and multilevel which opens up opportunities for coalitions of actors and states to formulate common positions and overcome their diversity and dispersion to exploit its political opportunities. . . . transnational advocacy coalitions— including actors within both national states and international institutions—may be the constitutive agents of a new transnational politics” (Tarrow 2001: 243–4; emphasis in the original). Transnational advocacy coalitions manage to break into this system of shifting alliances because they can provide supranational institutions with part of the legitimacy that they badly need. Even though such legitimacy derives from “virtual representation” (standing for a value, an ideal, an imagined constituency), it is representation nevertheless and, because it is virtual, it does not come into direct competition with other forms of representation (territorial, political, and functional), which would threaten the jurisdictional integrity of other channels of representation (national parliaments and governments, local councils and governments, the European Parliament, functional interest groups). For legitimation’s sake, they [the Commission] cultivate these ties, subsidize many of these groups, and provide them with a venue. . . . non-state actors

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The Theoretical Challenge gravitate around these institutions and have developed relations with their officials outside of, though not necessarily against, the states whose interests the institutions were created to serve. Not only that: encountering one another in the arena of international institutions may help them to frame their claims in transnational terms and—on occasion—to form true transnational coalitions. (Tarrow 2001: 246)

Just like the territorial prince of yore, “European institutions . . . actively encourage such groups to organize and interact with one another” (Tarrow 2001: 246). In some cases, the Commission even seems to “deliberately build up coalitions and networks as an opportunity to enhance its own position and influence” (Mak 2002). And the Commission has also deliberately sought to build up coalitions of subnational governments, such as when it pushed through the reformed Structural Funds and created the Committee of the Regions. Extending Tarrow’s conclusions somewhat, transnational groups and transnational associations of regional and local authorities (see Chapter 2) organize around supranational institutions “which serve as sources of group claims, as targets for protest, and as sites that can bring parallel groups [and subnational authorities] together internationally” (Tarrow 2001: 247).

Part II The Empirical Challenge

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5 Empirical Analysis Does this establish that multi-level governance is a theory? Or does it mean that it is a “paradigm” (Jordan 2004: 204), a “dis-ordering framework” (Rosamond 2000: 100), or a “compelling metaphor” (Rosamond 2000: 111)? Or, as this author suspects, does it not matter so long as a disciplined research agenda emerges that uncovers new knowledge about, and understanding of, the nature of the European Union? (George 2004: 117)

I N T RO D U C T I O N Exploration of the theoretical contours of multi-level governance (MLG) has led us significantly beyond what most scholars would identify as its essence: a convincing and open-ended description of policy-making in the European Union. In the introduction to their influential volume, Multi-Level Governance (2004), Ian Bache and Matthew Flinders use Marks’s words in order to recall this minimally shared understanding of MLG: “a system of continuous negotiations among nested governments at several territorial tiers” (Marks 1993: 392, quoted in Bache and Flinders 2004: 3). This system of negotiations, according to the same author, gives rise to arrangements in which “supranational, national, regional and local governments are enmeshed in territorially overarching policy networks” (Marks 1993: 402–3, quoted in Bache and Flinders 2004: 3). By way of further explanation, Bache and Flinders add that: “The multi-level concept then contained both vertical and horizontal dimensions. ‘Multi-level’ referred to the increased interdependence of governments operating at different territorial levels, while ‘governance’ signalled the growing interdependence between governments and non-governmental actors at various territorial levels” (Bache and Flinders 2004: 3). It would thus appear that, in order to test whether a given policy-making process is or is not an instance of MLG, one would need to check whether: (1) different levels of governments are simultaneously involved in policy-making; (2) non-governmental actors are also involved, at different governmental levels; (3) the interrelationships that are thus created defy existing hierarchies and rather take the form of non-hierarchical networks. In the chapters of this second part, I will assess the empirical relevance of the concept of MLG, that is, determine whether MLG describes accurately (at least some instances of) EU policy-making.

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In keeping with the more complex conceptual and theoretical discussion contained in Part I, however, I will try to do more than that. I will also analyze whether this minimal definition serves to distinguish instances of MLG from other types of governance (negative empirical test) and helps us differentiate between conventional forms of mobilization, which do not challenge established hierarchies, from more novel forms, which do challenge established hierarchies. And I will use it to explore what precisely constitutes a “novel” (hierarchychallenging) form of mobilization and what impact such mobilization may have on the structure of the European polity. Before I begin, though, let me tackle the apparently simple point of how many levels of government must be involved in policy-making in order to have an instance of MLG. It is my conviction that MLG should be used to indicate only those policy-making processes that see the simultaneous or staggered involvement of more than two levels of government. Although “two” levels are obviously more than “one,” they are not enough to warrant the use of the qualifier “multiple.” Two-level relations and “games”—between the international and the national level—are the mainstay of international relations and their predominant intergovernmental approaches (Putnam 1988). MLG challenges precisely the accuracy of this approach in explaining EU policy-making. Second, the involvement of non-governmental actors in policy-making—from trade unions and employers’ associations to NGOs and CSOs—is a necessary but not sufficient condition for MLG. To observe that, in a given policy area, national governments interact with supranational institutions and that non-governmental organizations are also involved does not suffice: to mobilize the concept of MLG, these latter must weave together different levels. The theoretical significance of MLG is fundamentally related to its pointing to the interdependencies between different (at least three) levels of government and civil society—the supra-, trans- or international level; the national level; and the sub- or infra-national level—and to the novel (that is, hierarchy-defying) relations that develop among them. These levels are often connected in network-like arrangements. Instrumental in connecting levels are both institutional actors—who may be willing to ignore hierarchical constraints in order to assemble the knowledge, resources, and consensus necessary to attain desired policy goals—and noninstitutional actors—who may counsel and cooperate with the governmental tiers (or contest and contrast them) in order to steer policy decisions, influence implementation, assess results. The mobilization of societal actors, therefore, is both part and parcel of a novel understanding of “governing as governance” and can serve to connect different governmental levels even where direct intergovernmental relations may prove difficult or excessively stifled by formal and legalistic relations. It will, therefore, also be possible to consider as instances of MLG policy processes in which subnational interests are voiced by non-governmental organizations, even in the absence of the formal participation of the subnational government in the network. It is a characteristic trait of governance that institutional and non-institutional actors sometimes cross their respective boundaries and swap tasks and modes of action, and sometimes take on board each other’s

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characteristic concerns and claims. To give an example, when Italian regions were still forbidden to open regional offices in Brussels because this would constitute a case of “foreign relations” which were the exclusive competence of the national government, they nevertheless conducted relations with the European institutions in Brussels through offices that were run by Chambers of Commerce (e.g. the Chamber of Commerce of Lombardy), by universities (e.g. the University of Turin, Piedmont) and by public-private partnerships (e.g. Emilia-Romagna’s ERVET). In other words, the regional governments, although formally absent from the Brussels scene, still kept their antennae focussed thanks to their collaboration with non-governmental organizations. The full and formal presence of regional or municipal governments in policy arrangements is, therefore, not strictly necessary in order to qualify them as genuinely multi-level.

O N E GOV E RNA N C E OR S EV E RA L ? In the first part of the book, I have argued that MLG is theoretically significant because it points to policy arrangements that call into question three established analytical boundaries intimately connected with the received notion of nationstate (polity dynamics) between center and periphery (X1), between domestic and international (X2), and between public and private (X3), and because it points to novel modes of political mobilization (politics dynamics) captured by movements on the three planes: the mobilization of subnational authorities at the international level (X1X2), the mobilization of civil society at the international level (X2X3), and the mobilization of civil society at the subnational level (X3X1). In testing MLG theory, then, I will pay attention to whether the policy-making decisions and arrangements also reflect the expected dynamics in terms of political mobilization and polity restructuring. In order to gain greater analytical depth along the politics and polity dimensions, I will discuss MLG theory against the backdrop of the two main alternative theories of European integration: liberal intergovernmentalism (LI) and neofunctionalism (NF). When it comes to explaining which level of government has primacy in EU policy-making (whether the subnational, the national, or the supranational), MLG’s most obvious rival is liberal intergovernmentalism (LI). It is against this theory that MLG contentions were first made. However, if MLG must be conceived as an authentic alternative conceptualization of EU governance, it must also be measured against the other main contending integration and governance theory, neo-functionalism (NF). Because it emphasizes the entrepreneurial capacity of supranational actors and the mobilization of societal groups, MLG has all too often been interpreted as nothing more than a restatement of neo-functionalism; hence the need to prove in which way it differentiates itself also from this second mainstream theory (Pollack 1995). Stephen George has recently developed such a critique from a penetrating reading of some European integration “classics.” Starting from an early critique

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of MLG formulated by Andrew Jordan (2001), George (2004) subjects MLG to an “empirical relevance” test. The core of George’s criticism is that, ontologically as well epistemologically, MLG is not significantly different from neo-functionalism or, rather, from its “revived” version (Stone Sweet and Sandholtz 1997; Sandholtz and Stone Sweet 1998; Stone Sweet et al. 2001), which he denotes as “supranational governance.” What this revived version did, according to George, was to ditch the simplistic idea of functional spillovers and emphasize rather that of cultivated spillovers through which the Commission enlists the help of economic interests and of the “functional ministries of the member states” (George 2004: 112). According to George, this new version of neo-functionalism anticipated one of MLG’s core ideas, namely that “The national state is not a unified entity, and parts of the state can defect from central control and ally themselves with the supranational actor” (George 2004: 112), the only difference being that in MLG theory, subnational authorities (SNAs) take the place of functional central ministries. According to George, then, “Multi-level governance therefore simply presents a special case within one aspect of the neofunctionalist analysis” (George 2004: 112). While it is certainly true that neo-functionalism and MLG “ultimately share a common position on the role of supranational institutional actors,” and that this position necessarily entails a rejection of “the state-centric view that supranational institutions are simply agents of the central executives of the member-states, because if the supranational institutions are simply the agents of the national central governments, there is no prospect then of forming alliances with SNAs against the policy preferences of the central governments” (George 2004: 112), I disagree with the second part of the syllogism that, therefore, MLG is simply “a special case within one aspect of the neofunctionalist analysis.”1 Treating SNAs and functional central ministries as comparable instances of a non-unitary vision of the state betrays—George will forgive me—a very “English” conception of the state indeed. According to this conception, local government is nothing other than the local articulation of one and the same national society and polity, with no political or cultural fundamental differences from the whole. MLG entails an altogether different understanding of local governments as capable of competing successfully with the central government for the allegiance and identification of local societies. Territorial distinctiveness is an inherent feature of MLG. MLG is not the only theory that purports to capture the above dynamics. On the one hand, other governance theorizations—such as “network governance,” “committee governance,” and “new modes of governance”—also start from an analysis of policy-making and political mobilization to draw attention to the novel arrangements which these interactions create (from policy and politics to polity). On the other hand, several state theories start from an analysis of the ways 1

It must be stressed that George means this as a compliment, as he sees MLG as the contemporary antagonist to intergovernmentalism: “It is a more comprehensive successor to neofunctionalism than the theories of ‘supranational governance’ which only pick up on some aspects of the neofunctionalist framework, and which therefore form a subset of hypotheses within the multi-level governance framework” (George 2004: 112).

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in which “territories are being unbundled” (Bartolini 1998) and “state boundaries are being redefined” (Ansell and Di Palma 2004) to argue that the opening up of new exit options induces a restructuring of voice within the member-states and within the EU, giving new relevance to subnational authorities and societies (from polity to politics and policy). Leaving for a later chapter the discussion of theories of state transformation, two questions must be asked with reference to the other governance theorizations. First, can these “theorizations” be turned into proper “theories” positing stable correlations (cause-and-effect relations) between observed phenomena so that they can, then, be subjected to empirical testing? Second, are these EU governance theorizations interchangeable? If it were so, some terminological simplification would be in order, so as to avoid inducing ambiguity by creating “distinctions with no difference” (Sartori 1984: 38). I believe that different governance labels point to different understandings of the same phenomena, hence deserve to be retained: they are characterized by some overlap but cannot immediately be reduced to one another. Network governance focusses on the informal shape that governance arrangements take in the European Union (Peterson 1995b, 2004; Kohler-Koch and Eising 1999; Marcussen and Torfing 2007; S
rensen and Torfing 2007). Like MLG, network governance draws attention to the scrambling of established hierarchies, to the creation of relational bridges, and to the mobilization of actors of a different political nature and institutional standing towards given policy goals: “The member state governments can no longer claim a monopoly on representing the interests of their citizens. Other avenues are open to them, and other non-national actors are competing for the position of legitimate interest representative” (Kohler-Koch 1999c: 19). The network qualifier is meant to draw attention to the particular configuration that governance structures in the European Union often take, capable of conjoining very different actors and institutions in the elaboration, implementation, and evaluation of policy solutions. However, in contrast to MLG, which emphasizes the contested nature of center-periphery, domestic-international, and state-society relations, the overall tone of network governance is functionalist: the successful combination of diverse interests towards a shared goal is inherent in its definition. “Governance is about the structured ways and means in which the divergent preferences of interdependent actors are translated into policy choices to ‘allocate values’, so that plurality of interests is transformed into coordinated action and the compliance of actors achieved” (Eising and Kohler-Koch 1999: 5; emphasis added). The assembly of highly integrated sub-systems yields functional structures that guarantee systemic coherence: “The core idea of network governance is that political actors consider problem-solving the essence of politics and that the setting of policy-making is defined by the existence of highly organized social subsystems” (ibid.; emphasis added). This surprising systemic result is reached thanks to the facilitating presence of governmental institutions. “[The EC] is a negotiating system which embraces Community institutions as well as economic and social actors and defines the role of ‘the state’, that is member state

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governments and the Commission, not as the apex of a decision-making hierarchy, but as a mediator in the common endeavour to come to terms with competing interests and an activator pushing for designing common policies” (Kohler-Koch 1999c: 18). The network qualifier, moreover, carries with it certain theoretical expectations that must be emphasized. The term “network” indicates fluid, yet stable structures whose contours may be constantly shifting but are always recognizable (sociologists discuss whether networks have a corporate nature), and within which a number of resources (information, authority, funds, organization, consensus, values) circulate. The emphasis, in the case of networks, is on consensus. The specific shape of the network is left unspecified by the literature—networks can take very hierarchical and segmented configurations, thus replicating government rather than governance structures, as well as very horizontal and interconnected structures, thus defying the governmental design—but it is implicitly understood that network governance gravitates towards the second end of the spectrum, lest the juxtaposition with the term governance is oxymoronic.2 Other expectations raised by this literature are that networks tend to emerge spontaneously among interested actors in order to solve policy problems, that they are self-steering, open to new entrants according to need, and potentially fungible (relations created with one end in mind can also be used towards different ends). Consensus is the glue that holds a network together and the criterion according to which new entrants are accepted into the network. As a byproduct, networks may create “social capital,” in the sense that they can raise the expectation that commitments will be honored by the members of the network and they can therefore make each partner more reliable and dependable. Should they fail, the default option would be sheer exchange: networks exist in the “shadow of the market.” “Adaptation occurs in the shadow of the market” (Kohler-Koch 1999c: 31).3 Committee governance has acquired increased currency in EU studies since scholars have begun to observe that many governance problems in the EU imply the creation of committees (Joerges and Vos 1999; Christiansen and Kirchner 2 Chris Ansell makes a similar point when he writes that “What distinguishes a heterarchy from a hierarchy is the capacity of lower-level units to have relationships with multiple higher-level centers (violating vertical chains of command) as well as lateral links with units at the same organizational level. . . . In formal terms, even a hierarchy can be described as a network in the sense that it can be represented as a set of relationships between nodes. In practice, however, the term ‘network’ only becomes interesting when some nodes violate the many-to-one mapping” (Ansell 2000: 307). Both hierarchy and heterarchy are possible network shapes: network governance would clearly consider only heterarchies as relevant networks, but the term network in and of itself does not discriminate between the two configurations. 3 She then goes on to explain exactly in what sense. “Both the Single European Market and globalization are reshaping the context in which actors formulate their preferences and strike bargains. Shifts in power and preferences may make different modes of governance more attractive. . . . The shadow of the market can be felt in another way. Faced with the inherent complexity of a network system of governance, conceding even more allocative powers to the governing mechanisms of the market may become attractive” (Kohler-Koch 1999c: 31).

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2000). Committees abound in the European Union. It would almost appear as if the EU had heeded the advice of US civil servants who, as sardonically reported by Lowi (1969), when at a loss about what to do about a problem create a committee. “Committees,” however, are not the same as “networks,” and consequently elicit rather different expectations. To begin with, committees are created, and do not emerge spontaneously. In contrast to networks, the members of the committees are carefully selected for their particular technical, legal, or administrative expertise; their nationality is also a fundamental quality. Like networks, committees circulate information, authority, and consensus, but this circulation is allowed only insofar as information, authority, and consensus are backed up by expertise. Some sort of certification is therefore essential in order to be part of a committee. As a consequence, the contours of committees are normally rather precisely defined, as the number and nature of the members need to be closely monitored. They are, therefore, rather technocratic in nature. Their specific task is fact- and solution-finding, hence they mostly operate through informed argumentation and scientific evidence production. Should they fail, the default option would be poorer legislation, but legislation nevertheless: they live in the “shadow of law.” Finally, the new mode of governance literature has drawn attention to horizontal coordination, spontaneous or elicited, through which an increasing amount of legislation is made in the European Union. Processes, Dialogues, and Open Methods are the ways in which the European Commission seeks consensus, coordination, and convergence among social partners, member-states, and institutions given the practical impossibility of applying more command-andcontrol governmental methods (like the Community method). They share features with both committees and networks. Like committees, and unlike networks, the identity of the members is selected among those that have particular resources to exchange: they are stake-holders in the strong sense of the word (e.g. employers’ and workers’ representatives in various Social Dialogues; institutions and economic actors in Territorial or Structured Dialogues; specific economic and institutional actors in various Processes; institutional actors in various Open Methods). Like networks, and unlike committees, these new modes of governance are self-steering and ongoing and rely on the sense of responsibility and mutual commitment of the members of the arrangement. According to one reading, should they fail, the default option is authoritative legislation: they stand in the “shadow of hierarchy” (He´ritier and Lehmkuhl 2008). It should therefore be obvious that, although all these theorizations investigate modern EU governance, the conceptualizations that they propose are not mutually interchangeable and they are not immediately equivalent to MLG. Multi-level governance is unique in that it draws attention to the role that governments and social actors at different territorial levels play in EU policy-making. It reminds us that much EU policy-making involves territorial jurisdictions below the national level, and their respective civil societies, in the ideation, implementation, and evaluation of legislation. Should MLG arrangements fail, we cannot simply argue that the territorial state would step in: they no longer live in “the shadow of the

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national state.” It further reminds us that EU policy-making cannot ignore existing institutions, particularly subnational governments, and that innovative governance solutions necessarily take the form of “institutional bricolage.” Bits and pieces of old institutions are reassembled in novel ways, and yet they are clearly recognizable in the new construction (Curtin 2007). The relevance of territorial institutions is one of the limits but also one of the characteristic traits of MLG theorization: it forces us to answer the difficult question of which territorial structures are activated and transformed and to look at the ways in which they resist or allow such transformation. Whereas MLG directly connects policy and politics issues to polity questions, neither the various governance theories recalled above nor state theories consider explicitly all these three dynamics simultaneously and posit clear causal interrelationships among them. In the case of the theories of governance, novel forms of political mobilization and policy-making are indeed detected, but the specific role of subnational authorities within them is not necessarily part of the investigation nor is it sufficiently specified. In the case of theories of state transformation, it is acknowledged that territorial unbundling and state restructuring are creating new opportunities of voice for subnational authorities, but their mobilization does not really pay attention to the concomitant activation of local societies. What is unique about MLG, then, is that it fully acknowledges this triple dynamic and the interrelations that it implies.

C R I T E R I A F O R E M P I R I C A L R E L EVA N C E How, then, do we move from the theoretical elaboration of MLG to its empirical application? How do we assess whether MLG, in addition to being theoretically significant, is also empirically relevant? What kind of evidence would we consider as supporting MLG and which as refuting it? In the following three chapters, I will review three different policy areas to see whether MLG shows any purchasing power, that is, whether it can accurately account for the decisions made and the governance arrangements thereby created. For each policy field, I will run a triple test of MLG. First, I will discuss in a rather conventional way whether the chosen policies display the traits conventionally attributed to MLG, that is, if: (1) different levels of governments are simultaneously involved; (2) non-governmental actors are also involved, at different governmental levels; and (3) the interrelationships thus created (the governance arrangements) defy existing hierarchies and take the form of rather non-hierarchical networks, that is, where they stand in the X1X2X3 space. The descriptive capacity of MLG can then be usefully contrasted with that of LI and NF. Second, I will analyze whether the policy decisions and governance structures display (i.e. cause or are caused by): (1) heightened international, transnational, or European-wide mobilization of subnational actors; (2) heightened national, transnational, and supranational mobilization of

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civil society actors; and (3) the creation of closer linkages between subnational authorities and subnational societies, that is, whether MLG dynamics are displayed on the X1X2, X2X3, and X3X1 planes. Third, I will speculate about the repercussions of these policy arrangements and this political mobilization for polity restructuring, that is, whether the action of the state has become less sovereign (X1), less autonomous (X2), and less specific (X3). Before I do that, however, I refer once more to George’s discussion of MLG in order to ferret out a number of frequently contested empirical issues. The second of Jordan’s original (2001) criticisms—that MLG provides a description and not a theory of the European Union and that it cannot, therefore, generate testable hypotheses—is, according to George, “unsustainable.” MLG does generate testable hypotheses, but ones that are not fundamentally different from those of neofunctionalism. Still, MLG is a more sophisticated version of neo-functionalism (“without the functionalism,” as argued above) in that it “turns its back on broad generalizations about the nature of the European Union and asks empirically testable questions about specific policy sectors” (George 2004: 116). One of the main hypotheses that MLG generates is that SNAs will mobilize in Brussels in part to exploit the new structure of political opportunity provided by the EU and in part to try and counter the drive towards the centralization of decision-making that the process of European integration has ignited. This mobilization will not occur evenly throughout Europe, however. MLG purports precisely to formulate hypotheses on what accounts for such variation. Further criticisms are that MLG overstates the autonomy of SNAs and that it mistakes subnational mobilization for evidence of influence. Indeed, mobilization is often due to an attempt on the part of SNAs to “overcome the informational advantage that government executives derive from their role as gatekeepers between the national and the European level” (George 2004: 123–4)—in itself, practically a confirmation of a state-centric view of the EU. On this point, George seems to agree with Jeffery (2000) that “the main game that is still being played is the domestic political game between SNAs and the central state,” so much so that SNA involvement in EU policy-making is taking the shape of “European domestic policy,” to all intents and purposes, an intergovernmental type of conclusion. As I will try to demonstrate, subnational mobilization is driven by different objectives, constrained by different institutional settings, and animated by different normative visions. Some subnational authorities prefer to orient their activism towards the acquisition (or the defense) of institutional powers, while others focus on their concrete involvement in policy-making, often in close collaboration with civil society actors, without investing too much energy in institutional change. These different strategies are certainly suggested by the institutional setting in which they happen to operate, but in no case does the institutional setting alone determine the political strategy. Subnational mobilization is as much influenced by the current institutional setting as by the intensity of the relations between subnational institutions and civil society associations, by the perceived EU-level structure of political opportunity, and by the normative visions embedded in the domestic local government tradition.

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Failure to mobilize may indicate, alternatively, lack of interest, capacity, or belief in the opportunity to do so. Let us, then, review the criteria according to which MLG empirical relevance should be assessed and the expectations that, in this regard, it is fair or unfair to hold.

Mode To claim that, e.g. cohesion policy has induced regional mobilization at the EU level does not imply that this should take place in any specific way. Regions may have mobilized around cohesion policy with the approval of their national governments or against their opposition. National governments may have seen from the start no problem in subnational mobilization at the EU level because of a long-term tradition of cooperative federalism or because the time seemed ripe for regional mobilization, or, again, they may have given in after a prolonged tugof-war once they became convinced that regional mobilization would take place anyway and that it could work to their advantage. What matters is that eventually regions mobilized in virtually all member-states and that they did so not just as mere outposts of their respective central governments but rather to promote their own institutional or policy interests and those of their regional societies.

Degree Subnational mobilization does not imply that all EU regions should mobilize to the same extent, nor that all regions of the same country should do so. Global trends cannot be disconfirmed by pointing to differences in speed, coverage, or reach nor by pointing to the different paths that different regions may take in order to reach comparable objectives. Neo-institutionalist analyses that focus on the different strategies and manners with which different regions manage to acquire independent access to EU circles (Bo¨rzel 2002b) or manage to defend internationally domestic competences by using different strategies at different times (Jeffery 2007) do not represent refutations of MLG. To characterize MLG as predicting that regions throughout the Community should become simultaneously equally independent and powerful, thanks to their participation in EU policy-making is certainly to make MLG into a theoretical straw-man in order the better to burn it to a cinder. The merit of MLG lies in its pointing to trends that, incrementally, induce significant changes in the way in which subnational and non-state actors mobilize, participate in policy-making, and by so doing redefine the nature of their relationship to the nation-state.

Timing To claim that subnational and non-state actors had begun to mobilize internationally before they were involved in EU policy-making, or that some regions had already become sites of innovative economic development experiments, or that they had already witnessed a revival of subnational identities does not detract

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from the theoretical significance of MLG. The process of European integration in general, and cohesion policy in particular, may have initiated these trends, they may have strengthened them, or they may have given them the opportunity to manifest themselves. MLG does not claim that it is only the process of European integration or, even less so, that it is only the entrepreneurial activity of the Commission, that elicits regional mobilization domestically and internationally, but that the process of European integration and the entrepreneurial activity of the Commission provide a suitable framework of opportunity for these developments to unfold or intensify (Bukowski et al. 2003). When, in the middle of the 1980s, Delors appealed to Europe’s “forces vives” in order to reignite the process of European integration that had considerably slowed down since the mid-1960s (Hooghe 1996b), he was probably thinking, by way of contrast, about national “deadweights” and was certainly aware of the economic and cultural effervescence already present in many peripheral areas of the Community.4 The theoretical claims of MLG, in other words, are not weakened nor refuted if some of the developments that the process of European integration is supposed to have helped were already somehow, somewhere under way.

Scope As for the existence and activism of non-governmental organizations and publicprivate advocacy coalitions, here too, it will suffice to show that these coalitions did indeed grow, transform, and multiply thanks to their involvement in EU policy-making, as they were called to release opinions that would feed on policy decisions, monitor policy implementation, and assess policy outcomes. Interregional associations, transregional pressure groups, and Euro-regions are all examples of this kind of novel mobilization that, with few exceptions, would probably not have existed or would have been significantly smaller had it not been for EU policy-making. What had existed prior to cohesion, environmental and higher education policy were interregional associations of a cultural kind, sponsored particularly by the Council of Europe. After the reform of the Structural Funds, the activation of environmental policy, and the inauguration of higher education policy, these associations multiplied and diversified, acquiring the traits of veritable lobbies in regular touch with Commission functionaries, members of the European Parliament, national representatives in Brussels (COREPER), and domestic Ministries or Departments. They also managed to create a consultative committee, the Committee of the Regions, which has become an increasingly significant institutional actor in its own right (more on that later).

4 These are, of course, figurative thoughts that I attribute to Delors to make my point, without presuming to represent his real thoughts. See Hooghe (1996b) for an accurate reconstruction of Delors’s strategy in reforming the Structural Funds.

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Impact Finally, one frequent criticism is that, while subnational authorities and societies do indeed take part in EU policy-making, they have very little influence on the provisions and procedures of these policies, which are still basically decided by the Commission and the national governments. Is the effect of subnational authorities and non-governmental organizations mere agitation without consequence? Have member-states finally won back much of the territory that they had initially relinquished? More generally, how do we know that subnational mobilization has any real impact at all? Indeed, tracing the specific impact of any given (individual or collective, private or public) actor is exceedingly difficult. Even when responsibility for a given policy idea can, pretty much beyond any doubt, be imputed to a given individual and institutional structure—as Hooghe has done in her accurate reconstruction of the Structural Funds reform (Hooghe 1996b)— nevertheless it is very difficult to trace where individuals got their first inspiration or to establish whether other institutional structures could have not achieved even better results. In the case of cohesion policy, for example, it would appear that Delors derived his conviction of the opportunity to involve regional authorities from his previous experience at DATAR (De´le´gation a` l’ame´nagement du territoire et a` l’action re´gionale), where he had been working in close contact with French regional authorities and experienced first-hand the difficulty of spurring economic development without the direct involvement of those on the receiving end of policy (Smyrl 1998). Apparently, he carried this conviction with him to the Commission and inspired a handful of functionaries with his ideas. How can we demonstrate that without Delors there would have been no direct regional involvement in cohesion policy or, on the contrary, that regional mobilization and involvement was just “waiting to happen” and that it would have found another promoter had Delors not been available? When it comes to ideas which, at one point in time, appear to command greater legitimacy than all others, we are pretty much left with either the “garbage can” (Cohen et al. 1972; Peters and Pierre 2002) model, which disperses responsibility for events and therefore fails to assign direct merit (or blame) for any policy success (or failure) to specific individuals or institutions, or with a “constructivist” approach (Radaelli and Schmidt 2004), which requires careful reconstruction of the institutional journey traveled by the actors and the ideas to which they were thereby exposed. To conclude on the methodological criteria, proving that MLG is empirically relevant will mean stacking up enough evidence that the three developments identified at the beginning of this chapter—simultaneous involvement of different levels of government, participation of NGOs and CSOs at all levels, and creation of governance structures that defy established hierarchies—did take place in the three policy areas that I will analyze and that they are interrelated with one another. This means that they did not occur simultaneously by mere chance, but were rather the product of concurrent dynamics that fed upon one another. While this is certainly a tall order, fortunately the evidence has already

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been harvested by a legion of very perceptive scholars, and I am just left with the task of ordering it.

CRITERIA FOR POLICY SELECTION The three policy areas selected for this book—cohesion policy, environmental policy, and higher education policy—have been chosen in order to cover a wide range of issues and policy types. Cohesion policy is a distributive policy (with redistributive implications) that hands out substantial amounts of funds. Environmental policy is a regulatory policy that imposes heavy costs on private and public actors. Higher education policy is hardly an EU policy at all (in fact, it hovers between spontaneous and steered coordination) and does not imply the disbursement of any significant amount of money (the Erasmus program being the only significant part of the EU budget under the higher education rubric). From a formal point of view, two of these policies, cohesion and environment, fall under the “first pillar” procedure, which sees the Commission play a pivotal role in proposing new legislation, grants an important decision-making role to the European Parliament, and gives the European Court of Justice jurisdiction over eventual infringements. However, these two continue to be very different policies in both institutional and conceptual terms: cohesion policy is closely associated with macroeconomic questions of budget allocation and redistribution, whereas environmental policy is associated with microeconomic issues of competitiveness and the correct functioning of the internal market. Finally, parts of higher education policy also fall under the first pillar, but most of it remains in limbo between spontaneous coordination, the open method of coordination, and multi-level governance. What’s more, none of these policies necessarily implies the involvement of the subnational tier of government or society. Though this may sound implausible to people accustomed to the idea that economic development should be fostered by targeting specific regions and localities, the prevailing economic approach towards development during the postwar period has been sectoral rather than territorial in focus. The mainstream approach to economic development has privileged the manipulation of demand-side levers—mainly, fiscal and monetary policies—and even when it started considering supply-side factors, these were mainly identified with material and immaterial infrastructure to be provided evenly across the country (communication and transportation infrastructure, energy supply, financial, banking and insurance services, R&D and technological transfer, human capital qualification, labor force training and retraining, etc.). Mainstream economics assumes that, once the right factors are in place, economic actors will spontaneously take advantage and exploit the comparative and competitive advantages inherent in any given location. Indeed, the creation of the Single European Market was at first conceived as a sort of giant macroeconomic measure aimed at creating incentives (or, rather,

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removing the disincentives) that the most attentive and capable economic actors in each country would certainly be able to capitalize on. Removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers (national regulation, monopoly positions, cartel situations, etc.) accompanied the creation of the single market so as to free the spontaneous forces of the market. Awareness of the impact that these measures—and the wholly unexpected and unanticipated shocks coming from without the system—might have on specific territories came much later, in the 1970s, when it became clear that neither demand-side nor generic supply-side factors would revive moribund local economies or breathe life into stillborn ones. The time for general solutions was over; the time for targeted recipes was at hand. In the attempt, on the one hand, to remove the factors that were stifling economic growth (those factors that prevented disengagement from declining industries or that discouraged workers from upgrading obsolete skills) and, on the other hand, to put in place the factors that might trigger economic growth (those factors that would facilitate investment in new products or services and would encourage workers to acquire new skills and competences), increasing attention started to be paid to territories. Territories, as we saw in Chapter 2, are local ecologies that combine in different ways a finite number of factors engendering unique combinations. Economic development, it was concluded, could be achieved only if the specific strengths and endowments of a given territory were correctly coupled with new ideas and markets to yield new products and activities. To this end, attention was to be paid not only to the specificities of the territory (its location, cultural heritage, productive profile, social capital, institutional capacities), but also to its inhabitants (their language, education, mobility, etc.). Economic development cannot be concocted following one standard recipe, but by blending together a number of well-seasoned local ingredients. Even less intuitively connected to the subnational level are the other two policies. Although environmental policy has a clear territorial component, it is far from clear that the relevant scale for tackling environmental problems should be the region or the locality. If air or water is polluted, many localities are likely to be affected, hence national or even EU-wide policies would seem most appropriate. If the problem has to do with endangered species (of animals or plants), policies may be drawn up at the national (indeed, EU) level and then applied wherever relevant. In each case, though, particularly dramatic environmental problems may be felt locally. Coastal areas will be particularly touched by issues having to do with sea-water pollution. Mountain areas will be particularly affected by issues of deforestation or acid rain. Cities will certainly be more affected by carbon dioxide emissions. The countryside will be more touched by issues of soil contamination. More generally, as we know, even the most global environmental issues may have devastating localized effects: the release of CFCs in the atmosphere leads to the depletion of the ozone layer that disproportionally affects the polar regions, while global warming is likely to affect particularly low-lying and tropical areas. Once more, the consequences of general, global dynamics must be dealt with locally. Finally, higher education is a policy area where the nation-state has traditionally been in charge. However, this policy too has unequivocal local repercussions

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that may stimulate subnational involvement. To begin with, innovative technology has been proven to emerge in areas where learning and research institutions exist next to enterprises willing to apply the knowledge there produced. Second, one of the surest recipes for the revitalization of declining cities has been investment in education, from medical care to advanced financial services, from cultural production to entertainment. Big cities are second to none in the race for economic growth, and investment in higher education services is a crucial component of their strategy (Salet and Gualini 2007; Le Gale`s 2002). Third, it is not just that higher education has a clear local impact, but in turn, local factors have a clear impact on the production of higher education: the way to promote the creation of world-class higher education institutions is to bank on local strengths (Newsweek 2007). In an increasingly mobile world, students, scholars, scientists, and entrepreneurs shop around for the best institutions and end up making their choice on the basis not just of academic or business excellence, but also of price-effectiveness and quality-of-life considerations. For all these reasons, there has been a trend towards the concentration of institutions of learning and research in specific localities: local governments, local entrepreneurs, and local credit institutions feel increasingly compelled to invest in higher education. None of the policies selected, therefore, would appear to be an obvious candidate for testing the purchasing power of MLG, yet none can be a priori discarded as being an obvious non-case. Moreover, they cover most policy types—covering both redistributive and regulatory policies—as well as different types of policy instruments—regulations (cohesion policy), directives (environmental policy), and recommendations (higher education policy).

POLICY AREAS Cohesion policy is the policy field in which MLG was first theorized and tested. It explicitly requires the active involvement of subnational governments and societies in both policy definition and implementation; hence it represents a “most likely case.” In reality, there are good reasons for claiming that cohesion policy is also a particularly tough testing ground for MLG. Substantial resources are distributed to regions through the Structural Funds (SFs); hence cohesion policy is a distributive policy with powerful redistributive side-effects. In large part, these funds derive from the central governments, both because the EU budget, from which the funds are drawn, is made up of contributions from the memberstates and because the central governments contribute most of the additional matching funds (in variable proportions from instrument to instrument) to integrate Community and local money (additionality). Moreover, the daily management of these Funds is entrusted to Monitoring Committees at the regional and local level, in which representatives from the Commission, the member-states, subnational authorities, and civil society organizations are present (partnership). As Bache (2004) reminds us, among the principles that govern

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this policy, additionality and partnership are the most difficult for national governments to accept. Central governments have a very concrete interest in determining how Structural Funds are allocated and spent, and are understandably reluctant to relinquish authority over the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of the programs thus funded to the Commission, subnational authorities, and representatives of civil society (social partners and non-governmental organizations). Indeed, the central governments of several member-states resisted the empowerment (and in some cases the creation) of the regional tier that this policy implied. In their turn, while some regions were overwhelmed by the burdensome procedures entailed by the policy, others complained as they saw their domestic role undercut by EU procedures that enlisted them among many other governmental and nongovernmental actors, but no longer as the sole protagonist of development policy. Cohesion policy may have been initially perceived as being at odds with the institutional interest of most subnational actors. Nevertheless, I will try to show that the policy has had an empowering effect on the subnational tier throughout the EU. The Structural Funds—the main financial instrument of cohesion policy—can therefore be considered a battleground in the power struggle between center and periphery: fights over financial resources, after all, are a classic in intergovernmental relations. If we factor in the possibility that, through the contacts developed during policy-making, the regions have the opportunity to inform the Commission of their specific preferences (which may not coincide with those of their central governments), to network with other similarly positioned regions in other member-states to further their common agenda, and to plan future actions aimed at strengthening their decision-making powers, it can be easily understood that this policy field should in fact be considered a particularly tough testing ground for the tug-of-war implied by the notion of center-periphery relations. Higher education policy is a completely different type of policy, indeed one in which the Commission hardly has any formal competence. Higher education is an integral part of that field of cultural policies over which the memberstates jealously guard their exclusive competence. Cultural matters define nation-states probably more than any other domestic issue. In a united Europe, peoples are separated first and foremost by languages and cultures. Control over education was, not by chance, the terrain over which the confrontation between church and state took place in the heyday of state formation: control of the means of cultural production is fundamental in the creation of a sense of identity with and allegiance to any wider unit. One need not subscribe to Gramscian or Foucauldian theories of hegemony to agree with the proposition that the filtering of information and the shaping of cognitive frames is one of the most powerful instruments of rule. Moreover, in contemporary societies, competition takes place as much in terms of control over prime materials, productive activities, and financial markets as in terms of control over knowledge. The production and diffusion of knowledge is, in fact, the terrain over which contemporary economies compete with one another. It

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is not by chance that the Lisbon Strategy identified “knowledge” as the key to the economic competitiveness of the EU. Understandably, national elites resist the idea of relinquishing this formidable lever of control over their own population and wealth to a supranational entity. At the same time, national governments know that, whether they coordinate with each other or not, they must engage in experimentation and learning in order to achieve high levels of efficacy in their educational policies. On the one hand, experimentation is encouraged by allowing for a high degree of independence and autonomy at the local level. Structured comparisons and mutual learning, on the other, avoid repeating mistakes made elsewhere. Thus, high levels of both experimentation and information exchange across states, regions, localities, and institutes of learning are desirable. Higher education policy, then, is at the same time an understandably difficult policy area in which to seek to apply MLG, as well as a potentially highly rewarding field. Conscious of the potential benefits deriving from experimentation and learning, the member-states and the Commission have begun to take the first steps in the direction of what appears to be a multi-level higher education system. Higher education policy is thus, at the same time, a “least likely case” and a most promising one. Finally, environmental policy can be considered as an intermediate case. It is a different policy type from the previous two, yet it is somehow bracketed by them. It is a policy area in which big money is involved, even though, being a regulatory policy rather than a distributive/redistributive policy, the money is directly spent by firms, citizens, and authorities rather than by supranational institutions. At the same time, it is a policy in which civil society is very active, particularly locally and internationally. For this reason, we can expect subnational, particularly local, authorities and societies to be very involved in this policy field and to lay claim to a substantial voice and participation. It is not by chance that this is the second most studied policy field in terms of the applicability of MLG. I shall consider it as an “intermediate” control case. While in this book I am going to look in some detail at only three policy areas, there are other policy areas in which subnational and civil society participation in policy-making can be documented and that could therefore serve equally well as testing grounds for MLG theory, such as neighborhood policy, transportation policy, or migration policy. It would appear that the policies which most immediately invite an application of MLG are policies that have to do with territory, although at different scales.

C O N C LU S I O N Several authors examine the same developments that occupy the second part of this book under the rubric of “Europeanization” (e.g. Bo¨rzel 2002a, 2002b; Graziano 2004; Gualini 2004b) rather than that of MLG (but see Bache 2008

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for an interesting merging of the two agendas). I will not mix these two lines of inquiry, because I believe that the Europeanization studies contain specific theoretical implications that may distort the study of MLG. In particular, Europeanization suggests that adaptation occurs between fairly self-contained political entities: those “hard-shelled, separate entities” reminiscent of the intergovernmental vision of Europe (Webb 1983). According to this view, both the EU and the member-states are characterized by specific institutional structures, political traditions, and cultural attitudes. These may be affected in some policy areas, while left untouched in others. Adaptation is therefore rather like a patchwork (Green Cowles et al. 2001) and there is no analysis of how whole systems will be affected by sub-systemic changes (but see Knill 2001). We could say that MLG makes the opposite implicit assumption: that both the European and the domestic political systems are continuously co-evolving because multiple feedbacks make sure that they keep influencing each other. Moreover, MLG assumes that increased subnational mobilization and policy participation will induce empowerment and learning processes that will inevitably affect center-periphery relations and unleash further mobilization both domestically and transnationally. While the various feedback relations may be difficult to trace and their causal correlation difficult to prove, MLG predisposes the analyst to assume that changes along the policy dimension will have repercussions along the politics and polity dimensions as well. True, Europeanization research was recently shorn of some of the naı¨veties that characterized its early output. Graziano and Vink (2007a) have produced an impressive assessment of Europeanization research in which they explore and explode some of the most enduring commonplaces. Among these, the assumption that Europeanization is a vertical, top-down affair (while it can also be horizontal); that it operates solely through direct effects (while it can also operate through indirect mechanisms such as information exchange and learning); that it must necessarily imply convergence, harmonization, and integration (while it may also produce divergence, dissonance, and disintegration); that it affects only policies (while it may also affect institutions); that it only affects member-states (while it can also affect non-member-states). However, by adopting a Europeanization perspective, a clear-cut causal relationship is normally posited between European Union institutions, policies, procedures, and attitudes, on the one hand, and changes in institutions, policies, procedures, and attitudes of the member-states, on the other (Radaelli 2003)—so-called downloading. Less often, the influence of national institutions, policies, procedures, and attitudes on the European Union is also underlined, in an effort to understand whence the EU gets its own institutions, policies, procedures, and attitudes—so-called uploading (e.g. Bo¨rzel 2002b). The degree of change induced in member-states is supposed to depend on the degree of fit or misfit between the original domestic arrangements and those implied by EU legislation. More precisely, change will be significant in the case of a moderate degree of fit/misfit, as the benefits of adaptation can be expected to be somewhat larger than their costs; it will be minimal when fit or misfit is so large that the

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benefits of adaptation will be far outweighed by the associated costs (Green Cowles et al. 2001). The relationship between the degree of fit/misfit and adaptation is therefore non-monotonic and looks rather like an upward-pointing parabola. In the case of cohesion policy, Bache (2008) proposed to capture the degree of fit/misfit by resorting to the more general macro-characterizations of memberstates as simple or compound polities proposed by Schmidt (2006b). He suggests that the degree of fit will be larger (hence, adaptation smaller) in compound polities, as these already contain elements of a multi-level political system, while the degree of fit will be smaller (hence, adaptation bigger) in simple polities.5 This is why an apparently well-fitting case such as Germany experienced rather significant problems in adapting to MLG arrangements, while an apparently poorly-fitting case such as the UK revealed surprising adaptational capacities. Indeed, as we will see in the chapters that follow, the British and the German cases are rather crucial test cases for MLG and will thus serve as a reference point in much of the following analysis. Ultimately, the reason why this book does not adopt a Europeanization perspective may well be one of personal preference. The fact is, if the focus of Europeanization is expanded to encompass top-down as well as bottom-up dynamics, direct as well as indirect effects, convergent as well as divergent trajectories, policies as well as institutions, member-states as well as non member-states, it will end up coinciding with the study of political change tout court—and not even only within the European Union! It then becomes difficult to decide what is the specific realm of application of Europeanization theory and whether Europeanization, as opposed to other global trends, are at work in producing those changes. 5 Bache (2008: 2–4, ch. 5) warns that these macro-characterizations are useful only as orienting devices and that details matter a lot.

6 Cohesion Policy European policy seemed to offer a way toward an integrated Europe as the regions would be permitted to bypass member state governments to form direct links with European institutions and would thereby whittle away the sovereignty of the nation-state (McAleavy 1993: 89) European integration and regionalism are two developments which are altering the architecture of the western European state. . . . Policy continues to be focused on the state, but this is penetrated by European and regional influences (Keating and Hooghe 1996: 216)

I N T RO D U C T I O N Cohesion policy is the field in which the theory of multi-level governance (MLG) was first fashioned and tested, and it is therefore the policy in which we would expect the theoretical promises of MLG to hold out most fully when measured up against empirical evidence. At a minimum, three hypotheses should be confirmed for MLG to accurately describe this policy field: (1) regions should mobilize at the EU level (outward movements on the X1X2 plane); (2) cohesion policy should spur greater activism on the part of transregional public-private advocacy coalitions at the EU level (outward movements on X2X3 plane); (3) regions should be induced by cohesion policy to connect more intimately with their respective civil societies (outwards movements on the X1X3 plane). As a consequence of this varied policy-related political mobilization, we should also be able to observe structural (polity) transformations: through cohesion policy, regions should be empowered vis-a`-vis their central governments (outward movements along the X1 axis). As I recalled in the first chapter, cohesion policy was the terrain on which MLG proponents (Marks 1992, 1993; Hooghe 1996a; Hooghe and Marks 1996; Marks et al. 1996a, 1996b) had both to fight the prevailing intergovernmental interpretation of European integration and also to defend themselves against the accusation of doing no more than re-hashing a neo-functionalist reading, which they achieved by underscoring the actor-centeredness of their approach. By focussing on the behavior of flesh-and-blood actors, with their specific political ambitions and policy visions,

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X2

X1

X3

Fig. 6.1. Cohesion policy Notes: X1 ¼ center-periphery dimension; X2 ¼ domestic-international dimension; X3 ¼ state-society dimension.

they avoided giving an overly stylized account of cohesion policy in which individuals are interpreted as merely filling institutional roles and as simply furthering the goals of the institutions they happen to represent. This narrow understanding of “actor,” in reality, characterizes both intergovernmental and neo-functionalist approaches. For intergovernmentalists (Moravcsik 1993, 1998), governmental actors—in whichever capacity and at whatever level they happen to serve—will invariably want to preserve and promote the sovereignty of the state and the national interests that they represent. For neo-functionalists (Lindberg 1963; Lindberg and Scheingold 1971; Schmitter 1969, 1970, 2004) and the theorists of the “regulatory state” (Majone 1996), Commission functionaries will always seek to preserve the power and expand the functions of this supranational institution. For the former, individuals are constantly engaged in power politics; for the latter, they are always engaged in bureaucratic politics. When real actors are factored in, convergence around policy goals and compromise solutions that neither completely preserve state sovereignty nor completely maximize bureaucratic expansion becomes possible. Key decision-makers on “either side” have multiple and changeable preferences, which are partly defined by their roles in their respective institutions, and partly by their roles in various policy networks. Under certain conditions, key decision-makers may want to forego maximum autonomous control for their institution in return for other interests, such as maintaining internal cohesion of their institution, building up a constituency, increasing the scope (rather than the depth) of their activities, realizing long-held ideas, achieving greater policy effectiveness, and scoring electoral advantage. (Hooghe 1996a: 93)

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European Regional Development Policy (ERDP), as cohesion policy was initially called, is an excellent example of this type of dynamic. The trigger for ERDP reform in the mid-1980s is most commonly identified with the impending completion of the Single Market, through the Single European Act (1986) and the Treaty on the European Union (1992), and its expected consequences.1 Jacques Delors, the mastermind of the Structural Funds reform, had sponsored the production of a highly influential White Paper on the completion of the Common Market (CEC 1985) and was, consequently, acutely aware of the need to accompany marketenhancing reforms with equally powerful market-correcting measures. He had taken his cue from the ideas that were circulating in the Commission and that were eventually contained in the influential Cecchini report (CEC 1988). This report forecast that the completion of the Common Market would benefit the core regions of the Community (the “golden triangle” or “blue banana”—from the colour used to highlight the European regions with the highest per capita income—extending from roughly Manchester to Barcelona passing through London, Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt, and Milan), but would penalize the weaker peripheral regions unless their difficulties were countered by some special measures. These economic forecasts were implicitly confirmed by the recent experience of the declining regions of the north (mostly in the UK) and the still developing regions of the south (mostly in Italy) which had not made any real progress since the mid-1970s. This evidence apparently convinced the representatives of the member-states to agree to a substantial increase in the Structural Funds, from roughly 7.0 million ecu to 14.0 million ecu between 1988 and 1992 and to a further dramatic increase, from roughly 18.2 million ecu in 1993 to 30 million in 1999, as a way of compensating the weaker regions of the Community for the foreseeable difficulties (Mazey 1995; Armstrong 1995). In 1999, Structural Funds amounted to more than a third of the EU budget (35 percent or 27.4 bn ecu), up from a trifling 9 percent (or 7 bn ecu) in 1986 (Wishlade 1996). Cohesion objectives were considerably simplified by the 2007–13 regulation, but the budget was kept at 36 percent of the EU budget (equivalent to 347.41 bn Euros). Scholars wondered why member-states agreed to such a significant increase in the financial endowment of a policy with a clear cross-European redistributive impact and designed in such a way as to involve subnational authorities that would have not existed or would never have had responsibility in decisions on how to use these funds in the absence of this reform. These provisions potentially entailed significant reductions in sovereignty both vis-a`-vis the Community and vis-a`-vis the subnational tier. On the one hand, the utilization of increasingly large shares of a growing Community budget for Communitywide purposes appeared to shift shares of sovereignty from the member-states to 1

Lest this sounds like a functionalist argument—the reform was decided and implemented because it was anticipated that the completion of the Common Market would reward richer regions and penalize poorer ones—well, it is! Sometimes functionalist arguments work because there is enough continuity in political action to allow leaders to anticipate the future consequences of current decisions and try to counteract their negative impact beforehand.

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the Commission. On the other hand, the involvement of lower levels of government in the decisions governing the allocation of these funds seemed to shift parts of sovereignty from the member-states to the regions. As already mentioned in the Introduction, the question was mostly pitched at a theoretical (polity) level, as calling into question the dominant theories of European integration regarding the challenges to the nation-state in guarding the domestic-international gate as well as the center-periphery gate. The argument advanced by intergovernmentalists, it will be recalled, was to deny the significance of these curtailments of sovereignty (Moravcsik 1993; Pollack 1995; Bache 1998). Member-states were relinquishing sovereignty shares to supranational authorities, it was argued, because by so doing they could achieve their real and ultimate goal: the completion of the Common Market. As for subnational authorities, member-states were not really ceding any real powers to them, as central governments still decided regulations, the size of the national financial “envelopes,” and the content of Community Support Frameworks, which determined which areas would receive the funds. Whichever power was given to the Commission, it was the power of a faithful agent who was supposed to better serve its principals’ interests. And whichever power was given to the regions it was only symbolic and limited. Gary Marks’s rebuttal (Marks 1992, 1993, 1996) of the intergovernmental interpretation of ERDP reform and the detailed account provided by Liesbet Hooghe (1996b) of the intra-bureaucratic fight that ensued around two different visions of cohesion policy between Delors and his close circle of collaborators and the DG XVI bureaucracy clearly show how policy visions and different bureaucratic cultures shaped this policy reform and vindicate the fertility of an actorcentered approach. Both the 1988 reform and its partial (and in many ways only apparent, Sutcliffe 2000) 1993 “counter-reform” can be understood only by taking seriously the visions and ambitions of individual actors.2 In practice, the goal of the counter-reform was to “simplify the programming procedure by clarifying the role to be played by each of the partners. To this end, the Commission would have a larger role in the setting of the overall priorities for structural fund assistance, whereas the central governments and subnational partners should take a larger role in the implementation and monitoring of the funds” (Sutcliffe 2000: 302). By drawing attention to the policy details, MLG theorists could effectively counter the intergovernmentalist polity claims: the central governments of member-states might well have decided framework regulations and financial envelopes, but the Commission had reserved for itself ample room to decide the terms of fund

2 The main evidence supplied by Sutcliffe (2000: 298–9) in support of a partial reassertion of nation-state supremacy over the Commission is represented by the more stringent regulations and the decreasing budget allocated to Community initiatives in 1993 and 1999 vis-a`-vis 1986. The budget for Community initiatives decreased from 10% to 9% and eventually to 6% of the overall structural funds, while in their administration, the principle of additionality could be attenuated, taking into account not just macroeconomic circumstances, but also a number of specific economic circumstances (privatizations, unusual levels of public structural expenditures).

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disbursement, and had requested to this end the collaboration of regional and local governments, social partners, and organized civil society. As Marks (1993) aptly put it, “the devil hides in the details.” By shifting the level of discourse, Marks and the others certainly won a battle, but also committed themselves to prove that policy dynamics accumulate and escalate into polity transformations, and this is a much tougher test.

C O N T E N T I O U S I S S UE S Let us review the main contentions. The first claim, that cohesion policy (as ERDP eventually came to be known) has caused a shift of sovereignty away from the national state and towards supranational institutions, deserves a closer look. Intergovernmentalists argue that cohesion policy is the side-payment to the weaker member-states for the greater benefits that would accrue to the stronger ones from the completion of the Single Market. It would be almost unnecessary to mobilize harder-to-prove motivations if the rational-choice explanation appears to say it all. Furthermore, member-states remained the “masters of the Treaties” and could, in theory, renege on their previous commitments and withhold budget shares, although in practice, such a retrenchment would be very unlikely. Although distributive and redistributive, cohesion policy is thus portrayed as a Paretoimproving redistributive measure that eventually leaves everyone better off (Majone 1996). It would appear, therefore, unnecessary to presuppose any particular willingness to relinquish national sovereignty on the part of member-states’ central governments to account for their acceptance of cohesion policy. The “side-payment” thesis is a widely accepted explanation of member-states’ acquiescence to such a momentous increase in the Community budget and to the reform of the Structural Funds in 1986. But there are other more commonsensical reasons why cohesion policy should be accepted by all member-states that do not imply a confirmation of the intergovernmental thesis. To begin with, the Structural Funds would inevitably favor this or that member-state according to whether it happened to host lagging or declining regions. Since no member-state could be certain of remaining for ever at the giving or at the receiving end of this measure, this policy implied that economic costs and benefits would be distributed in unknown proportions. In fact, while in the beginning they particularly favored Italy, Ireland, and the UK, they later favored Greece, Portugal, Spain, Germany, and, more recently, the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs). Hooghe (1996a) and Behrens and Smyrl (1999) have convincingly shown that other considerations, such as a true concern for economic equality and the desire “not to leave anyone behind,” inspired cohesion policy reform. Moreover, it was clear that the policy would be implemented in such a way that all member-states would receive at least a small part of it, probably more for symbolic than for substantive reasons (Piattoni 2008a). Accordingly, national governments could easily agree to a cohesion policy that promised to come to the rescue of the weaker regions, wherever they

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happened to be, potentially also in their own country. In conclusion, the redistributive aspect of this policy can easily be accommodated even by those theories of European integration that place the states’ desire to preserve their sovereignty at the core of their analysis. Other aspects of ERDP, however, are more contentious. The reform of the Structural Funds contained procedural details that indeed seemed to imply a certain surrender of sovereignty on the part of the member-states in favor of their regional tiers and, ultimately, the Community itself. The principles contained in the reformed Structural Funds—programming, concentration, additionality, subsidiarity, and partnership—could indeed affect national sovereignty. Programming and concentration meant that funds should not be dispersed among many disparate and small projects, but needed to be concentrated on a few truly deserving objectives and areas in such a way as to try and make a real difference. The effort in favor of the targeted areas should be protracted in time and last for the duration of the entire programming period (initially five, then six, and ultimately seven years). These two principles together implied that the funds could not be used to buy off small “local constituencies” and to create patronageinduced consensus—a well-known practice in many European areas, both north and south. The subsidiarity principle turned out to be even more contentious: initially conceived to indicate that “decisions should be made at the level closest to the citizen”—which, in the original thinking of the Commission, meant regions and cities—it was eventually reinterpreted to indicate that “decisions should be made at the Community level only if the problems could not be satisfactorily handled at the national level,” a version of subsidiarity preferred by the member-states.3 Even today, the interpretation of this principle keeps oscillating between these two meanings, signaling that the tug-of-war between supranational, national, and subnational institutions is not over. The additionality principle stipulated that Community funds could be disbursed only if national governments contributed matching funds, thus preventing member-states from considering Structural Funds as mere reimbursements of budget contributions and limiting their freedom to use a portion of the national budget as they saw fit. The partnership principle, finally, required the active involvement of subnational authorities in the ideation and implementation of the programs that would guide the disbursement of the funds, thus rendering them accomplices in this reduction of sovereignty. At the limit, it implied their creation where a regional (NUTS (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) II) level did not exist, a veritable intrusion into the autonomy of member-states’ freedom to organize territorially as

3 The online glossary of the European Union states that: “The principle of subsidiarity is defined in Article 5 of the Treaty establishing the European Community. It is intended to ensure that decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen and that constant checks are made as to whether action at Community level is justified in the light of the possibilities available at national, regional or local level” (). Article 3b of the Treaty on the European Union (formerly article 5 of the Treaty establishing the European Community, consolidated version 2002) reads: “The Community shall act within the limits

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they preferred. These provisions, therefore, imposed actual and symbolic “sovereignty costs” that affected the different member-states in different ways. Unitary states might be expected to be affected more deeply by this aspect of the policy than regionalized and federal states and, understandably, to try to fight back more vehemently.4 However, the difficulties of implementing cohesion policy must not be underestimated in the case of federal member-states either. These two issues together reveal that polity consequences may indeed be implied by policy provisions. Hence, MLG can and should be interpreted and discussed also as a theory of European integration and of the transformation of the nation-state.

I N T E N S I F I E D M O B I L I Z AT I O N O F R E G I O N S AT T H E EU L EVE L (X 1 X 2 ) The mobilization of regions within cohesion policy is the first indicator of the significance of MLG. There is wide agreement on the following propositions: (1) that subnational authorities throughout the EU have been involved in this policy area; (2) that such involvement has allowed them to mobilize at the EU level in a number of novel ways; (3) that they have thus managed to entertain relations with European institutions and other subnational authorities that they would have hardly entertained had it not been for this policy, and (4) that such participation has represented an opportunity for creating, reviving, or intensifying their linkages with their respective societies. Unsurprisingly, scholars disagree on whether subnational authorities have ever really managed to influence cohesion policy (Jordan 2001; George 2004) and whether their political mobilization and participation in policy-making has been accompanied by a significant redefinition of center-periphery relations that would not have occurred had it not been for subnational involvement in this policy (Jeffery 2000: 3). In other words, scholars disagree as to whether the political mobilization of subnational authorities and societies (politics) has had an impact on the internal structure of each memberstate (polity) in addition to having some variable impact on the formulation and of the powers conferred upon it by this Treaty and of the objectives assigned to it therein. In areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Community shall take action, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States and can therefore, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved by the Community” (). The Treaty of Lisbon contains a Protocol on the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality that states: “Before proposing legislative acts, the Commission shall consult widely. Such consultations shall, where appropriate, take into account the regional and local dimension of the action envisaged” (). 4 I will review this center-periphery tug-of-war in the section on empowerment (below), as this broader concept is more suited to encompassing the range of developments in center-periphery relations that MLG brings about. On France, see Eberlein (1999), Benz and Eberlein (1999), and Smith (1997); on Italy, see Ciaffi (2001) and Gualini (2003, 2004a).

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implementation of cohesion (policy). Leaving to a later section the discussion of the polity implications of cohesion, let us first review the policy and politics contentions. Hooghe (1995: 177–9) effectively summarizes the expectations on the scope and significance of sub-national mobilization created by each of the main theoretical approaches to European integration. The state-centric (intergovernmentalist) model expects transnational contacts among regions to be scarce; member-states to be effective gatekeepers of the relations between subnational actors and European institutions; and the nature and intensity of these contacts to be determined by national institutions and practices. This is the scenario of a Europe des patries, in which politics are elitist. The supranational (neo-functionalist) model expects subnational mobilization to directly challenge state power and instead support supranational authority; to be policy-specific but to spill over from one policy area to the next; and to gradually build an “uninterrupted and uniform subnational political tier” (Hooghe 1995: 178). This is the scenario of a Europe of the regions, in which politics are pluralist. Finally, the MLG model expects subnational mobilization not to erode, but to complement the aggregating role of member-states; to heighten the already existing interdependence among governmental levels; and to upset established hierarchies. This is the scenario of a Europe with the regions, in which politics are “pluralist, but with an elitist bias” (Hooghe 1995: 179). Subnational mobilization was the first distinctive trait of cohesion policy— originally more descriptively called European Regional Development Policy—that political scientists focussed on. Scholars interested in the reawakening of regional societies were quick to perceive the innovativeness of a European policy that required the activation of the “regional tier” alongside the supranational and national tiers in order to be ideated, implemented, and evaluated. Probably because they had been attentive to the many ways in which regional identities had been reaffirmed since the end of the 1960s, these scholars associated the beginning of ERDP with hopes of a forthcoming “Europe of the Regions.” This catchy phrase has been much used and abused. Although it had become commonplace to discard it as no more than a pipedream,5 not-so-unreasonable expectations were in reality implied by it. Let us review the empirical evidence. Although during the 1970s, the regions had become more prominent in domestic policy-making and had gained institutional ground in several European countries, building what has been described as a “decentralist trend” towards the creation of a “meso” (Sharpe 1979, 1993) or “third” (Bullmann 1994; Jeffery 1997) level, they made their first significant appearance on the Community scene only a decade later (Keating and Jones 1985). The existence of a “regional lobby” in Brussels, however, began to be noted towards the middle of the 1990s (Mazey 1995; Rhodes 1995). The nature of this lobby was admittedly highly diversified, consisting of “elected authorities, socio-economic interests located in a

5 See the special issue on Regional & Federal Studies, October 2008, and the articles by Elias (2008a, 2008b), Tatham (2008), Moore (2008), Hepburn (2008), Lynch and de Winter (2008), Bruszt (2008) and Keating (2008) therein contained.

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particular region, transnational ‘Euro-regions’ and European associations or regional socio-economic interests and/or governments” (Mazey 1995: 78). These “new regional groupings, networks and processes . . . transcend the territorial and legal parameters of ‘old’ regions defined by the nation-state” (Mazey 1995: 80), hence signaling a regional ebullience driven more by the attempt to seek collaboration with similarly positioned entities in order to solve common problems and to acknowledge each other’s importance than by a conscious design to change the constitutional set-up of European member-states. Indeed, one of the main supporters of these activities has all along been the Council of Europe, whose scope and mission do not coincide with those of other European institutions. Sceptical views on the significance of such mobilization have been expressed by several authors. Jeffrey Anderson (1991), anticipating in a way both the “fit/misfit approach” (Green Cowles et al. 2001) and the “dual networks approach” (Ansell et al. 1997), observed that cohesion policy might empower or disempower the regional vis-a`-vis the national tier, depending on whether it made subnational actors less, equally, or more dependent on governmental agencies. Assuming it to be possible to measure the degree of interdependence between these two sets of actors before and after cohesion policy, Anderson reasoned that if mutual interdependence increases, national ties are strengthened and the two tiers are more tightly bound together than ever (tightening of the network), while if mutual interdependence decreases, national ties are weakened and each level is freer to pursue its own strategy (loosening of the network). More interesting from the point of view of center-periphery relations, though, are the mixed cases in which the subnational tier becomes more dependent on the national one and the opposite case in which the national tier becomes more dependent on the regional one (Anderson 1991: 422, figure 1). These two situations signal, respectively, downward and upward sloping curves. In Anderson’s words: When subnational groups grow more dependent on their governmental agency as a result of Community initiatives, their leverage over government officials and their ability to formulate and pursue independent policy alternatives should decrease. As a result, government officials will be in a position to augment their gatekeeping capabilities. On the other hand, Community initiatives that decrease the resource dependence of subnational actors on their state, or shift their dependence from the national to the supranational level, may enable groups to redefine the terms of their exchange relationships within the network. Furthermore, the capacity to pursue autonomous policy objectives may increase. This describes the Europe of the Regions scenario, in which the EC becomes a source of empowerment for subnational groups. (Anderson 1991: 423)

According to Anderson (1991), the “Europe of the Regions” outcome—understood as an increase in the formal powers of the regional tier vis-a`-vis the national tier—is refuted by the analysis of two most dissimilar cases, the UK and Germany. Although in these countries the respective subnational tiers started from rather different institutional and policy situations, they became either more dependent on national agencies (Germany) or did not alter their degree of dependency upon them (the UK).

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More precisely, Germany is the case of a tight national network that gets loosened by cohesion policy in an asymmetrical fashion, making the regional tier more dependent on the national one. The UK is a case in which the highly asymmetrical dependence relation between the national and the regional tier is not significantly altered by cohesion policy. If both a most likely case (Germany) and most unlikely case (the UK) yield results that run counter to the “Europe of the Regions” scenario, Anderson concludes, then cohesion policy clearly does not uphold MLG theory. More than that: if even the regions of the most likely case (Germany), which were undoubtedly better “positioned to take advantage of the new opportunities created by the Brussels reforms,” did not “invariably welcome an expanded role for the Commission in the field of regional economic development” (Anderson 1991: 431), then clearly the “Europe of the Regions” project was insubstantial. Other scholars, such as Charlie Jeffery (1996, 2000) and Ian Bache (2008), also arrived at the same broad conclusion, interpreting as negative evidence the fact that the institutionally more powerful German La¨nder did not approve the curtailment of their powers initially entailed by the 1988 Structural Funds reform and fought back to re-establish their powers. In the event, the German La¨nder were able to use their strong institutional powers to redress the situation of asymmetry that cohesion policy had created (Jeffery 1996), while the British regions could not use their weak institutional powers to improve a situation which had not really changed. The evidence from these cases, then, seems to show that the national institutional set-up determines the degree to which regions are or are not empowered by cohesion policy—a veritable “state-centric” understanding of the limits to cohesion policy-induced subnational mobilization (Hooghe 1995). According to the intergovernmental, or state-centric approach, polities still make policy and politics—a message reiterated, surprisingly, also by Keating and Hooghe (1996), Bomberg and Peterson (1998), and Jeffery (2000). Indeed, the latter posits the existence of a positive correlation between the strength of regional constitutional powers and their influence on EU policymaking, even when cross-country comparisons yield few counter-examples (e.g. constitutionally stronger Castilla-la-Mancha has less influence on EU policymaking than constitutionally weaker Wales; Jeffery 2000: 18). This proves that not all regions “display the same levels of entrepreneurship in European policy, the same level of rootedness in distinct civil societies, or bring the same influence to bear in intergovernmental relations” (Jeffery 2000: 18). The importance of regional political entrepreneurship was a result particularly emphasized by Bukowski et al. (2003) in their comparative study of four post-Napoleonic states (France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) by means of paired comparisons of equally constitutionally empowered regions. It emerged that only those regions, in which the political class had decided to mobilize in favor of ERDP because it had given primacy to the need to resurrect the regional economy or because it wanted to promote the regional identity, managed to have an impact on ERDP (Piattoni 2003a, 2003b). When we look at the details of Germany and the UK, however, the state-centric interpretation looks a lot less convincing. We discover, for example, that the long tug-of-war between the British government and the Commission regarding the

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additionality principle (McAleavy 1993 and Bache 1999, but see also Bache 2008: chs. 7–8), as well as the anti-devolutionary reforms of the Thatcher governments, were dictated more by the political goal of weakening Labour strongholds in the northern periphery and among social partners and regional development authorities than by a concern for the protection of the sovereignty of the British state.6 Similarly, we discover that the Commission did not really want to challenge states’ sovereignty, but only wished to implement a social and economic cohesion policy that would supplement and ultimately support the construction of the Single Market. And these are precisely the type of dynamics that MLG would stress. The additionality issue acquired an inflated, polity significance, but started off as a contest between two institutional orders, each pursuing legitimate policy goals.7 Perhaps all major political transformations begin as limited squabbles over jurisdictional boundaries: in this case, over whether it was the prerogative of the Commission or of the member-states to decide which regions would receive Community development funds and how. The details of the additionality and Rechar—one of the early Community Initiatives aimed at revitalizing coal-mining areas—controversies are contained in McAleavy (1993: 93 ff). “[ . . . ] the deadlock between the European Commission and the UK government represented more than a mere squabble over accounting procedures for public expenditures. Rather, it was the test case of the extent to which the Commission is able to get beyond the member state governments’ ‘gatekeeping’ position to determine the ultimate destination of funds” (McAleavy 1993: 89). The significance of the Rechar controversy lies in its showing that an alliance between subnational authorities and supranational institutions can bring even a strong centralized and unitary state like the UK to heel. There are reasons to believe that the Commission, in reality, never wished to wage a war on the member-states, but rather wanted to implement its regional development objectives, which had been thwarted by the determination of the central governments of the member-states (not just the UK, but also France and Italy) to consider the Structural Funds as mere reimbursement for budgetary contributions: “On the basis of its alliance with local interests, this strengthening of the power of the European Community means that the ERDF may at last begin to operate in the interests of the target regions” (McAleavy 1993: 90). It is interesting to note that 6 “The Thatcher government’s general embrace of the market, coupled with a much greater emphasis on the electoral utility of regions, led to a partisan reassessment of relations with subnational groups. The complete lack of a Conservative electoral base in the North East prompted the central government to substantially narrow group access to ministerial decision-making. The West Midlands, on the other hand, secured official status as an assisted area in 1984, an acknowledgement by the Cabinet of the region’s mounting economic problems as well as political centrality to the Tory majority” (Anderson 1991: 432–3). 7 “The UK government made no attempt to argue that it was the eligible regions themselves which benefited directly from ERDF. The essence of the Commission’s grievances was therefore that grants are not directed where they are most needed; at the very best, assuming that anticipated ERDF receipts are taken into account, they are used by the government to supplement the global budget in the fields eligible for EDRF support” (McAleavy 1993: 95).

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other European institutions (the Court of Auditors and the European Parliament) were also involved in this controversy and actually forced the Commission onto a path of direct confrontation with the UK government. The other interesting aspect of this controversy, which vindicates the greater accuracy of MLG in pointing to the relevance of real actors’ policy visions and political interests above the more stylized accounts of European integration and policy-making, is that the British Commissioner for Regional policy, Bruce Millan, former Secretary of State for Scotland and, therefore, a strong advocate for the need to assist the Scottish coalmines, was eventually responsible for the escalation of the Rechar controversy. It is plausible to suppose that, in his previous capacity, he would have become familiar with the difficult situation of the Scottish coalfields and that he could not accept that Community funds, which had been earmarked for those areas, should end up helping other regions. McAleavy (1993: 98–9) provides very telling details to the effect that the Rechar initiative had been due to “years of lobbying by a UK-led partnership” (McAleavy 1993: 98). Community initiatives are usually drawn up in response to direct lobbying by local authorities in affected areas. . . . the Commission generally looks favourably on lobbying by groups of similar councils from different member states, as was the case with the Interreg initiative, when ECU 800 million was earmarked to prepare border areas for the opening of the Single Market after lobbying by the Association for European Border Areas (AEBR) . . . A similar process was evident in the creation of the Retex initiative . . . The empirical evidence therefore supports the Commission’s contention that the Community initiatives are transnational programmes but with an equally strong accent on the involvement of regional and local authorities in their preparation and implementation. (McAleavy 1993: 98)

In fighting the Rechar initiative and the additionality clause of ERDF, Margaret Thatcher was at the same time fighting against Labour bastions in the coalfields (memories of the Miners’ Strike of 1984–5 were still alive), Scottish minority nationalism, and European supranational institutions—all simultaneously embodied by Regional Policy Commissioner Bruce Millan (confirmed also by Bomberg and Peterson, 1998: 232). It was easy for him to forge an alliance with the Coalfields Community Campaign (CCC) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which led to the Commission’s decision to freeze the Rechar Funds allocated to the UK for 1992–3. In the event, a confidential memorandum by the British Tory Environment Minister, Michael Heseltine, to the Chancellor of the Exchequer was leaked by the Labour Party Shadow Trade and Industry spokesman, Gordon Brown, to the Commission, expressing concerns that “the continuing failure to review the UK’s current approach to public expenditure treatment of the EC receipts will result in a reduced allocation of those receipts, a loss of prestige in Europe, to say nothing of political difficulties within the UK itself” (McAleavy 1993: 102). Eventually, the controversy was resolved when the British government agreed to “indicate the European grants separately for each spending programme” so that “supplementary credit approvals will be authorized for any local authority receiving ERDF assistance,

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thereby raising its capital ceiling and allowing the authority to spend the additional resources” (McAleavy 1993: 103), a convoluted way of saying that EU money would ultimately be spent in EU-designated areas. To conclude: [ . . . ] the alliance forged between the European Commission and British local authorities during this dispute was one of the factors which led to the retreat by central government and the emergence of a policy commitment that may now allow European regional development policy to operate in the interests of the targeted regions of the UK. Although not heralding the arrival of a “Europe of the Regions” era, the Rechar dispute reminds us of the importance of the subnational level of government in Europe’s political construction. (McAleavy 1993: 90)

This alone confirms that ERDP, and particularly Community initiatives, entail movements on all three planes simultaneously, as predicted by MLG: X1X2, because they signal the forging of an alliance between subnational authorities and supranational institutions; X2X3, because they are the result of the direct mobilization of functional interests and civil society organizations in the international arena; and X1X3, because they presuppose a close working relation at the local level between subnational interests and authorities. Personal research conducted in the early 1990s in the Italian region of Abruzzo allowed me to collect evidence of just this type of collaboration between small entrepreneurs and regional authorities, which eventually led to their participation in the STRIDE initiative aimed at connecting small firms with one another and to central facilities funded by the region (Piattoni 1996). “Rejecting both state-centred and neofunctionalist frameworks, we need explanations of European Community policy-making in the field of regional development that encompass all levels of the new and complex inter-governmental relationships involved” (McAleavy 1993: 104). MLG provides this kind of explanation. Likewise, when we look at the details of the German case, we discover that part of the story entailed the visions of the actors involved: the La¨nder authorities did not just fight to preserve their traditional competences, but also felt that they had a moral commitment to even out economic conditions first and foremost among their own citizens. “All that one has to do is to travel to some of Germany’s border areas . . . to realize that no matter how bad things are in Portugal, these areas have to be helped. It is the obligation of national policymakers to orient themselves to the national average, not to the EC average” (Anderson 1991: 437, reporting the words of a Land official). Another aspect of ERDP reform that the German authorities resented was the excessive complexity of the procedures, originally intended to make sure that funds would be spent effectively on policy goals. These regulations had been designed primarily for regions with weaker policy capacities, so they were clearly too exacting for the much more capable Land authorities. In this case, the question was one of policy vision, not of sovereignty. A second important reason for the cold reception of ERDF on the part of the German La¨nder authorities was the Commission’s intention to involve social partners and representatives of civil society in the consultation process, a com-

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mitment which has grown over time. The German statist tradition welcomes the involvement of social partners and civil society organizations in corporatist arrangements, but only insofar as they are chartered by the state, which retains a monopoly of public power (Offe 1981). The La¨nder political authorities, which had until then dominated the redistributive policy network and felt they were the authentic representatives of the regional “public” interest, resented being put on an equal footing with other “private” societal interests. The German regional policy network is predicated upon a much more equal distribution of resources among members and a higher degree of interdependence between national and subnational actors than in the UK. . . . The result is a highly institutionalized network in which the participants exchange the full range of resources enumerated above. Bargaining is strictly an intergovernmental affair; firms, local authorities, and producer groups are absent from the process. (Anderson 1991: 425; emphasis added)

Bache (2008: 64) confirms these typically German difficulties in accommodating social partners and civil society representatives within the cohesion partnership arrangements, which leads him to downplay the ostensible “goodness of fit” that should exist between the tradition of cooperative federalism and the requirements of EU partnership. In the UK, on the contrary, in line with a tradition of self-government and in partial compensation for the non-existence of regional political authorities, the involvement of civil society representatives was not an institutional novelty, but instead, played neatly into the hands of the British central government, which wanted to retain control over ERDP (Bache 1999, 2005). The reluctance of the UK government to institutionally empower regional authorities (Bache and Jones 2000) did not prevent it from fostering their policy empowerment. “Whitehall has created new networks encompassing a smaller subset of participants—local authorities and relevant governmental officials—to handle ERDF issues. Regional civil servants quickly adopted a ‘mothership’ role, encouraging local authorities to take advantage of the new source of regional assistance . . . These new networks have strengthened the British state as gatekeeper in this policy area” (Anderson 1991: 432–3). What bothered the British elites, then, was not so much the erosion of sovereignty per se, as “the formal and visible transfer of sovereignty. On less visible transfers of power, successive governments have been more pragmatic” (ibid. 90; emphasis added). British elites were therefore forced to adopt a sort of double standard, overtly decrying and opposing losses of sovereignty to the European Union, while quietly surrendering shares of powers when that afforded British governments “greater effective leverage over key areas of the economy.” “But for purposes of domestic consumption, British political elites have largely been in denial about the positive-sum nature of (at least some aspects of) European integration and have sought to build a narrative that, on the one hand, seeks to validate and legitimize the mainframe of the Westminster model and, on the other, blames the seepage of authority to ‘Europe’ for inconvenient policy failures” (Bache 2008: 90). It is the “vertical” dimension of governance that British governments have had most trouble with.

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Bache (2008) supplies a detailed analysis and sophisticated discussion of how the traditional notion of British sovereignty, encompassed by the “Westminster model,” in fact also contains elements that could accommodate an expanded role for subnational authorities. The notion of parliamentary democracy . . . has been essentially a notion of undivided sovereignty, a zero-sum conception, which has made it difficult for political elites to come to terms with features of the EU, in particular that cooperation between states and international institutions can take place without national identity being compromised and with neither controlling the other . . . Yet the traditional British de jure conception of sovereignty contrasts with the de facto interpretation which is more flexible and sees international cooperation and supranationalism as a way to maximize effective state influence in a context where economics, politics and security issues are largely internationalized. (Bache 2008: 89–90; emphasis in the original)

The interesting feature of British politics and political tradition is that it also contains the threads of another kind of narrative, one which would accommodate international cooperation much more smoothly. This alternative tradition, which can be reconnected to the pluralist and guild socialist conception of the Labour tradition, was able to be resurrected by the new Labour government in 1997. The following quote from a Blair speech in 2001 reported by Bache (2008: 102) illustrates this more nuanced and EU-compatible conception of sovereignty: “I see sovereignty not merely as the ability of a single country to say no, but as the power to maximize our national strength and capacity in business, trade, foreign policy, defence and the fight against crime. Sovereignty has to be employed for national advantage. When we isolated ourselves in the past, we squandered our sovereignty—leaving us sole masters of a shrinking sphere.” It would thus appear that, while strongly resisting regional institutional empowerment (“vertical MLG,” for Bache 2008), the UK government was indeed favoring regional policy empowerment (“horizontal MLG”; Bache 2008): “Government officials have also encouraged local authorities to establish in-house capabilities to monitor EC developments” (Bache 2008: 433). Anderson labels this strategy “civil service-led mobilization.” Indeed, new public-private partnerships (PPP) emerged around cohesion policy. For example, in the North-East of England, a Northern Development Company was established to forge closer links between the region and Brussels. Even Anderson admits that this development is “intriguing” and that the creation of a Euro InfoCentre in the North-East was a veritable “first for an English region” (Anderson 1991: 435). Yet, he concludes: These attempts to forge stable, unmediated relations with Brussels have yet to progress to the point where existing network relations with central government are visibly affected. . . . New policy networks—sowed, nurtured and harvested by the regional civil service—have grown alongside existing networks linking centre and provinces. Apart from the embryonic developments in the North-East, responses have failed to generate among local and regional groups a fundamental reorientation towards Europe, or even consistent demands for additional EC competences in this area. (Anderson 1991: 435)

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As we have already seen, a “Europe with the Regions” scenario does not require a wholesale “reorientation towards Europe,” but rather the creation or strengthening of alternative network ties: it will then be left to the actors to choose, depending on the situation at hand, which linkages to activate (cf. Ansell et al. 1997). Thielemann (1999) arrives at similar conclusions through a different, and in many ways opposite, path, that is, by taking an institutionalist approach in which both institutions as actors (rational-choice institutionalism) and institutions as arenas (sociological institutionalism) are prominent. By underscoring in particular the clash between the different institutional cultures and expectations, embedded respectively in the German concertative tradition and in the Commission’s centralized and hierarchical approach to state aid policy, Thielemann argues that Germany’s constitutional set-up makes the delegation of sovereignty from the national to the supranational level particularly unpalatable, unless it is compensated for by adequate counter-measures that make sure that the German La¨nder do not lose their powers: The nature of European integration implies the transfer of sovereign competencies. Sovereignty is given up in exchange for participation in decisionmaking at the European level. However, while this logic applies to unitary states, problems arise in the case of a federal state. When regions relinquish authority, they are often not adequately compensated with increased participation in the European decision-making process, since EU policies have traditionally been the prerogative of national governments. (Thielemann 1999: 413)

Thielemann explains the German La¨nder’s uneasiness with cohesion policy, identified also by Anderson, Jeffery, and Bache, by pointing to the “horizontal aspect of MLG” with the opposite argument. German regional authorities were not resisting their policy marginalization, but rather their de facto demotion to the level of “particularistic” (territorial) interest groups not qualitatively different from any other “particularistic” (functional) interest group. In other words, the mobilization of subnational authorities (SNAs) at the European (and more generally, transnational) level comes at a cost: that of having to use the same channels of political pressure as interest groups and lobbies and being de facto on an equal footing with other private interest groups. This is the dilemma that SNAs (and not just German La¨nder) face: whether or not to accept their own policy empowerment at the supranational level at the price of confusion with (for some of them, demotion to the level of) private/particular interests.

I N C R EA S ED P R E S EN C E O F T R A N S R EG I O NA L C I V I L S O C I E T Y O RG A N I Z AT I O N S ( X 2 X 3 ) A second oft-cited development implied by MLG is the increased international mobilization of regional societies. The creation of interregional associations of a

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cultural or economic character, with or without the help of the respective regional authorities, has been hailed as a significant manifestation of this type of mobilization. Many regional authorities have been quick to grasp the new opportunities presented to them by the SEM for transnational regional cooperation, not only other elected authorities, but also with other interests, (e.g., universities and industry). Transnational regional networks of this type are becoming increasingly common as regional actors recognize the need to develop an integrated “regional” economic strategy within the wider context of the SEM. (Mazey 1995: 82)

The Council of Europe, an independent international organization whose goal is to foster among other things the promotion and protection of minority languages and cultures, has often lent a helping hand. The activities sponsored by the Council of Europe have often complemented those of the European Commission, frequently drawing attention to non-economic, identity issues that would later be addressed also by the other EU institutions. A few years ago, with a group of American colleagues, I investigated whether there was a space for territorial governance between the competing, but also potentially convergent, demands coming from local societies and the EU (Bukowski et al. 2003). We came to the conclusion that such space existed, and that it could be meaningfully filled if synergic relations between regional societies and regional authorities could be sparked in a number of ways: as a reaction to economic shocks, as a response to institutional pressures, or as manifestation of identity issues. Economy, institutions, and identity were the potential origins of a triangle of forces that could feed back and reinforce each other, spiralling up towards self-conscious territorial governance. We discovered, however, that these impulses might also be left unexploited and peter out without leading to any particular result. Crucial in determining one or the other outcome was the presence of political leadership, which could express itself in different guises (e.g. quasi-corporatist or clientelistic; Piattoni 2003a; Piattoni and Smyrl 2003), but which was always crucial to the projection of regional societies and authorities onto the European and transnational scene. A similar investigation conducted by Keating et al. (2003) yielded very similar results. A good example of this potential synergy is represented by regional information offices in Brussels, studied by many as a novel and interesting manifestation of regional ebullience on the international scene (Marks et al. 2002). Charlie Jeffery (2000) gives a skeptical assessment of the significance of regional mobilization based on his study of the Regional Information Offices (RIOs) that were established in Brussels from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. Once again, the analysis is bracketed by a closer look at the two polar cases of Germany and the UK. In Germany, RIOs were considered as second-best to the preferred option (from the La¨nder point of view) of lodging a regional representative in the member-state’s Permanent Representation in Brussels, the heart of the EU decision-making process. Once this preferred option proved non-viable, the La¨nder began opening up RIOs in Brussels, starting with the Rhineland-Palatinate in

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1986. These offices were supposed to serve a number of functions, amomg them to: (1) act as early warning systems, that is, channel information on future EU policies back home; (2) feed information and ideas into the early stages of the EU policy debate in the hope of shaping the eventual policy decision; (3) protect domestically sanctioned powers and competences that might be eroded by European legislation; (4) secure a steady flow of funds to the regions by tapping into all possible sources and programs; (5) maintain a “high profile” in Brussels, particularly in view of the proliferation of RIOs and the risk of being swamped by a flood of other such offices from the new members; (6) “sell Europe” back home. While all RIOs perform more or less the same functions, Jeffery detected a fundamental difference in the emphasis with which English and German RIOs pursued some of these functions. Generally speaking, Germans RIOs covered a broader area of policy and were technically better equipped to make a real input in the early stages of many decision-making processes; British RIOs, on the contrary, were more concerned with “milking the system” (an expression used by a West Midlands civil servant interviewed by Anderson 1991: 423). “The funding process seems to be absolutely central to the work of the UK offices. Even those without significant access to the biggest pots of gold distributed through the Structural Funds place heavy emphasis on accessing the smaller pots” (Jeffery 1996: 194). This different attitude dovetails with the different institutional status of German and British regions and, one could say, with the different general attitude of these two countries towards the EU. Jeffery summarizes his observations by concluding that: The German offices are one element of a wider La¨nder strategy designed to adapt and protect their role as component units of a federal state which has been overlaid by a new tier of supranational government—a role which has to an extent been challenged by supranational integrations. The UK offices have been, and for the most part still are, part of a local authority strategy to access European funding sources, which is designed in part to ameliorate an inherent resource weakness exacerbated in recent years by central government funding cuts. (Jeffery 1996: 198)

This different attitude is also confirmed by the different quality of relations between these RIOs and their respective permanent representations. Because the RIOs were interpreted by German regions as a second-best option, relations with the permanent representation remained tense, betraying the competition that exists between the two sets of “territorial representations” (Keating and Aldecoa 1999). On the contrary, because the British RIOs were always meant to supplement the action of the UK permanent representation by monitoring those policy areas which might benefit or harm the UK government, the relationship between the British permanent representation and the RIOs was relaxed and collaborative. Jeffery’s conclusion is that the evidence from the RIOs is not supportive of an MLG scenario, which would imply “a recalibration of the relationship between member-states and supranational institutions which cuts

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into the traditional monopoly of central government over external affairs and which creates some form of independent access of subnational governments to the supranational level” (Jeffery 1996: 199). In reality, Jeffery himself provides enough evidence to build a more optimistic version of British regional mobilization in Brussels through the RIOs. The first bit of evidence comes from the fact that the first two RIOs ever to open shop in Brussels were those of the Cities of Birmingham and Strathclyde in 1984 in order to access EU funds. Other bits of interesting evidence come from Kent, a region which has been attracted into EU circles by its interest in the extension of the cross-channel INTERREG program with Nord-Pas-de-Calais and which now boasts about its “Frenchness” to British tourists unwilling even to cross the Channel, and from Essex, which has cooperated closely with Picardy to secure small pockets of funding, accessible through transnational cooperation networks, in the fields of youth training, business cooperation, tourism, R&D, and the KONVER (military industry restructuring) program and has formed with it a Euro-region. While these activities may not entail a redefinition of institutional and constitutional equilibriums, this may simply be due to British pragmatism, which prefers deeds to words. The fact of the matter is, though, that British regions seem to have progressed rather a long way in their international and transregional mobilization (Marks et al. 2002). What, then, should we make of this mixed evidence? Does it really refute the MLG thesis and reveal the illusoriness of the “Europe of the Regions” project? Should all European regions be expected to pursue the same goals through their regional information offices? I believe that these are unnecessary and unrealistic expectations. The mobilization dynamics set in motion by cohesion policy cannot be expected to translate immediately into institutional power gains on the part of the regions nor into power gains that affect all regions equally, because not all regions start out on the same footing. What we could expect from our discussion of MLG, and what we found, is that all regions try to take advantage of the new opportunities for mobilization afforded by cohesion policy.

D E E P E R L I N KAG E BE T W E E N R E G I O NA L AUT H O R I T I E S AND CIVIL SOCIETIES (X1X3) As we have seen in the previous section, regional authorities often mobilize together with or on behalf of societal interests. Deeper linkages between regional authorities and regional societies are likely to give greater substance and incisiveness to subnational mobilization. The development of such linkages is a less wellresearched consequence of cohesion policy, but one, I believe, that is crucial for a full discussion of MLG. Without the growth of deeper linkages to regional societies, the creation or the empowerment of the subnational tier remains artificial and may end up detracting from, rather than contributing to, the

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legitimacy of this level of government and to MLG arrangements (Paraskevopoulos and Leonardi 2004; Paraskevopoulos et al. 2005). Jeffery (1996) also provides interesting evidence regarding the development of deeper linkages between local authorities and local societies as a consequence of the mobilization induced by cohesion policy. One of the tasks of the RIO staff in Brussels, as we have seen, was to “sell the region” in Brussels—“the single biggest meeting point of commercial and other economic interests outside Washington” (Jeffrey 1996: 195)—as well as to “sell Europe” back home. This means “stimulating their regions’ awareness of, and sensitivity to, the opportunities available to them through the EU, and more broadly to promoting an understanding of how the EU works” (ibid.). This activity may take place both at the level of the elite and at the level of the general populace. In the first case, it may mean dismantling the (often negative) myths surrounding the European Union and making it more understandable and “proximate.” In the second case, it means educating people on what the EU does by facilitating visits to Brussels by students, businesspeople, and public officials otherwise unconnected with the EU. These activities have further repercussions on the regional administration itself, which becomes slowly more and more Europeanized. Once again, the most interesting piece of evidence comes from Kent, where The decision to establish the [regional information] office led in turn to substantial internal reorganization, in particular the establishment of one or two European officers in each of the council’s 12 policy departments, who act as intermediaries for the information sent back from Brussels. The European Officers act as “multipliers”, spreading the “Euro-net” wider in Kent, consolidating the wider European thrust of the Council’s activities, and shifting its frame of reference away from the previous sole focus on the arena of domestic interaction with central government in London. (Jeffery 1996: 196)

More generally, regional mobilization in Brussels forces a reconsideration of the specific mission of regional authorities vis-a`-vis their local population. Whose interests should regional authorities be promoting in Brussels: those of the organized few or those of the unorganized many? The White Paper on European Governance (CEC 2001) suggested that subnational authorities (SNAs) and civil society organizations (CSOs) are the two fundamental bridges between EU citizens and EU institutions, thus implying the existence of a “division of labor” between these two channels of political representation and civil participation. The concept of “civil society” (see Chapter 4) encompasses several diverse components—from organized business to voluntary organizations, from groups of concerned citizens to religious movements—promoting a host of different interests and values (economic, cultural, environmental, religious, etc.). Civil society crucially also contains an element of organization and self-awareness: it is a society that has thickened around shared goals and values. By default, political institutions such as regional and local authorities should voice the concerns of those who have not managed to organize and speak for themselves: the general populace or society at large. Are subnational authorities playing this role? Are they

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more consciously embracing this representational role as a consequence of their closer involvement in EU policy-making? Let us review the existing evidence. While systematic data on the specific representational role played at the EU level by regional authorities are yet to be collected (but see Marks et al. 2008 and Hooghe et al. forthcoming), I will limit my observations to the evidence gathered by studying the loci for the participation of both subnational authorities and civil society organizations, namely the Structural Funds (SFs) monitoring committees.8 Monitoring committees were established in the wake of the 1988 reform of the Structural Funds in order to monitor progress in the implementation of the SFs operational programs and to suggest changes, where necessary. Monitoring committees were the practical embodiment of the partnership principle: through the active involvement of regional and infra-regional levels of government, social partners, environmental and equal opportunity groups, and members of civil society, the Commission intended to stimulate input into cohesion policy from a wide variety of stakeholders.9 While monitoring committees have formally been established everywhere, lest the Structural Funds would not be released, the principle of partnership has not been translated into actual practice everywhere, as envisioned by the Commission. Partnership arrangements must still clear several difficult hurdles of a formal and an informal nature. In some cases, social partners and other civil society representatives are invited to participate in the monitoring committees, but are not given the right to vote. In other cases, they are extended full participation rights, but are not given enough time to formulate sensible opinions on the documents under discussion. In other 8

The section that follows is based on the evidence collected through an Integrated Project—CIVGOVOrganized Civil Society and European Governance—funded by the European Commission in 2002–6. Within that project, I directed a team investigating the presence of civil society organizations within Structural Funds’ monitoring committees in thirty regions or localities in ten different countries. A more detailed account is contained in the CIVGOV Reports (CIVGOV 2003, 2005a, 2005b, 2006). 9 The partnership principle was first formulated in the 1988 regulations and subsequently reformulated in the 1993, 1999, and 2006 regulations (emphases added): Regulation 2052/1988 (art. 4) defines partnerships as “close consultation between the Commission, the Member State concerned and the competent authorities designated by the latter at national, regional, local or other level, with each party acting as a partner in pursuit of a common goal”; Regulation 2081/1993 (art. 4.1) adds to the consultation exercise economic and social actors identified “within the framework of each Member State’s national rules and current practices.” Partnership should be conducted “in full compliance with the respective institutional, legal and financial powers of each of the partners”; Regulation 1260/1999 (art. 8.1) extends the principle of partnership to “all the relevant bodies, according to national rules and practice, taking account of the need to promote equality between men and women and sustainable development through the integration of environmental protection and improvement requirements”; Regulation 1083/2006 (art. 11.1–2) prescribes that “each Member State shall designate the most representative partners at national, regional and local level and in the economic, social, environmental or other spheres in accordance with national rules and practices” and they “shall involve, where appropriate, each of the relevant partners, and particularly the regions, in the different stages of programming . . . ” covering “the preparation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of operational programmes.”

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cases still, the inclusion of social partners, and even of regional and infra-regional authorities, is resisted in several ways. This has led Brian Harvey to formulate, with particular reference to the 2004 enlargement countries, the expression “the illusion of inclusion” (Harvey 2004). This patchy and still unsatisfactory implementation of the principle of partnership is due to several factors that do not necessarily reveal ill will on the part of national and regional authorities. To begin with, Structural Funds are not widely known among the general populace: in 1995 (Eurobarometer 1995) only 18 percent of the population knew of their existence in Italy, 18 percent in France, 22 percent in the Netherlands, and 23 percent in Sweden, to give just a few examples. Awareness was slightly higher in cohesion countries, ranging from 54 percent in Portugal to 23 percent in Greece. Yet people strongly believe that regions should be involved in EU matters, particularly in southern Europe (89 percent in Portugal, 87 percent in Spain, 85 percent in France, and 81 percent in Italy) and that more powers should be given to the Committee of the Regions (CoR), even if they do not know exactly what it is (Eurobarometer 1995). Generally speaking, awareness of SFs is correlated with: (1) the amount of funds received and their visibility (highest in cohesion countries and enlargement countries); (2) the institutional structure of the state (highest in regional and federal states); and (3) the divisiveness of structural issues in the country (highest in countries with large and visible structural gaps). The social interests involved in structural policy differ in terms of membership, leadership, and style of action, and their mix is different from member-state to member-state. They may be: (1) public (regional and local) institutions of an administrative or elective nature; (2) private-public institutions (Chambers of Commerce, regional development agencies, research institutes, etc.); (3) functional groups (trade unions, employers’ associations, associations of small and medium enterprises, etc.); (4) sectoral groups (agriculture, industry, tourism, etc.); (5) cultural associations (for the protection of productive traditions, of typical products, of the landscape, of women farmers, etc.); (6) political parties (particularly where subsidiarity and devolution are on the political agenda); (7) social movement organizations (concerned with the environment, equal opportunity, social exclusion, etc.). Cohesion policy often becomes entangled with other issues which end up shaping the kinds of interests involved in partnership arrangements, such as: (1) the degree of regional autonomy, so much so as to become a testing ground for the redefinition of center-periphery relations and for regionalist partisan mobilization; (2) the protection of the environment, the preservation of traditional products, areas, ways of life, etc.; (3) the creation/ absorption of areas of social exclusion (marginalized workers, “ethnic division of labor,” etc.); (4) the challenge to the distribution of competencies between central and peripheral governments brought about by interregional cooperation schemes. There is agreement among CSOs and institutional actors alike that, in the realm of cohesion policy, SNAs, particularly if elective, are more genuinely representative of the general interest of the regional citizenry than civil society

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organizations themselves. These latter sometimes admit to representing only specific interests and to being special-purpose organizations. They do not claim always to represent large sections of the populace (but rather ideas and values which are spread throughout the population to an unknown degree) nor do they really attempt to explain, educate, and “raise the consciousness” of the population on structural issues. At most, they keep their membership informed as they try to represent their functional, sectoral, or issue-specific values, ideas, and interests. As people are not very interested in cohesion policy and CSOs are not very interested in mobilizing them on this issue, there is a real danger that partnership schemes will simply reproduce existing concertation arrangements (where they exist) that may not be particularly suited to regional development policy and that may thus represent an instance of (perhaps involuntary) capture of consultation mechanisms rather than of opening up to wider societal interests. Public institutions thus often become “Janus-faced,” acting both as civil society representatives and as public policy enforcers. Other factors explain the rather weak contribution that civil society makes to cohesion policy. To start with, social movement organizations (SMOs) often work at cross-purposes with more conventional social partners (functional and sectoral groups) and sometimes even with one another, as each focusses on one aspect of economic development or of displacement caused by economic development. For example, SMOs that deal with social exclusion may want to preserve industrial concerns that are environmentally unsustainable, thus being at odds with SMOs that mobilize to protect the environment. The excessive clustering of SMOs in the same decision-making space may further exacerbate differences and detract from effective decision-making. Alliances among CSOs are more likely at the EU level, particularly when cross-regional issues are being decided. At the EU level, alliances are often formed between regional representatives, members of the European Parliament, and European-wide SMOs. The inclusion of civil society organizations in cohesion policy arrangements still varies from country to country, but is severely limited everywhere by the highly technical nature of the issues dealt with within cohesion policy and by the inherent mismatch between the level at which this policy is crafted and implemented and that at which CSOs are active. Paradoxically, formal participation in monitoring committees may help regional authorities to link up more closely with their respective civil societies, thanks to the informal relations that emerge on the occasion of formal encounters. Sometimes partisan links can create more good will, but equally frequently they create additional problems. Sometimes, CSOs manage to capture regional authorities’ attention by threatening to disrupt structural projects should their issues or values not be taken into consideration. This more adversarial tactic, however, is considered an option of last resort, to be implemented only when very important issues are at stake, while normally more collaborative tactics include lending expert advice, warning about possible implementation problems, petitioning, and lobbying. To summarize, despite the presence of CSOs in cohesion policy monitoring committees, subnational authorities emerge as the most important channels for

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civil society participation in this policy sector because: (1) there is a mismatch between the levels at which civil society actors are best structured (which could be either national or local or both) and the level at which they are requested to act (the regional level); (2) civil society is scarcely interested in regional development issues and, therefore, has problems gathering and processing the information, difficulties developing real expertise, and frustration with its inability to make a real contribution; (3) the above problems are understandably more acute when the governance system is only formally implemented, and the marginalization of civil society is actively pursued in a number of more or less subtle ways; (4) this may happen because civil society organizations themselves feel incompletely legitimated to take part in a decision-making process about which they know, and in the end care, so little; (5) nevertheless, all CSOs feel that the best way to have an impact on structural developmental issues is to “play according to the rules of the game,” which means preferring the provision of expert knowledge, submission of petitions, lobbying activities, media campaigns, and participation in decision-making forums rather than resorting to directly confrontational action (Piattoni 2007). To conclude, regional political authorities do connect with social partners and civil society organizations within monitoring committees, but this formal linkage often remains rather superficial. It may acquire greater substance if a number of facilitating factors kick in, such as: a distinctive cultural identity (given by partisan, language, religious, or ethnic identification); the urgency of certain structural issues and the need to ensure that everyone is on board; the development of informal relations often as a spin-off of more formal relations; a specific willingness to “make partnership work” (Keating 1996; Smith 1997; Jeffery 2000).

I N C R E A S E D R E G I O NA L E M P OW E R M E N T ( X 1 ) The empowerment of European regions as a direct consequence of their involvement in cohesion policy is widely considered MLG’s “proof of the pudding.” Unless regions manage to break free from their central governments’ oversight and acquire freedom of maneuver, hopes for a future “Europe of the Regions” are stillborn. Liesbet Hooghe (1995, 1996b) and Gary Marks (1996) have gone to great lengths to try to show that MLG does not imply endorsement of the “Europe of the Regions” vision, but more modestly of a “Europe with the Regions” scenario. The difference between the two, as recalled above, is essentially that in the “Europe with the Regions” scenario, nation-states still play a significant role alongside the regions, whereas they are supposedly completely replaced by them in the “Europe of the Regions” scenario. Nevertheless, the literature has shown a stubborn tendency to equate the two (e.g. Jeffery 2000: 2), often counting failure to arrive at a “Europe of the Regions” as a refutation of MLG. The source of such confusion lies in the difficulty of assessing with any precision the degree to which increased regional mobilization (politics) and participation in cohesion policy (policy) translate into gains in institutional powers and legal competences

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(polity). This is the reason why the German and UK cases have appeared to provide such damning evidence against MLG: Germany, because it is a case in which regional mobilization and policy involvement implied a loss rather than a gain of institutional powers and legal competences; the UK, because significant mobilization and policy involvement did not translate into any gain in institutional competences and legal powers. Clearly, the process of regional empowerment must be analyzed more carefully and its links with political mobilization and policy involvement assessed more precisely. The word “empowerment” refers to rather different processes. Empowerment is often understood as the increased freedom of subnational authorities to connect with similar authorities or with supranational authorities without the permission of national governments. In this sense, it coincides with mobilization; hence it has already been reviewed above. Empowerment is also understood as the increased capacity of subnational authorities to make decisions without seeking the prior approval of their national governments. Such greater capacity may derive from the greater availability of financial, relational, and ideational resources thanks to participation in cohesion policy (policy empowerment) or it may derive from changes in the formal powers of subnational authorities (institutional empowerment). In this case, regions that receive EU Structural Funds and that can influence the way in which they are spent are de facto (if not de jure) empowered vis-a`-vis their national government as well as other regional authorities. Bache (2008) calls these two dynamics, respectively, the horizontal (or Type II) and the vertical (or Type I) dimensions of MLG. Finally, empowerment is sometimes understood as improved institutional performance; hence it points to the learning processes triggered by exposure to the “good practices” circulating in the EU (administrative empowerment). Most authors focus on the second meaning of the term: empowerment as increased institutional powers and augmented legal competences. This is indeed the toughest criterion: to expect that, because of their involvement in cohesion policy, regions should develop greater self-awareness to the point of demanding and obtaining greater formal powers and competences from their central governments is to ask a lot. Institutional dynamics are not necessarily in sync with policy dynamics: institutions do not adapt instantaneously to functional policy needs (Pierson 2000, 2004), nor does playing an important policy role necessarily imply being able to cash it in, in institutional terms. The relationship between policy relevance and institutional acknowledgment is indirect and is often mediated by other dynamics, particularly domestic political dynamics. With regard to the British experience, Bache establishes precisely this same relationship between policy empowerment and institutional empowerment by remarking that: “In this emerging multi-level polity [i.e. Britain], a distinction can be drawn between emerging type I multilevel governance, with clearly and formally defined territorial layers of government proliferated by devolution, and type II multilevel governance, which captures the complex array of quangos, agencies, and partnership that exist not only at the clearly delineated territorial spaces defined by formal government, but also in the spaces between and below

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(intraregional, subregional, sublocal, etc.)” (Bache 2008: 101). In an apparent reconciliation with MLG, Bache then admits that: [ . . . ] the relationship between type I and type II multilevel governance may be less clear-cut than it first appears in the potential for the latter to transmute into the former. This suggestion refers to the English regions, which began with governance arrangements that were more type II than type I, with functions limited specifically to economic development. However, there was some anticipation both within government and beyond that at some future point this type II arrangement might lead to type I multilevel governance at the regional level. . . . it is difficult to see how . . . the emerging multilevel governance might be reversed. The process has already necessitated a culture shift in the formulation of Britain’s EU policy, particularly where the devolved institutions have a responsibility for implementation. . . . the post-1997 reforms have unleashed the prospects for a genuinely differentiated multilevel polity, characterized by a variation in process and outcome at the subnational level. (Bache 2008: 105–6)

To give another telling example, Belgium’s increasing federalization may seem to have little to do with any empowerment that may accrue to Belgian regions from participation in cohesion policy or, for that matter, from being exceptionally close to the EU institutions. If lobbying capacities could be immediately translated into augmented legal powers, Belgian regions should be the most powerful in Europe. Instead, while their policy competences are roughly similar to those of the German, Spanish, and Italian regions, they are indeed among the most powerful in Europe because the process of federalization in Belgium, driven by linguistic and partisan dynamics, has since 1993 endowed them (and linguistic communities) with the capacity “to conclude international agreements in those policy fields in which they possessed exclusive competences. In this way, the 1993 reform filled a lacuna left by the reforms of 1970, 1980 and 1988. The sub-national entities acquired the right to conduct their own external relations and to conduct negotiations themselves” (Kerremans and Beyers 1997: 43). This external relations capacity is a direct consequence of Belgium’s particular federal arrangement, in which “there is no hierarchy between the federal level and the subnational level” and according to which “a federal law cannot override a subnational law” (Kerremans and Beyers 1997: 42). German regions, as we have seen, found themselves partially disempowered by cohesion policy, as German governmental representatives could directly bargain in Brussels over the amount and destination of the Structural Funds to be distributed in Germany without necessarily having to secure the prior consent of the La¨nder, which was the position under domestic arrangements. It is, therefore, understandable that the German La¨nder, which enjoyed significant domestic institutional powers, should be acutely aware of the curtailment of the domestic policy powers they exercised, particularly in the Bundesrat and in the highly instititionalized consultative forums that decide on the distribution of development funds (a process known in Germany as Gemeinschaftausgabe), without really gaining any additional institutional power from their involvement in EU cohesion policy. Such a curtailment of their institutional powers induced

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the German La¨nder to “strike back” and demand compensatory powers. In the event, German La¨nder secured the right to be consulted on all questions relating to regional issues before the federal government takes an official position in Brussels and to send a regional minister to represent Germany at Council meetings at which regional issues are decided (Jeffery 1996). They obtained these powers by threatening to withhold consent for the Single Market with a negative vote in the Bundesrat, that is, by using to the full their domestic institutional powers. Let us draw this discussion to a close. First, it is one thing to expect cohesion policy to empower the regions of Europe, in the sense of making them more capable of contributing to the policy-making process (policy empowerment), while it is an entirely different issue to expect cohesion policy to bring about a redefinition of the institutional or even constitutional set-up of the member-states (institutional empowerment).10 While both may be understood as developments towards multilevel governance, they remain two very different processes that, understandably, imply different degrees of resistance on the part of central governments. Institutional empowerment is a complex process through which regions may eventually translate their good policy performance into augmented institutional powers. In order to do this, regions must be able to project themselves as reliable cohesion-policy partners by supplying good ideas for program formulation, efficient monitoring of funds, negotiation skills in the partnership exercise, and incisive evaluation of the results. Subsidiarity may be invoked and shares of sovereignty may be claimed, and may eventually be ceded, only if the lower tiers of government prove to be policy efficient. Institutional empowerment that capitalizes upon policy and administrative empowerment is captured by movements on the X1 axis. A development of this sort took place in Italy, against all the odds. The central government created a forum in which the Presidents of the regional governments were to meet periodically to discuss a number of issues, among them “European” issues. At first, this forum—the Conferenza Stato-Regioni (CSR)—met sporadically (twice a year) and its meetings had little practical significance (e.g. they were not chaired by the Prime Minister, as they should have been, but by the junior Minister for Regional Affairs). Regional Presidents would go to Rome mostly to meet representatives of the central government (ministries) and to cultivate their partisan links, each playing an individual game, rather than to attend the CSR. Over time, the frequency of these meetings and the range of issues discussed increased to the point that the CSR now meets two or three times a week. Virtually all national ministers now meet periodically with their regional counterparts to look at policy issues and to try and find shared solutions. A boost in this direction has come from the heightened political standing of regional Presidents 10 Bache (2008) speaks of increases in vertical and horizontal governance to indicate, respectively, the acquisition of powers and competences on the part of the regional tier (what I here call institutional empowerment) and the establishment of governance schemes that involve in various ways private interests, interest groups, and members of local civil society (what I here call policy empowerment). According to Bache, increases in vertical governance lead towards Type I MLG; increases in horizontal governance lead towards Type II MLG.

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since 1993, that is, since a new electoral law was passed that secured a governmental majority for the party or coalition that garnered the most votes above a certain threshold. The candidate put forward by the winning party or coalition automatically becomes President (that is, leader of the regional government) and is assured of a governmental majority for the duration of the legislature. At one point, during the turbulent 1990s when the national political system was still in disarray while the regional governments had stabilized, some regional Presidents had higher political standing than the Prime Minister. The relationships among regions have also thickened and several regions have emerged as leaders in different policy areas. While regions may disagree on given issues, they have developed the habit of trying to find a common position that they can then recommend to the national representatives. While Italy still lacks a regional Senate, the CSR is in some ways fulfilling an equivalent function. The regions which manage to command the greatest prestige are those that show they are capable of delivering. While the federalist agenda is slowly evolving also due to partisan pressures (particularly from the Northern League), institutional empowerment has been pushed forward by the regions’ policy and administrative empowerment. Institutional medals are won on the policy and administrative battlefield. To the extent that regions acquire stronger administrative capacities through cohesion policy, they may thus gain greater political standing domestically and claim greater institutional powers and legal competences (Piattoni and Brunazzo forthcoming). Second, the notion of power employed by the critics of the “Europe of the Regions” scenario is clearly a zero-sum notion inspired by a negative understanding of freedom (freedom from): empowerment of one level, on this understanding, necessarily implies the disempowerment of another. If, instead, we consider a positive-sum notion of power and we conceive of empowerment as the greater capacity to achieve results, including through cooperation with other actors, then we clearly employ a positive notion of freedom (freedom to). The first conception is more closely linked to a government view of politics (as in command and control), the second to a governance view of politics (as in steering and enabling) (Pierre 2000; Pierre and Peters 2000; Peters and Pierre 2002). Policy empowerment is clearly a positive-sum concept; institutional empowerment is clearly a zero-sum concept. It is, therefore, understandable that the German La¨nder, while not discounting the significance of being able to interact with Brussels autonomously through a number of channels, would at the same time not want to lose any of the institutional powers that they enjoyed at home. Indeed, they managed to augment their policy capacity while preserving their institutional powers as well. Liesbet Hooghe (1995: 179–91, tables 1, 2, 3a, 3b) was one of the first to review the different ways in which the regions make their presence felt at EU level, individually and collectively, directly and indirectly. Among these are: (1) institutional channels for subnational representation in the European arena (such as Art. 146 of the Treaty of the European Union allowing regional representatives to participate in Council meetings instead of national representatives; the CCRLA and its successor CoR; the partnership arrangements under the Structural Funds; the Intergroup of Local and Regional Representatives in the European Parliament); (2) institutional channels

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of subnational representation in the national arena (provisions for the mandatory approval of Treaty revisions by subnational authorities; the presence of a regional observer attached to the member-state’s permanent representation; various Council and Commission working groups; regional electoral districts for European parliamentary elections encouraging representation of regional interests at the European Parliament); and (3) non-institutional channels for subnational interests (regional information offices in Brussels; interregional associations such as the Assembly of European Regions, Council for European Municipalities and Regions, and others; Structural Funds networks; independent collaborative projects and associations). She remarks that stronger institutional actors, such as the German La¨nder, make use of all of these channels simultaneously, while weaker actors, such as the French regions, may be able to use only some of them. “The expectation is that these functional ties will pave the way for a greater political role for subnational authorities in European decision-making” (Hooghe 1995: 193). Particularly significant is the Consultative Council of Regional and Local Authorities (CCRLA), set up by the Commission in 1988 under the joint pressures of both the AER (Assembly of European Regions) and the CEMR (Council for European Municipalities and Regions). Originally created by the Commission as a consultative council, it was instead seen by the German La¨nder as the embryo of a forthcoming “third chamber” that would represent the “third level” in Europe (Bullmann 1994). Eventually, this consultative council was transformed by the Treaty on the European Union into a Committee of the Regions (CoR), with compulsory consultative powers in a number of areas. Jeffery (1996: 187) pours scorn on the hopes that the German La¨nder pinned on the creation of this Committee: The La¨nder have also attempted to . . . seek out and support, with sometimes overly messianic zeal, what they term Third Level (regional level) allies elsewhere in the EU. In some of their more fanciful moments they have conjured up a vision of some kind of Europe-wide arrangement in which the Third Level would have powers of participation in EU affairs which would be exercised autonomously and directly, ring-fenced under the principle of subsidiarity against subversion by the First (European) and Second (national levels). . . . This vision of a Third Level with its own legislative chamber of equivalent rank to Council and Parliament is, of course, hopelessly unrealistic. . . . The La¨nder have both failed to spread their evangelical message and, more fundamentally, to attune themselves to the vastly different priorities and mentalities of local government representatives from centralized member states.

In reality, the Committee of the Regions has shown a remarkable capacity for institutionalizing itself, expanding its own remit, and securing for itself a central place in some of the most complex policy areas, such as cohesion, competition, migration, enlargement, etc. Particularly in times of crisis, the Committee of the Regions becomes the institutional locus in which an enfeebled Commission enlists subnational authorities—and, through them, civil society and national governments—in a renewed effort to jump-start the process of integration (Piattoni 2008). Its efforts will be further rewarded by the Lisbon Treaty, when it comes into force.

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C O N C LU S I O N As R. A. W. Rhodes (1974) reminded us, the expression “Europe of the Regions” began to circulate in 1973, hard on the heels of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) which, together with the already existing European Social Fund (ESF) and European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF), as well as independent loans from the Bank of European Investment (BEI), would constitute the backbone of ERDP for years to come.11 This fund and the corresponding policy had been strongly advocated by the UK which, upon joining the EC, realized that, through the Common Agricultural Policy, a large part of its net contributions to the EC budget would end up going to other member-states. Joining forces with Ireland and Italy, the UK demanded that a policy be created with “the aim of correcting, in the Community, the structural and regional imbalances which might affect the realization of the Economic and Monetary Union,” as the final communique´ of the Conference of Heads of State/Government held in Paris in October 1972 stated (Rhodes 1974: 106). The initial justification for ERDP was perhaps presented in strictly instrumental terms—redressing budget “misallocations” and helping weaker member-states meet the challenges entailed by the completion of the Common Market—but it was never strictly interpreted as a purely economic measure, rather as a way of safeguarding economic and social cohesion of the Community—hence, later, the term cohesion policy to denote this whole area of intervention (as stated in the Preamble of the Treaty of Rome). In this more social and even “moral” sense, the idea of a “Europe of the Regions” was espoused by many unsuspected observers. It is again Rhodes that reminds us that, even the highly technical Thompson Report, drafted in May 1973 to gauge the regional problems in the enlarged community, “recognizes the cultural aspects of regionalism when it talks of the ‘moral basis’ of regionalism; of ‘sustaining local communities’ and of ‘historical and cultural values which are the moral wealth of each region’ ” (1974: 106). And no lesser a person than Samuel Brittan saw as desirable a development which we could easily summarize as the onset of a “Europe of the Regions”: “A shift of authority away from the nation state both upwards and downwards would be the best way of combining the technological needs for larger units with the human demand for smaller ones” (quoted by Rhodes 1974: 106). The catchphrase “Europe of the Regions,” then, aimed to capture nothing more or less than the desirability of combining efficacy with legitimacy, efficiency with emotional attachment, and the suggestion that the nation-state might no longer be the right “level” at which to accomplish either. That this multiple objective would not be easily attained by simply 11

Other funds were later created in order to address more specific development goals such as the Cohesion Fund, created in 1993 to help member-states whose per capita GNP was less than 90% of the EU average (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain) upgrade their communication and transportation infrastructure, and the Financial Instrument for Fisheries Guidance (FIFG), created in 1995 to help the fishing communities of Sweden, Finland, and Spain.

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selecting “the region” as that level at which economic development, social cohesion, emotional attachment, and “moral values” could be simultaneously pursued is clear to everyone (and certainly to Rhodes, who in the remainder of that very incisive article spells out the fallacies involved in the naı¨ve hope that one regional size—and which one, given the many objectives for which different regions could in principle be created?—would fit all purposes). “Europe of the Regions,” then, did not initially indicate the facile and illusory hope that one and the same “level” could help attain all good things at once. Nor was it a slogan behind which all European regions should find reason to rally, shelving their very real diverging interests and their equally real different understandings of what constitutes a proper division of labor between center and periphery. And yet it is precisely this naı¨ve interpretation which is sometimes implied by the skeptics who want to prove the illusoriness of this phrase by recalling the great diversity of subnational institutional articulations and their incapacity to collaborate on all issues (cf. Christiansen 1996; Jeffery 1997; Elias 2008). What was not and is not illusory is the idea that a competitive process of mutual recognition by subnational authorities—whether administrative or legislative, provided they express real links with their corresponding societies—and of recognition by EU authorities could lead to the legitimation of these tiers of government as fundamental interlocutors for any policy that crucially impinges on the Community’s territory. This is the “Europe of the Regions” that could and should be brought to life. The process that eventually led to the Westphalian system of states was based not so much on an improbable harmonious collaboration of all would-be states against the Emperor or the Pope, but by ruthless competition, coupled with the mutual recognition of that principle of sovereignty which eventually sealed the victory of the territorial state form of rule over all others.

7 Environmental Policy Whereas in the past, environmental policy was largely the product of negotiations between sovereign states, today it is fought over between a wide constellation of public and private bodies . . . These developments have served significantly to blur the traditionally sharp separation between domestic and international politics, to the extent that the two spheres are currently interconnected with subnational bodies operating cheek by jowl with states in European fora. (Jordan 1999a: 2)

I N T RO D U C T I O N EU environmental policy started off in the early 1970s as a “flanking policy” to the creation of the common market.1 The Commission feared that different national environmental standards would act as non-tariff barriers and produce trade distortions that would slow down the creation and impede the proper functioning of the common market. Normative concerns might have played a role as well: the narrow objective of favoring the functioning of the common market soon gave way to the much broader goals of “improving the living conditions” and securing a “harmonious development of economic activities throughout the Union” (Knill and Tosun 2008). A facilitating background condition throughout was probably the growing international awareness of environmental problems—which had surfaced with particular force at the Stockholm UN environmental conference in 1972—that appeared to exceed the capabilities of any single European state and suggested an opportunity for Community action in this policy field. The Treaty of Rome provided no explicit legal basis for a Community-level environmental policy; nevertheless such a basis was initially found in the general promotion of the common market (Art. 100), while goal expansion occurred thanks to the increasing use of Article 235, which gives the Community “residual” authority to adopt measures “necessary to attain the objectives of the Community” for which the Treaty has not provided the necessary powers. Although decisions in 1

For the historical reconstruction of environmental policy, I have relied mainly on Sbragia (2000a), Lenschow (2005), and Knill and Tosun (2008).

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this field required unanimity, in the 1950s and 1960s member-states agreed to setting compulsory environmental standards in a handful of hazardous industries—for example, Council Directive 59/221 on ionizing radiations, later replaced by Council Directive 66/45/Euratom, and Council Directive 67/548/EEC on the classification, packaging, and labeling of dangerous substances (Lenschow 2005: 324 n. 1)—thus breaking the ground for Community-wide environmental policy. In 1973, the Council approved the first Environment Action Program (EAP) which laid out the fundamental principles of Community environmental legislation, such as “prevention,” “action at source,” and “the polluter pays.” The Single European Act (1986) introduced a new set of articles (Arts. 174–6, ex Art. 130r–t) giving an explicit legal basis to the Community’s competence and requiring qualified majority voting (QMV) and the cooperation of the European Parliament in environmental matters that affected the common market, while unanimity and the simple consultation of the European Parliament were required in environmental matters not linked to the common market. A division of labor between the Community and the member-states in environmental matters was also delineated by these articles. Particularly after this policy obtained explicit legal bases in the Treaties, the Commission began to regulate a wide variety of environmental issues.2 The Treaty on the European Union (1992) strengthened the legal bases of Community environmental policy and the roles of the Commission and European Parliament in it. “The TEU . . . brought those areas of environmental policy not linked to internal market harmonization under QMV in the Council of Ministers and the cooperation procedure with the European Parliament. Areas linked to internal market harmonization became subject to the stronger procedure of co-decision with the European Parliament” (Sbragia 2000a: 297). Moreover, in 1994, a European Environmental Agency (EEA) was established in Copenhagen. The Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) further expanded the scope of legislation to be decided by QMV (Art. 95) and through the simplified co-decision procedure, thus giving the European Parliament—and the environment-friendly parties and groups that either sat in it or had easy access to some of its members—a much stronger voice in environmental matters. Environmental policy then is a classic regulatory policy governed by the Community method. Particularly during the initial phase, the room for governance and for levels other than the national or the international was minimal. The SEA brought about a momentous increase in the participation of societal actors and non-governmental organizations, which mostly functioned as channels between their national constituencies and European circles. Since these groups also have an impact at the international (extra-EU) level, they allowed developments in the global environment to affect European policy-making. Despite the remark2

Environmental policy is composed of many different directives and regulations that touch upon rather diverse realms: from the establishment of maximum (air and water) pollution levels, to pollution cleaning regulations, from protection of endangered species to the creation of national parks and protected areas, from waste disposal to the use of pesticides in agriculture—to name just a few of the main items in this complex policy area.

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able presence of activist organizations in support of the environment, the weight of business groups is however still prevalent in this policy area (Mazey and Richardson 2006). Although the EEA does not have a policy-proposal role, which is reserved for the Commission, it performs a fundamental function in collecting data and releasing reports on the state of the environment in the Union and in the individual member-states, thus providing the information that activist groups can then use to monitor compliance with EU directives. Two distinctive features of environmental policy explain why the “black box” of the Community method utilized until the 1980s eventually opened up and made way for greater societal participation and softer legislative tools from the 1990s onward. First, protection of the environment has been the policy terrain on which local, national, and transnational social movements and non-governmental organizations mobilized most intensely. The environment represents one of those “non-materialistic values” that were taken up most eagerly by new social movements in the 1970s and around which they forged strong international ties and organizations. Environmental movements and parties had already managed to obtain rather advanced environmental legislation in several, mostly northern European, countries (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden—the “leaders”). These same movements and parties would understandably not be content to remain at the sidelines of environmental policy once the EU became involved in it, nor would the Commission welcome their aloofness. On the contrary, given its shortage of detailed technical information and implementation and enforcement capacity, the Commission welcomed and encouraged participation of these groups in the policy-making process, opening up the rather closed Community method to greater societal influence. And since the TEU expanded the role played by the European Parliament, environmental movements and parties became even more prominent policy actors. Second, while member-states had at first endorsed the involvement of the Community in setting environmental standards that would equalize productive conditions throughout the Community, they later began to complain about standards being either too lax or too strict and to request greater flexibility in applying these standards. In this novel policy area many national policy-makers had not fully understood the consequences of their decisions. The British negotiators, for example, did not realize how binding directives actually were on the member states. Directives were passed which were so expensive to implement, and required so much adaptation in some member states, that it is unlikely they would have been passed at a later date, when the implications of environmental restrictions were more fully understood. None the less, adopted they were—and the difficulties of changing legislation once it is adopted in the Community ensured that they remained as key pieces of legislation which the Commission attempted to enforce. (Sbragia 2000a: 296)

The governmental process—the Community method—that the Commission had initially used to pass environmental regulation thanks to the support of some

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crucial member-states, the distraction of the others, and the support of the ECJ was eventually transformed into a more complex pattern of policy-making. This happened when, on the one hand, the cost of rigid regulation became clear to all and powerful economic groups started to ask for a relaxation of the standards and when, on the other hand, environmental groups sought to counter these pressures by accessing directly the Commission and by operating through the European Parliament.3 As for cohesion policy, in this case too scholars wondered how it was possible that member-states would allow such a momentous expansion of EU competences in a field that is only tangentially connected with the common market. The answer is that “clouded vision”—the classic “unintended consequences” argument (Schimmelfennig 2004)—on the part of some member-states explains why the intergovernmental clash took a while to develop. Yet, it eventually did. The environmental “leaders,” whose producers had had to adjust to tough domestic environmental legislation and did not welcome the “unfair” competition of producers from countries with laxer environmental standards, were in favor of exporting the regulatory framework implemented at home. The environmental “laggards” (the UK, at least initially, and the southern European member-states),4 while agreeing to those standards, demanded and obtained permission to delay implementation of legislation, but ultimately counted on the possibility of not implementing it at all. The initial confusion gave way to a clearer assessment of the relative costs and opportunities, and thus opened up the decision-making process to more punctual pressures from societal actors. The co-ordination dilemma that affects multi-level governance in the EU shows up very clearly in the Council. The goal of individual members of the Council is to assert their national interests at the European level to the greatest possible extent, in order to avoid criticism from their own governments, affected societal interest groups and voters. At the same time, it is in the common interest of all members to reach agreement. (Knill and Tosun 2008: 149)

In this setting, the voices of national parliaments and of the national communities that they represent became more clearly audible. This explains, for example, why it took so long to pass the first directive on car emissions in the 1970s and why it eventually provided only for “optional harmonization” (Lenschow 2005: 3 Sbragia (2000a) and Lenschow (2005) report that at first, four, then seven powerful environmental groups have had steady access to the Commission: the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), Friends of the Earth Europe, Greenpeace, the World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF) constitute the original “Gang of Four,” later joined by BirdLife International, Climate Network Europe, and the Transport and Environment Federation to make the “Gang of Seven.” 4 Lenschow (2005) says that it is not easy to pin down certain member-states as being clear environmental “leaders” or “laggards,” and that this constellation keeps changing. “ . . . binary perspectives, juxtaposing supranational against intergovernmental influence or—within the Council—the rich, northern environmental proponents against the poorer, southern states, do not do justice to the far more varied dynamics in space and time” (2005: 306).

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307). Increasingly, the Commission took care to package environmental regulation so as to favor the completion of the common market by removing non-tariff barriers among countries. The national governments in the Council countered these arguments with the priorities of their respective national communities (or of their strongest industrial groups). When the Commission, with the support of the European Court of Justice, sought to promote the reception of Community legislation and worked with environmental groups to enforce their actual implementation, a reaction began against the rigidity of Community-wide regulation. These legislative acts had been tabled because the environmental leaders (Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands) actively sought to externalize their domestic regulatory regimes and they had been approved because producers in every member-state preferred to deal with more costly, but uniform standards rather than having to adapt their products to different standards. Serious conflicts among member-states began to arise only when administrative and procedural matters started to be affected. The clash did not so much involve raw economic interests, as entire “regulatory philosophies” (Lenschow 2005). Indeed, in 1997 the Commission brought infringement proceedings against every single member-state, particularly in the area of water pollution (Sbragia 2000a: 305). Problems were experienced with “simple” and “compound” polities alike (Schmidt 2006b). More generally, federal systems find it extraordinarily difficult to centralize the implementation of environmental legislation (we will come back to this problem later). In some cases, implementation problems arise not from the lack of administrative capacity but rather from a “misfit” between the EU’s approach to regulation and the administrative apparatus which exists within a member state. For example, in Germany environmental policy is firmly in the hands of the La¨nder, and hence the federal government, with few exceptions, has limited scope for ensuring that the La¨nder implement measures appropriately. (Sbragia 2000a: 306)

Some latitude was given to environmentally conscientious national governments to set environmental standards higher than those imposed by the Community (provided they did not hamper Community trade), further differentiating the implementation pattern. Hence, despite its (deceivingly) straightforward legal foundations, environmental policy ended up consisting of “a regulatory patchwork of different instruments, principles and strategies rather than a coherent body of legislation” (Knill and Tosun 2008: 149). The Community made increasing use of Environmental Action Plans to foreshadow the environmental goals that it wished to reach, knowing that the path towards their attainment would be most difficult and tortuous. Despite their non-binding status, EAPs (covering five-year periods) became an important vehicle for the Commission to announce and substantiate policy initiatives for subsequent years. Bodies of law developed as regards water, air, waste, chemicals, nature, and noise policy. In addition, more general and procedural measures were adopted, ranging from impact assessments to information rights. (Lenschow 2005: 309)

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The controversy over information rights is a good example of how even the new legislative instruments were received with different degrees of enthusiasm by different member-states. Directive 90/313 established free public access to environmental information for those national public authorities that have the task of supervising the implementation of environmental standards. Such a measure is in keeping with a philosophy which sees the public as the ultimate watchdog of governmental action and with a market-oriented approach to regulation. The idea is that the information assembled and freely released by national environmental agencies will orient consumers’ choices and prompt citizens to demand stricter rules and closer compliance. However, in certain administrative traditions, information is not easily released because the potential dangers stemming from the availability of this type of information are deemed greater than the advantages that could derive from it (Sbragia 2000a: 309). In particular, “Germany used to handle data access very restrictively: data protection from potential abuse had priority over offering information in the name of public service. The opposite was true in the UK, especially since a new public service philosophy has been adopted under the Conservative government” (Lenschow 2005: 315, box 12.3). Therefore, Germany and Spain opposed the measure, while the UK, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands supported it. Eventually, a modified version of the directive was passed by the Council in 1990 and later revised in 2003 (Lenschow 2005: 315). Consequently, mainly through faulty reception and implementation, on the part of the laggards, and through the enforcement of stricter standards, on the part of the leaders, a certain degree of re-nationalization of environmental standards began to take place, informally at first and more explicitly later. In part, this was due simply to pursuit of national economic interests. For example, “the draft Directive on end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) was derailed in June 1999 during the German presidency by the direct intervention of Chancellor Schro¨der, who was responding to pressure from the Chairman of Volkswagen, the German car manufacturer, who was simultaneously the President of the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association” (Sbragia 2000: 300a).5 In part, however, the renationalization of environmental policy was due to questioning of the use of uniform and compulsory regulatory measures at the Community level to address environmental issues and to the increasing purchasing power of a more flexible approach that relied more heavily on market mechanisms and left greater freedom to local and national communities to obtain the desired balance between environmental protection and economic growth. Greater access for societal interests, such as industrial concerns and environmental groups, and mounting dissatisfaction with the rigidity of initial regulation opened up environmental policy to a more varied array of interests and administrative approaches, thus inducing a transformation in the policy-making process. 5 Sbragia (2000a: 300) also notes that “Schro¨der had previously sat on Volkswagen’s supervisory board and argued that the ELV directive, because of its cost to manufacturers, would hurt share prices.” Can there be a clearer example of direct representation of powerful economic interests in the Council than this?

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Although environmental groups could not directly refer transposition or implementation failures to the ECJ, they could alert the Commission on transposition failures and thus “force” it to take action. “The judiciary provides a potentially very important access-point for such groups in their efforts to ensure that legislation is actually executed on the ground. . . . The Court, however, has refused to allow the environmental groups the legal ‘standing’ which would allow them to challenge decisions made by the European Commission. . . . However, third parties can gain access to the Court if the Commission’s decision is ‘of direct and individual concern to them’ ” (Sbragia 2000a: 302–3). Alternatively, they could bring individual cases of infringement or failed transposition to the attention of the national courts and thus, via the mechanism of preliminary ruling, to the ECJ. “National NGOs are crucial in the implementation and enforcement phases of policy-making . . . In addition to national legal action, environmental groups use the complaints procedure to inform the Commission of any gap in implementation that is detected in the member-states. In 2002, the Commission received 555 new complaints alleging breaches of EU environmental law” (Lenschow 2005: 319).

CONTENTIOUS ISSUES Environmental policy is the second most-studied policy in connection with multi-level governance (MLG). Fairbrass and Jordan (2004: 147) stress how the remarkable achievements in the field of European environmental policy “have been accomplished with the involvement of a variety of state and non-state actors at different levels of governance, ranging from the local to the global.” Indeed, they go so far as to argue that: Since EU’s environmental policy is characterized by such dispersed decisionmaking competences and the involvement of state and non-state actors it would seem to provide an excellent vehicle for analysing multi-level governance in general, and the utility of Gary Marks’ model in particular. In fact, we would argue that environmental policy is a case par excellence of “the dispersion of authoritative decision-making across multiple territorial levels.” (Fairbrass and Jordan 2004: 148; the quote is from Hooghe and Marks 2001: p. xi)

This is a strong statement indeed, particularly as it is underwritten by one of the early critics of MLG (Jordan 2001). Some of those early criticisms still find an echo in the following overall assessment of MLG which is, however, inserted in a description of two environmental policy decisions that also provide partial confirmation of MLG’s empirical relevance: Although multi-level governance provides a compelling description of EU policy-making processes, it does not explicitly offer any causal motors for the actions of subnational and supranational actors. It only hints at what might be reasons (i.e. rewards) for the mobilization of subnational actors. It also overstates the autonomy of subnational and supranational actors: our

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The Empirical Challenge evidence shows that the state can still be an important shaper of post-decisional politics and a powerful gate-keeper. Multi-level governance also tends to view subnational actors as being relatively passive when our evidence suggests that nationally based groups do behave strategically and purposefully to establish direct relations with EU level policy-makers. But perhaps the most compelling criticism of multi-level governance is that it overlooks the international drivers of EU policy. (Fairbrass and Jordan 2004: 164)

It would appear from the above that the main contentions regarding environmental policy are not dissimilar from those raised in the case of cohesion policy and concern: (1) the lack of an independent explanation of the increasing involvement of subnational actors; (2) an overstatement of their real influence on the final policy decision and an understatement of the importance of central governments; (3) a general underestimation of the importance of international dynamics. The theory of MLG herein proposed is fully capable of capturing all three dynamics, particularly the international and the societal dimensions, should they prove to be at work in this policy area. Indeed, environmental policy is mostly understood as a two-level affair between the European Union and the member-states. The relevance of subnational governments in this policy field is less straightforward than in the case of regional development policy, whereas the relevance of civil society organizations is much more pronounced. In this case, we might say that the “governance” aspect of MLG is more easily proven than the “multi-level” aspect. It is not surprising, then, that environmental policy should have triggered a heated debate on the issue of subsidiarity in both its territorial and societal dimensions. An empirical test of MLG, in the case of environmental policy, would seek to demonstrate, at a minimum, that subnational mobilization was significant, and that international and societal dynamics are fully factored in. Moreover, the linkage between subnational institutions and societies is particularly crucial for this policy area. Jordan indicates how MLG may be relevant to describe and explain environmental policy when he underscores “the more paradoxical features of EU environmental policy, such as why it actively intervenes in the provision of subnational public goods such as drinking water . . . the same could be said of bathing waters, shellfish water, . . . and urban air quality—all of them subnational public goods that do not directly affect the functioning of the common market” (Jordan 1999a: 5–6). If, as Jordan suggests, “the complicity between subnational and supranational actors helped to politicise the implementation of laws on water-pollution control, habitat protection, and environmental assessment, preventing member states from reneging on their legal commitments” (Jordan 1999a: 8), then this policy clearly qualifies as a very interesting case of MLG. According to Jordan, with time, environmental policy has developed into a “sophisticated, multilevel governance system in which policymaking powers are shared between supranational, national and subnational actors to a unique extent” (Jordan 1999a: 2). In this chapter, I will be reviewing the literature for concrete instances of subnational mobilization, either on the part of subnational authorities or of subnational social groups. Indeed, it would appear that subnational social

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groups, more than subnational authorities, have been active in environmental policy. So, in its own particular way, environmental policy too seems to activate all three MLG axes, with most of the action occurring on the X2X3 and the X1X3 planes (Figure 7.1). In other words, environmental policy allows us to explore the empirical significance of all three dimensions of MLG, in their politics and policy aspects, as well as in their polity-restructuring consequences. Does environmental policy involve subnational authorities in its implementation, thus empowering them vis-a`-vis central government (outward movements on the X1X2 plane)? Does it invite the mobilization of social groups on a national and transnational level (outward movements on the X2X3 plane)? Does it favor a closer interconnection between local societies and local governments (X1X3)? Does it induce member-states to cooperate more closely and to pool their sovereignty even further (outward movements on the X2 axis)? These are the questions that I will try to answer in this chapter.

G R E AT E R I N VO LV E M E N T O F LO C A L AU T H O R I T I E S I N P O L I C Y- M A K I N G ( X 1 X 2 ) In the early 1990s, the concept of subsidiarity was put forward in favor of mitigating some of the rigidities and excessive costs associated with the initial round of Community environmental legislation. It was later used to prevent legislating environmental regulation at the Community level if national- or X2

X1

X3

Fig. 7.1. Environmental policy Notes: X1 ¼ center-periphery dimension; X2 ¼ domestic-international dimension; X3 ¼ state-society dimension.

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even local-level legislation could achieve better results, where “better” meant more cost effective and more responsive to local preferences. This same term was then used by the member-states as a codeword for the re-nationalization of environmental policy. The burden of proof—that having different national environmental standards would be harmful to the environment and/or to the common market—was placed on the Commission and no longer taken for granted. At the same time, it also provided subnational authorities with a conceptual weapon to argue that goals and means of environmental policy could be determined at even lower governmental levels. This transformed what had until then seemed like a fairly watertight intergovernmental process into a much more fluid governance setting. Subsidiarity is a powerful normative concept, but it is procedurally blunt: it is “more a political than a legal doctrine” (Peterson 1994: 118).6 In contrast to classical federalism, it does not really help determine what decisions should be taken at which level. To state that “decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the citizens” (TEU, Art. A) does not really dispel the indeterminacy of the rule according to which “In areas which do not fall under its exclusive competence, the Community shall take action, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States and can therefore, by reason of scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved by the Community” (TEU, Art. 3b). The ambiguity of subsidiarity is clear when the two Treaty references are compared. In the first case (article A), subsidiarity appears to mean that decisions in the European Union should be taken “as closely as possible” to the citizens, presumably at the level of local government whenever that is possible. Meanwhile, article 3b presents subsidiarity as a procedural device for dividing competencies between the EC and its member states according to which can perform specific actions most efficiently. These two definitions are not one and the same. In no sense do they add up to a clear, legal definition of subsidiarity. (Peterson 1994: 120)

Subsidiarity, then, opened access to different interests, ideas, and regulatory philosophies in a policy area originally dominated by intergovernmentalism and the Community method. In the 1990s, the procedural principles originally enshrined in the first EAP came under increased scrutiny. Similarly, the idea that environmental legislation should regulate the sources of potential damage, and that it should seek to do so by controlling the quantity of pollution, was questioned. An alternative approach, which focussed on targeting the ends, that is, the environmental quality to be achieved, gained ground instead. This new approach was more in keeping with the new public philosophy of the time, which focussed on market mechanisms and the application of New Public Management techniques, spearheaded particularly by the UK. This epochal and cultural change

6 Peterson (1994) reports on the mixed pedigree of the notion of subsidiarity and contains a brilliant discussion of the different and not so easily reconcilable meanings of this principle. See also F
llesdal (1998, 2000).

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explains why Germany lost supremacy in setting environmental regulatory standards in the Community, while the UK instead gained momentum. In reality, both countries were only trying to export to the Community their favored “regulatory philosophies” (He´ritier et al. 1996a). Here the same contrast emerges that was noted in the case of cohesion policy. Federal Germany, having difficulty adapting to Community legislation, in part overhauled its domestic administration, but also tried to export to the Community as a whole its administrative style, which granted a primary role to subnational authorities (SNAs), so as to minimize the costs of adaptation. The UK, which apparently resisted more openly the involvement of the Community in both regional development and environmental policy, later managed to adapt by resorting to a more flexible approach that put a premium on the use of market-conforming mechanisms and the involvement of civil society organizations, thus avoiding, at least overtly, the empowerment of subnational authorities.7 While MLG policy-making requires an institutionally complex (federal) system like Germany to adapt its established institutional equilibrium to the new division of competences, it allows an institutionally simpler system like the UK to absorb change by having public-private subnational governments take on the new competences. More generally, in the EU, the engineering of new stable governmental equilibriums appears to lose out to the search for flexible governance arrangements. Rather than trying to force a common nesting of institutional levels onto every member-state, MLG encourages flexible and negotiated solutions to coordination. This is why scholars like Bache (2008) and Conzelmann (2008) find that Type II MLG better describes the challenges of EU policy-making than Type I MLG, and it also explains why the network image appears so pertinent. The contrast between the continental European model of rule, often epitomized by Germany, and the Anglo-Saxon model, invariably represented by the UK, which figures so prominently in much comparative political and policy analysis, surfaces also in this case. Theories of political development normally contrast the gradual and fairly peaceful construction of the British state, which could rely on the participation of civil society in the making of the state, with the more rapid and bellicose construction of the Prussian state, in which it was rather the state that organized its own society. Among the many facilitating factors, these studies often mention the insularity of Britain. Thanks to its particular geographical situation, Britain did not need to fight continuously for its survival, whereas, because of its location at the center of the European continent, Germany constantly needed to guard its borders against the attacks of many powerful enemies (cf. Moore 1967; Hintze 1975: Ertman 1997). Geography, the argument goes, allowed Britain to be fairly cavalier about the negative externalities of neighboring states’ wish to expand, while it forced Germany to be very aware of its neighbors’ schemes. This, in turn, allowed Britain to devolve part of the

7

For a discussion of the contentious interpretation of subsidiarity in the UK, see Scott et al. (1994).

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business of rule to its civil society, while it forced Germany to construct a strong public apparatus neatly distinct from civil society. The same factors appear to have played a role also in the choice of environmental approaches in the two countries, allowing Britain to be rather cavalier about the impact of pollution on its own and other countries’ territory, while forcing Germany to be very aware of pollution within its borders as well as outside, and directing the former to an approach to environmental problems that looks at the quality of the environment, while inducing the latter to choose an approach that seeks to control the quantity of pollution. Sbragia emphasizes these same factors when she writes that Geography also reinforced these differences of philosophy. The UK’s pollutants are blown away and its streams run into the ocean, and hence the dispersal takes care of much of Britain’s pollution. The opposite is true for Germany. These two contrasting approaches lead to very different regulatory preferences. The common control approach necessitates very detailed regulations, whereas targeting quality allows much greater latitude to the member states as to the choice of methods. Furthermore, the German approach required BAT [best available technology], whereas the British approach was based on BAT without excessive economic cost (BAT versus BATNEEC). Implementation under BAT involves sophisticated technology, whereas BATNEEC is much more permissive. (Sbragia 2000a: 309)

The swing of European policy solutions’ “pendulum” (Wallace 2000) happened initially to favor the German approach, but later favored the British approach: a new generation of governance approaches thus came into effect.8 With the Fourth and Fifth Environmental Action Programs, the Commission began to move away, at least in theory, from the command-and-control approach and towards a softer, more market-oriented approach. Economic incentives and context-oriented instruments were promoted instead of the more conventional regulatory tools initially employed. The epochal switch from rigid regulation towards more flexible and market-oriented solutions opened up the system to greater variation and to the closer involvement of governmental and non-governmental subnational actors. It also fostered a closer connection between these two. The Fourth Environmental Program (1987–92) dealt with economic instruments. “Emission taxes, emission certificates, state aid, negotiable deposit permits, voluntary agreements with the polluters, and stricter liability laws were specified” (Holzinger et al. 2006: 405). Three main advantages are associated with these new instruments: (1) they operate according to “the polluter pays” principle even more fully than the original instruments, as “the polluter not only carries the cost of avoiding environmental pollution to a certain limit (usually by some technical device), but also the costs of residual pollution”; (2) they are suited to guaranteeing optimal allocation of environmental resources (allowing for a

8

See Sbragia (2000a: 310) for a detailed example of how the two philosophies may play out in concrete terms.

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weighing of the cost of additional investment to reduce pollution versus the cost of additional taxes or permits to pollute); (3) as the residual pollution is still paid for, economic instruments encourage a progressive improvement in environmental standards, thereby securing dynamic efficiency (Holzinger et al. 2006: 405). The Fifth Environmental Action Programme (1993–2000), in turn, marked a shift to a more integrated, context-oriented approach to environmental policy that took into account the cumulative impact of several pollutants on the same territory and the need to mainstream environmental concerns in all EU policies. The concept of “sustainable and environmentally suited development” was forged to make sure that, for example, regional EU development policy would not work at cross-purposes with environmental policy. In this way, subnational authorities were also necessarily implicated, thus marking a shift from a “topdown” to a “bottom-up” approach to environmental policy. Effective governance is to be guaranteed by the most comprehensive collaboration possible between public and private actors at the various institutional levels during policy formulation and implementation. . . . the involved actors have enough discretion to optimally align their respective activities with the conditions of the specific political and social and economic contexts that exist at the national, regional and local levels. (Holzinger et al. 2006: 408)

Associations of regional and local governments were formed to lobby, advise, and share best practices in the field of environmental policy. Transnational municipal networks such as Cities for Climate Protection, the Climate Alliance, or Energie Cite´s have been established to share information, experiments, and best practices, to seek funding, and lobby the EU and the Committee of the Regions (CoR) (Kern and Bulkeley 2009).

C LO S E R I N T E RC O N N E C T I O N B E T W EE N LOC A L S O C I E T I E S A ND LO C A L G OV E R N M E NT S ( X 1 X 3 ) Together, economic instruments and a context-oriented approach allowed for a more flexible environmental policy that would better approximate the preferred balance between economic development and environmental protection expressed by each territorial community, and it would do so in a more efficient manner. By defining only the broad objectives to be reached, the Community would leave national and local communities free to choose the means to achieve these objectives. “The instruments ought to create positive incentives for societal actors to voluntarily cooperate and participate in formulating and implementing European environmental policy” (Holzinger et al. 2006: 408). This change of policy philosophy is most clearly revealed by two environmental policy decisions concerning biodiversity and land-use planning in the UK, a unitary state particularly weary of regulation that does not directly serve the purpose of perfecting the single market. As the two directives in question “stand out as being only very

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tenuously connected to the logic of the single market” (Holzinger et al. 2006: 154), we would not a priori expect them to uphold the hypotheses generated by MLG theory, particularly in the UK. Given the characteristic identified above, we would not therefore readily expect domestic non-state actors in the United Kingdom successfully to outflank national government policy-makers, by seeking common cause with European actors . . . We would not expect environmental policy making and implementation in the United Kingdom and the EU to be either “multi-level” or dominated by “governance”. On the contrary, it is more likely to be predominantly “single level” and “government” led. (Fairbrass and Jordan 2004: 155)

MLG expectations are, instead, fully borne out by these two policy studies. In the case of biodiversity—in particular, Directive 79/409/EEC on the conservation of wild birds and Directive 92/43/EEC on the conservation of natural habitats and wild flora and fauna—the European Court of Justice proved instrumental in securing the implementation of the natural habitats directive in particular by elevating ecological considerations over economic ones. Under pressure from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the Commission brought a suit against the UK government’s infringement of this directive: “This decision carried significant political costs for the UK Government (i.e., its inability to pursue certain economic development plans)” (ibid. 156). In the case of land-use planning—in particular, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive 85/337/EEC and the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive 2001/42/EC, which was approved after a protracted tug-of-war between the UK government, on the one side, and the Commission and the Brussels-based environmental groups, on the other—these directives produced “unforeseen and unwelcome” implications for the UK government. Fairbrass and Jordan’s conclusion is that: The implementation of EU biodiversity and land use planning measures in the UK share several common features with structural funding policy . . . They are both characterized by subnational mobilization, complex, uncertain, and contested decision-making, entrepreneurial action on the part of the Commission and Parliament, unintended policy outcomes and learning on the part of the member-states. If multi-level governance refers to “the dispersion of authoritative decision-making across multiple tiers” (Hooghe and Marks 2001: xi), then our two cases could easily be classified as examples of multi-level governance. (Fairbrass and Jordan 2004: 162; emphasis added)

T H E M O B I L I Z AT I O N O F T H E T R A N S NAT I O NA L B I A S ( X 2 X 3 ) As we saw, starting with the Fifth Environmental Action Plan, increasingly softer measures were designed to encourage member-states and producers to enter voluntary agreements and adopt common standards. Crucial elements of this

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new approach are environmental groups and the general public, who are expected to be directly involved in the monitoring and enforcement of these agreements: for example, eco-audits and eco-labels would provide European citizens with the information with which they could then make informed choices and sanction deviant behavior. Voluntary agreements among European member-states and with other states were also encouraged: “in July 1998 the Commission finalized a key voluntary agreement designed to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new cars,” while “in the run-up to the conference which discussed the Kyoto protocol (agreed eventually in December 1997), the EU Environment Council committed the EU to reducing by 15 per cent emissions of three greenhouse gases (CO2, methane and NOx) by 2010” (Sbragia 2000: 312–13). Even more typical of new governance style is the compilation and diffusion of national statistics that allow European institutions and the general public to assess the progress made by each member-state towards meeting the environmental targets set, but not strictly enforced, by the Commission in its periodic Environmental Action Programmes (OMC (Open Method of Coordination) environment). This is, in fact, the origin of the European Environmental Agency, which is the successor of the Coordinated Information on the Environment (CORINE) project, linking national ministers from the European Union (plus Norway and Iceland). National ministers have the task of providing updated information on environmental standards and levels and to make this information freely available to the Commission and to the wider public (“regulation by information”) (Sbragia 2000a: 303–4). To further help enforcement, the Commission proposed to establish minimal criteria for environmental inspections by national environmental agencies in the member-states so as to facilitate environmental groups and concerned citizens’ access to their own courts and allow them to use the “preliminary procedure” and ask for the ECJ’s opinion. The establishment of minimum criteria was welcomed also by national environment ministers, who had often managed to pass more stringent legislation in Brussels than they ever would have been able to do at home. In the end, these criteria took the shape of a non-binding recommendation rather than a draft directive. Yet, peer pressure was deemed useful to bolster enforcement efforts. “In June 1997 Environment Ministers also decided to strengthen the institutional capacity of the informal EU Network for the Implementation and Enforcement of Environmental Law (IMPEL), created in 1992, by giving it a secretariat within DGXI and allowing it to give formal policy advice” (Sbragia 2000a: 306). Finally, over time, the Commission has moved towards a more integrated and thematic approach to the environment: environmental concerns must be mainstreamed in all European legislation, thus becoming a constant priority for all EU actions; attention is given to the combined effect of different pollutants; and the connection between environment and climate change, biodiversity and economic sustainability has become clearer. One of the characteristic features of environmental policy is its international dimension. Not only was this prompted by developments in the international arena (Stockholm conference in 1972; Mon-

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treal, Rio de Janeiro, and Kyoto Protocols in 1989, 1992, and 1997 respectively), but it also contributed to strengthening the external powers of the Union vis-a`-vis the autonomous capacity of the member-states to regulate their own environment. As Sbragia and Damro (1999) show, the Commission used its internal competence to project its influence onto the international stage. “In the ERTA case . . . and in subsequent rulings, the Court developed the principle of ‘implied powers’, which permits the Community to act externally in areas where it has already promulgated internal rules” (Jordan 1999a: 12). In other words, as soon as the Commission is granted competence in an area, the member states lose the right to enter, either individually or collectively, into agreements with third states. Previously the Community was only empowered to act externally in areas expressly mentioned in the Treaty. In developing the doctrine of implied or “parallel” powers, the Court effectively rejected a state-sanctioned approach to integration: henceforth, the Community’s powers would expand automatically, even without the express approval of the states. (Jordan 1999a: 13)

Jordan suggests that the Commission knowingly plays the international card in order to gain greater powers within the Union. The Kyoto agreement requires huge changes in a host of internal policy areas, from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and transport policy, through to habitat conservation and energy use. The continuous interplay between internal and external affairs is thus another powerful element of the internal dynamic which seems continually to expand the scope of EU environmental policy into “nonenvironmental” spheres. (Jordan 1999a: 13)

S T R EN G T H E N E D RO L E O F T R A N S NATI O NA L G RO U P S ( X 3 ) Progress in environmental legislation and enforcement, then, was due to the active mobilization of environmental groups, nationally, transnationally, and subnationally. Further evidence of the multi-level nature of the governance arrangements created by these environmental directives comes from Laffan (2008) who analyzes their implementation in three unitary states—Ireland, Greece, and Finland—that not only belong to very different state traditions in terms of both center-periphery and state-society relations, but that also joined the EU at different moments in time, bringing different understandings and sensitivities to environmental issues. The directives, which had been enacted thanks to the joint pressures of mounting international concerns and the active advocacy of international environmental groups (Fairbrass and Jordan 2004), required member-states to “transpose the directive into national law, undertake the scientific work leading to the designation of sites, formally transmit the designated site lists to the Commission, and prepare management plans for the priority habitats and species” (Laffan 2008: 164). Complying with this policy was “demanding” in

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scientific, managerial, and political terms. Securing the consensus of the farmers or fishermen who lived off the products of the areas that would become protected sites proved particularly difficult. Laffan analyzes these three “most dissimilar” cases— differing on all four institutional dimensions having to do with state capacities for enforcing the directive, conventional modes of consultation with societal interests, access points for the disgruntled public, and domestic channels for fighting decisions in the courts—and produces a fascinating mosaic of different modes of policy implementation and political contention. Crucial in all cases, however, was what Tallberg (2003) terms the Commission’s “management-enforcement ladder” (ibid. 167)—a formidable mix of compliance-inducing strategies made of ongoing consultation, moral suasion, and formal sanctioning. Constant consultation with local environmental groups, which could provide evidence about unjustified delays, potentially alternative sites, or outright directive infringements, was instrumental in allowing the Commission to use these varied mechanisms effectively. In this case, as in the case of cohesion policy, the Commission utilized in a “dual network” strategy (Ansell et al. 1997) without ever opting for an all-out alliance with either the national governments or subnational authorities and societies. The Commission engaged in two distinct sets of relationships during this phase. The first was its relationship with the domestic core executives that were ultimately legally responsible for transposition and compliance. Second, it fostered relationships with civil society actors and acted as a support to environmental NGOs at domestic level. (Laffan 2008: 177)

In all three countries, “The relationship between DG Environment and environmental groups at the domestic level was particularly close. The complaints procedure enabled domestic groups to alert the Commission to compliance problems. Such complaints may feed the infringement proceedings” (Laffan 2008: 179). In particular, in Ireland, they presented “a shadow list of 600 sites to the Commission in contrast to 364 sites provided by the Irish authorities”; “In Greece, eight environmental groups . . . were active in promoting the implementation of the Natura 2000 network”; in Finland, “the groups communicated frequently with the Commission and kept up to date on developments” (Laffan 2008: 179–80).

C O N C LU S I O N By way of conclusion, we might ask whether this change in “policy paradigm” was merely instrumental or whether it translated into concrete policy changes. If the switch in policy approach to environmental problems was dictated more by the attempt of the Commission to open up the policy-making process to new actors—environmental groups and SNAs—then we may even expect that, once sufficient pressure for EU intervention accumulates, the Commission will prefer to use fairly binding forms of legislation. Unsurprisingly, Holzinger et al. (2006)

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conclude that: “This change in governance ideas, however, is only partially expressed in changes in concrete instruments introduced by the EU . . . Intervention instruments still constitute the dominant form of environmental governance in the EU” (Holzinger et al. 2006: 404). A quantitative assessment of the impact of new environmental policy instruments by these authors reveals that only about 12–15 percent of the instruments can be related to the new governance types. The reason for this disappointing recourse to new instruments has to do with functional restrictions (harmonization is most apt to regulate product- or process-related environmental standards, which together still represent 80 percent of all EU policy provisions), the general tepidity with which economic and contextoriented instruments are assessed by public (governmental) and private (industrial interests and the general public) actors alike, and the particularities of the EU setting (for example, the reluctance of the member-states to relinquish sovereignty over taxation—even environmental taxes—to the Community). In conclusion, “there is a broad gap between the political and scientific advocacy of new ideas and their actual implementation through corresponding changes in underlying instruments” (Holzinger et al. 2006: 419). This does not mean, however, that the member-states remain in charge of environmental policy, that most of the driving force comes from international developments, and that supra- and subnational mobilization is ephemeral and ineffective. A regulatory policy like environment lends itself to being assessed mostly from an efficiency point of view: does it contribute to bringing about Pareto-optimal solutions? More explicitly so than cohesion policy—whose success, it is widely acknowledged, depends on too many factors to be solely attributed to policy decisions at whatever governmental level—environmental policy is still predominantly evaluated in terms of reduction in pollutants’ emissions and the successful handling of polluting materials and situations. Nevertheless, a purely efficiency-driven explanation and assessment of this regulatory policy would not do justice to the very important role that environmental groups at all levels play in securing legislation and ensuring compliance and would ignore the very real investment of time, energy, and passion that societal groups make in order to make it happen.

8 Higher Education Policy In the last decades the Commission’s influence came from its ability to act as a policy entrepreneur and its ability to set and channel the discourse, as illustrated by the Lisbonisation of higher education reforms. In addition a European academic and political community has emerged in the past decades with the formalisation of links between academics, administrators, students and universities. . . . these relationships should be seen as dynamic in nature, where exchange, regulation, institutional strengthening and organization develop in interaction with each other and jointly push for further supranational governance. (Beerkens 2008: 422)

I N T RO D U C T I O N Higher education has conventionally been the concern of nation-states. The literature on state formation considers it as one of the main tools of nationbuilding (Gellner 1983). Through education, national authorities have pursued a number of equally crucial objectives. First of all, they have formed ruling classes, trained competent administrators, cultivated national language and culture, and achieved technological advances. Second, they have sought to elicit the allegiance of the population to the nation-state, by infusing them with a sense of national identity. Educational structures were not only designed to transmit specialized knowledge, but also to inculcate values, worldviews, and expectations. In other words, higher education is a crucial instrument for the creation and perpetuation of the national identity and in the search for national excellence (Gornitzka 2006). It is, therefore, wholly understandable that European member-states would be hesitant to relinquish control of this important area of national concern to the EU level. At the same time, knowledge knows no boundaries. Intellectuals—ancient and modern clerics—have always been the most mobile stratum of their respective societies, often traveling the known world of their time to create links with their peers. Despite the effort of national states to nationalize knowledge and excellence, intellectuals often display marked cosmopolitan attitudes and identify themselves more with their own brand of science than with their nationality. Particularly in recent times, significant advances in science have resulted from the cooperation of scientists from different countries, a development which defies

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the attempt to retain knowledge within national boundaries. Bearing this in mind, we would expect European scientists (and intellectuals more generally) to take advantage of the intensified international cooperation spurred by the European Union to try and create stronger links among themselves and their respective educational systems. Both these trends are, in fact, apparent in contemporary Europe. On the one hand, European educators have sought to facilitate the international mobility of scholars and students and to create European structures of higher education by trying to make their national systems increasingly compatible and competitive. On the other hand, national authorities have often opposed these attempts in an effort to keep under their own control the production and exploitation of specialized knowledge and the tools for preserving a national identity.1 While national authorities see the limitations inherent in excessively restraining international cooperation in the field of higher education, nevertheless they resist the idea of giving up training their “national champions” at home and then allowing them to compete in the international arena for scientific and technological excellence. Knowledge is a source of economic and political power that no national authority is willing to relinquish. At the same time, through the creation of the European Community, they have clearly opted for the creation of a common market, and this has had definite consequences in terms of the mobility of current or future workers, that is, citizens who may need retraining at some later point in life, and whose children will need access to EU-wide institutions of learning on an equal footing with country nationals. These opposed forces explain the troubled development of higher education policy in Europe and its oscillations between intergovernmental cooperation and supranational steering. More recently, emphasis on the issue of quality control has prompted the development of criteria and processes of quality assessment of higher education institutions (HEIs), thus encouraging involvement of and consultation with various stakeholders, not least the subnational authorities and societies in which the institutions are located. The governance arrangements that have ensued may be closer to Type II than to Type I multi-level governance (MLG), as the individual institutions of learning and the stakeholders represented therein have been particularly induced to mobilize in this policy area (forward movements on the X2X3 plane). Nevertheless, particularly in member-states in which competence for education is delegated to subnational authorities, these latter have been directly involved in, or challenged by, policy-making (forward movements on the X1 axis and on the X1X3 plane, Figure 8.1). In what follows, I will recount the evolution of (the various strands of) higher education policy in Europe, highlighting the different governance modes that have been activated and the difficulties that they have encountered. The case of

1 “Integration of education has been off limits in terms of legal harmonization. . . . The boundaries have been least penetrable in the area of compulsory education and more porous in higher education, especially with respect to the universities” (Gornitzka 2006: 7).

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X2

X1

X3

Fig. 8.1. The MLG space of higher education policy Notes: X1 ¼ center-periphery dimension; X2 ¼ domestic-international dimension; X3 ¼ state-society dimension.

higher education is particularly apt for raising conventional questions about the nature of the EU—What type of polity is the EU? Is it an intergovernmental organization, a supranational polity, or a multi-level governance system? Yet, it also reveals their ultimate infertility. The EU appears to be all of the above in turn and sometimes even at once, never quite settling for a definite type. I will further speculate whether the numerous governance regimes that higher education policy has so far adopted single it out as a special policy area or, rather, simply direct our attention to the fact that it is increasingly difficult to assign EU policies to fixed governance formats. More specifically, though, I will ask some questions aimed at checking whether higher education is a case of MLG. Does this policy activate various levels of government simultaneously? Are non-governmental actors involved at different governmental levels? Do the interrelationships thus created defy existing hierarchies and take the form of non-hierarchical networks instead? What Type of MLG—Type I or Type II—is higher education policy?

CONTENTIOUS ISSUES Higher education policy is like a river with many tributaries which meet, come together and exchange waters, but still somehow retain their own courses to the point of remaining distinguishable from one another. The main strands of higher education policy are: (1) the European attempt at creating a “high quality” European University (if not a high quality European university system), (2)

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mutual recognition of (vocational training) diplomas and the free movement of skilled workers across Europe, (3) Community policies favoring the international mobility of scholars and students (Erasmus and Socrates programs), and (4) intergovernmental processes (the Bologna Process and OMC (Open Method of Coordination) education) aimed at harmonizing higher education systems across and outside the EU. I will briefly recall the evolution of each of these policy strands to highlight the different governance processes that have been activated, discussing their meaning with reference to the nature of the EU polity, of political mobilization within it, and of its policy-making processes.2

Creating a European Universities circuit The idea of creating a European University (if not a whole circuit of European Universities throughout Europe) came first chronologically. Already in Messina, in 1955, when discussing the European Community of Coal and Steel (ECSC), the representatives of the Federal Republic of Germany circulated a paper proposing the establishment of a European University. Behind this idea was the then German negotiator and future president of the Commission, Walter Hallstein, who wished to show the young people of Europe that the ECSC Treaty signatories wanted to ground the process of European integration on the creation of a European University (Corbett 2006: 10). This idea was not taken up immediately, nor was it shelved. It resurfaced on the occasion of the Euratom Treaty in 1957 (Art. 9.2) and, surprisingly, was enshrined therein. It was also decided that the future European University would be regulated by a Council decision to be taken by qualified majority voting, and that the Commission would prepare a proposal for the Council to approve. Although the general idea of creating a European University quickly found its grounding in a Treaty, its implementation took considerably longer. Etienne Hirsch, the chairman of the European Atomic Energy Commission and friend of Jean Monnet, revived the idea by proposing the creation of an entire circuit of European Universities throughout the European territory by issuing the label of “European” to only a few institutes of certified quality. With the argument that it was unclear on what legal (Treaty) basis the corresponding expenses could be justified, the proposal was stalled by the opposition of the French. Charles de Gaulle was opposed to the symbolism contained in the creation of a European university system and instead supported the creation of an agency for cultural cooperation. Later developments may have been affected by the personal antagonism between de Gaulle and Hirsch, which could not be overcome, even by the personal backing that Adenauer gave to the proposal and by the “enthusiastic” support of the Italians. The fact is that the creation of the only European 2 The development of this policy area does not allow for a neat separation among the narratives relative to the four different issues; therefore the following subdivision will appear at times a little contrived.

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University so far was delayed by at least ten years (Corbett 2006: 12). It is possible to see two contrasting interests at play in these events: the wish to retain control of one of the most powerful identity-shaping tools, on the French side, and the conviction that the European construct required the creation of a supranational elite, if not a scientific community, on the German side. Despite these difficult beginnings, the dialogue among education ministers continued (see Beukel 2001: 124–40). In 1971, two working parties on educational issues were established and placed under the responsibility of Commissioner Altiero Spinelli. The education ministers from the six member-states met with Commissioner Spinelli in late 1971 and decided to interpret the Treaty of Rome as including education within the remit of the European Economic Communities (EEC) because it was a necessary complement to the creation of a common market. Their ultimate goal was the creation of a “European model of culture” (European Educational Policy Statements, 1988). A working party of senior education officials was also created to find concrete ways of “achieving cooperation in the educational field” (Beukel 2001: 127). From 1973 onward, education appeared to be the express responsibility of a Commissioner, Ralf Dahrendorf, who contributed various ideas on how to carry out the objective of creating a common European culture. The ministers’ working party established an education standing committee composed of the representatives of the member-states and of the Commission, which in turn elaborated the Action Programme (approved in 1976) containing several concrete measures to be taken in the field of higher education. Among these, the most relevant were: (1) strengthening cross-border links between universities, (2) improving mutual understanding of each other’s educational system, (3) compiling updated statistics on education; (4) guaranteeing the education of the children of migrant workers. Underlying the resurfacing of higher education on the political agenda was—as is so often the case in the life of the Community—the first enlargement of the EEC to the UK, Ireland, and Denmark, which focussed attention on the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity of the Community. Responding to this renewed attention to “non-material values,” the Commission set up a DG on Education, Training, and Youth within the Commission for Research and Science and placed a dynamic Welshman, Hywel Ceri Jones, at its head. He eventually became so intimately involved with this policy that he was known as “Mr Education.” Jones tried to strengthen the supranational character of the policy by extending the reach of the Commission beyond national ministers and officials. Beginning in the mid-1980s, the Commission launched a series of pilot programs—Comett I and II (Community Programme for Education and Training in Technology), Erasmus I and II (European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students), Lingua (Language and Training Program)—which would carry out the objectives of the Action Programs and would test and select the best means towards that end. Later these programs were selected and put under the Socrates umbrella, which now includes Erasmus, Comenius, Lingua, Eurydice, and Arion (Beukel 2001: 132).

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Corbett (2006: 13–14) highlights the “dual nature” of the governance structure regulating this policy area. The Action Program was a “mixed process resolution of the Council of Ministers of education meeting with the Council,” whose implementation was also to be controlled by a “mixed process committee” which was under Council control, but had the Commission as a full member, given its expertise and ideas on how to get Community funding for the implementation of the Action Program. “The Ministers of education, though making some amendments, accepted the innovative principle of dual membership of Council and Commission—a decision with important policy-making consequences” (Corbett 2006: 14). This confirms the hybrid character of at least one of the strands (the one concerning European universities) of higher education policy governance: on the one hand, the process was grounded in Treaty provisions approved by national representatives and entrusted to the Commission for their implementation according to an almost classical understanding of the “Community method”; on the other hand, national ministers classified higher education as an intergovernmental policy and consequently kept the Commission on a “short leash,” preventing it from expanding its mandate despite its attempts to do so. Removing this constraint would require the joint intervention of the European Court of Justice and the Council of Education Ministers, who came to see student mobility as a policy priority.

Mutual recognition of higher education degrees “On June 15 1985, the twelve ministers of education of the EC agreed for the first time to use exclusively EC law and EC funding for an educational project, despite the fact that there had been no modification of the Paris Summit deal of 1961 that education was a matter for intergovernmental cooperation” (Corbett 2006: 15). In particular, they agreed to launch the Erasmus program for student mobility and to experiment with a European credit transfer system (the future ECTS). This was an old idea, having been aired for the first time in the Hirsch Plan of 1960. Still, its implementation would imply changing the nature of education policy, from a case of intergovernmental cooperation to one of supranational policy—or, to be more precise, to emphasize the supranational side of the “mixed” process followed up until then. Yet, this move required a more explicit Treaty connection. The ECJ lent a helping hand by interpreting higher education as a special case of vocational training (Beerkens 2008: 413–14), for which the Commission had been assigned formal responsibility in the Treaty of Rome, Articles 128 (on a common vocational training policy) and 235 (on the possibility of the Council expanding the remit of the Commission if judged necessary for the attainment of one of the objectives of the Community, after consultation with the European Parliament, which would need to vote unanimously). The opportunity was given by the Gravier v. City of Lie`ge case (1985)—a case of discrimination against a non-national on the part of a Belgian school—where the Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff. Subsequently, “The Commission proposed to the Court of Justice a broad definition of ‘professional training’, which the Court adopted in the Vincent Blaizot v. University

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of Lie`ge case” (Petit 2007: 10) and in the Steven Malcom Brown v. The Secretary of State for Scotland case. Moreover, the Court also extended the notion of “worker” to include teachers and professors in the Deborah Lawrie-Blum v. Land Baden-Wu¨rttemberg case. In reality, the idea that the completion of the single market needed a more European-minded labor force (which the Erasmus program would help to create) had been around for a while (Corbett 2006: 15). Framing the Erasmus program as nothing more than a special case of harmonization of admission procedures in line with what had been going on in the field of vocational training was one thing, getting the Council to approve the dedicated budget line necessary to carry it out was another altogether. The Council decision was stalled in December 1986, but was later approved in 1987 (a delay that triggered Commissioner Manuel Marin’s angry remark that “for the Council a student was evidently worth less than a cow”; Corbett 2006). Still the Commission was unhappy, because the ECJ judgment did not give it a clear enough legal basis for the implementation of the Erasmus program and because the Commission wanted to end the “mixed” policy regime. This would happen only in 1991, with the approval of Articles 126 and 127 of the Treaty of Maastricht, which provided explicitly for education (126) and training (127) and which would enshrine the promotion of an education “of quality” as one of the objectives of the EU (Art. 3). Still, the Treaty of Maastricht (1991) excluded harmonization of national laws and regulations in the field of education and the Treaty of Amsterdam (1996) simply states that “The Community shall contribute to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation between Member States and, if necessary, by supporting and supplementing their action” (Art. 149). Higher education was still based on an intergovernmental process, although the Commission was given a mandate to actively “support and supplement” the member-states’ action through their own initiatives. The ideas and programs meant to support and supplement member-states’ action would come from DG Education and Culture (DG EAC) which took over the educational remit from DG Research, Science, and Education. In 1995, the Socrates program, one of the first cases in which the co-decision procedure was applied, became “the umbrella of the EU’s educational programmes” (Gornitzka 2007: 15).

Favoring mobility of students and scholars across Europe Meanwhile, two major European agencies had been established in the field of educational training: the European Center for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop), which would “provide information on and analysis of educational training policies and contribute to developing and coordinating research, information dissemination and be a forum for the exchange of ideas” (Gornitzka 2007: 11), and the European Training Foundation (ETF), which would “contribute to the development of the education and training systems of the EU partner countries and to promote knowledge sharing and expertise development” (Gornitzka 2007: 12). In typical Commission fashion, moreover, DG EAC mobilized, through

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these agencies and otherwise, a wide network of experts and stakeholders often organized in committees. Since fewer than 40 percent of these had formal status, they failed to establish those long-term, stable connections that should characterize an “epistemic community” (P. Haas 1992) capable of generating and promoting distinctive policy ideas. Still, they helped to sustain the Commission’s effort to lend a more supranational character to higher education policy. Among the many committees set up to manage the programs, Eurydice and Socrates would prove to be the most stable. The first is an information committee, established in 1980, consisting of a European unit and national information units, including not just EU countries, but also EEA countries and EU candidate countries involved in the Socrates program. Since 1995, Eurydice has been an integral part of the Socrates committee. This latter is a comitology committee led by the Commission, whose members are appointed by the respective education ministers of the member-states. The operation of the entire Socrates program involved “centralized” and “decentralized” actions and configured a multi-level system of governance. The new Lifelong Learning Program (LLP) (2007–13), covering learning “from childhood to age,” implies the appointment of a single agency per member-state (which cannot be a national ministry) to replace the various national organizations. This new development configures a veritable multi-level system of administration in the field of education. The issue of student mobility then moved from one mode of governance to another and, in so doing, significantly expanded the remit of the Commission and its ideational and spending powers in matters of education. From a purely intergovernmental “mixed process” mode, higher education has become increasingly supranational, first, by finding some legal basis in a broad interpretation of the ECJ; then, by developing a proper legal basis in the Treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam; further, by developing a full-fledged comitology system that brings in experts, stakeholders, and education providers; and, finally, by generating a rather complex multi-level governance system that connects commission functionaries directly with national and local administrators. So far, the “progress” of higher education policy can be explained mainly in terms of the policy entrepreneurship of some and by the presence of “functional” (better, “cultivated”) spillovers. Other policy streams feeding into higher education policy will, as we shall see, fit into different governance molds and contribute to the strengthening of higher education as a crucial EU policy area.

Homogenizing university curricula The Amsterdam Treaty provision concerning the Community’s contribution to the supply of an “education of quality” logically implied two actions: first, the assessment of higher education provision throughout Europe by means of common indicators; second, the convergence of the quality of higher education systems toward the upper standards. This, in turn, implied attempting to do precisely what had been avoided until then: pushing for the harmonization of

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national educational programs toward the higher standards. Behind this “technocratic” (as opposed to an initially “romantic”) drive toward common or compatible higher education systems was also the realization that the production and dissemination of a higher education of quality had probably become the single most important factor of economic competitiveness in advanced industrial societies. To attain the objective of the Lisbon Agenda launched in 2000 at the Lisbon Council, namely for Europe to become the “most competitive knowledgebased society in the world,” education would need to be taken very seriously. Harmonization of European higher education curricula has been the main force behind what is commonly known as the Bologna Process, which began in 1999, and behind the more recent OMC education established in 2007. These two policy processes and networks eventually came together (Capano and Piattoni 2009). We therefore witness an autonomous process of international coordination (the Bologna Process) become intertwined with the Commission-sponsored OMC education in pursuit of one and the same goal (Gornitzka 2006). Higher education policy had already covered quite a bit of ground from its hesitant inception as an appendage to Community vocational training policy to becoming a Treaty-enshrined policy managed by a dedicated DG and running one of the most successful programs of the entire Community (pace European cows). The completion of the Single Market, in particular, had made it clear that the harmonization, or at least the mutual recognition, of higher education degrees was absolutely necessary in order to allow skilled workers and more generally, all European citizens to take full advantage of it. “The first directive in this area was adopted already in the 1970s for medicine and health professions, and in 1988 a directive was adopted for a general system of recognition of higher education diplomas for professional education and training with a duration of three years or more” (Gornitzka 2007: 21). An agency entrusted with ensuring academic recognition of diplomas, NARIC, was established in 1988, while another agency, ENIC, covering the countries adhering to the Council of Europe and UNESCO had already been created in 1984. ENIC-NARIC are actually networks of national recognition centers in charge of the recognition of foreign degrees. Since in some countries, universities are free to have their own recognition standards, NARIC ends up simply counseling on issues of degree recognition (Gornitzka 2007: 21–3). Both these networks cooperated closely with the DG EAC of the European Commission in the area of quality assurance and accreditation. In the 1990s, this collaboration led first to a pilot project, then to a Council recommendation on quality assurance, and, finally, to the creation of a network of national quality assurance agencies (ENQA). ENQA later went from being a Commission-sponsored network to being an independent association, opening its membership to all the countries involved in the Bologna Process, hence extending beyond EU borders. ENQA’s later development illustrates the creeping supranationalism inherent in processes of harmonization that respond to real common market-like imperatives, regardless of whether they concern the production of goods, services, or knowledge. In 2004, the Commission proposed the creation of a European

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Register of Quality Assurance and Accreditation Agencies and further proposed that universities should be free to choose by which agency they would be accredited without being bound to nationality, thus implying “a potential challenge to a traditional national ministerial responsibility towards universities across Europe” (Gornitzka 2007: 23). The proposal assigned the role of coordinator, supporter, and supervisor of such network to the Commission (COM (2004) 642 final). The proposal was accepted by the Council and the European Parliament (EP) conditional upon the compatibility of this solution with national legislation (REC 15 Feb. 2006 PE-CONS 366611/05 REV). Inevitably, this Commission-sponsored process got intertwined with the parallel Bologna Process. The Bologna Process began in 1998 when the Education ministers of France, Germany, Italy, and the UK met in Paris to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the Sorbonne. On that occasion, they issued a declaration pointing to the opportunity to harmonize “the architecture of the European higher education system” (Balzer and Martens 2004: 9). The document called for a gradual convergence of higher education degrees and the creation of a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in Europe (but outside the EU framework), indicated the BA/MA structure as being most apt (thereby adopting the Anglo-Saxon model), and pointed to the ultimate goal of facilitating student and scholar mobility across Europe. The process, however, takes its name from Bologna, where the education ministries of 25 countries (obviously not all members of the then Community) met again the following year (1999) at the homonymous university and signed the Bologna Declaration containing a number of precise objectives (among them the creation of an official European credit transfer system (ECTS), the production of Diploma Supplements to facilitate the comparability of courses, and the improvement of the quality of European education). One may usefully recall that at that time European economies had begun to fear having become less dynamic vis-a`-vis the United States and several Asian economies (Beukel 2001). The Bologna Process soon hooked up with the Lisbon Strategy, launched officially the year after, to turn the EU into “the most competitive knowledge-based society of the world.” With this ambitious goal came also the intertwining between what had been until then an instance of intergovernmental coordination with a more streamlined type of coordination known as the Open Method of Coordination (OMC). The Bologna process clearly adopted the main procedures that characterize, in general, the OMC (Pochet 2005): periodic meetings for the evaluation of national systems of higher education, structured comparisons among these systems based on selected indicators, creation of national task-forces to devise ways in which systems can be reformed and best practices introduced, submission of periodic progress reports attesting to progress made—in other words, convergence towards greater harmonization by setting periodic milestones and deadlines, but leaving each member-state free to proceed at the speed and in the way it considered most apt. The Commission displayed great skill in quietly blending into what had begun as a purely intergovernmental process, making its presence and support increasingly indispensable. The network also became increasingly more structured. A Bologna Follow-Up Group (BFUG) was created to act as secretariat and

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coordinating unit in-between plenary meetings, made up of two representatives from each member-state, two representatives of non-EU member-states, one representative from the country which would host the next plenary meeting (to be held every other year), and representatives from the Commission. Moreover, several independent agencies, such as the EURASHE (European Association of Institutions in Higher Education), ESIB (European Union International Board), EUA (European Universities Associations), CRE (Confederation of European Union Rectors’ Conferences), and the Council of Europe, also had their own representatives on the BFUG. These “stakeholders” were crucial not only in furnishing specialized, technical knowledge, but also in producing important publications such as Trends in Learning Structures in Higher Education I, II, and III (Gornitzka 2007: 25). The contours of a typical Commission-centered “epistemic community,” mostly composed of national experts and representatives from national educational institutions, were beginning to take shape (what Beerkens 2008: 420 calls a “political community”). Meanwhile, societal forces also began to mobilize: Beerkens (2008: 418–19) charts the growth of a veritable “transnational academic community” of higher education and research institutions—publishing a growing number of specialized European journals, represented by a growing number of European organizations, and flanked by equally vibrant European students’ associations—which are among the most relevant stakeholders in the entire process. More explicit and transparent was the launch of an OMC education in Lisbon. “The Lisbon European Council represents the confluence of two general processes: the process that led to the Lisbon diagnosis of the shortcomings of the European knowledge economy and the acknowledgment of this as a common European concern, and the search for new modes of governance in the European Union” (Gornitzka 2006: 10). In Lisbon, education was clearly linked to other crucial policy areas, constituting the “interface between the economic, cultural and social policy” (Gornitzka 2006: 10). Initially, OMC education coincided with the identification of a number of objectives. Three were identified as having absolute priority: (1) improving the quality and effectiveness of European education, (2) easing access to education throughout Europe, (3) opening up national education and training systems to the wider world. Very soon, OMC education began to run in parallel with both the Bologna and the Copenhagen Processes (on higher education and vocational training, respectively), and the whole process became known as “Education and Training 2010.” OMC education had a rather smooth start, based on the familiarity that education ministers had developed after years of cooperation in the various ad hoc or stable committees related to education. It did not take long before education was subsumed under the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP). The “Lisbonization of Bologna” had de facto been accomplished (Beerkens 2008: 417). OMC education lent stability, coherence, durability, and self-awareness to the members of the many committees it activated. DG EAC writes most of the documents that have been produced, thus accumulating an impressive amount of statistics and evaluations of national systems based on commonly identified

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indicators. The experts that have been involved in OMC education are less the technical experts of yore and more the “national experts,” whose expertise lies mainly in knowing what would be politically acceptable to the national ministries. A Standing Group on Indicators and Benchmarks (SGIB) was also established and (roughly eighty) non-governmental organizations have been involved in the process as well, mostly to act as watchdogs vis-a`-vis their national governments in case these lagged behind in the implementation of agreed goals. Other than that, civil society participation has been weakly institutionalized, partly because the rules and traditions regulating civil society participation in European decision-making processes vary greatly from country to country. In what follows, I will analyze a few selected goals of the “Lisbonized” Bologna Process to highlight the difficulties encountered by the different member-states in achieving them and the impact that this convergence process has exerted on the higher educational systems of the individual member-states. In the process, I will discuss the transformation that was induced in the peripheral system of higher education (X1X2), in the participation of societal interests in the design and implementation of the new system (X2X3), and on the potential effect that such reconfiguration might exert on the localization of the production of knowledge (X1X3). The most significant change for a prototypical intergovernmental policy like higher education, however, has been the degree to which it has induced a shift in sovereignty from the national to the supranational level (X2).

I N C R E A S E D AU TO N O M I Z AT I O N O F H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N I N S T I T U TI O N S A N D I N C R E A S E D L I N K S W I T H S U B NAT I O NA L G OV E R N M E N T S ( X 1 X 2 , X 1 X 3 ) Higher education institutions historically enjoy different degrees of autonomy in different member-states. The push towards a European system of higher education has challenged these different state traditions and has engendered a rebalancing of the relationship among different types of HEIs and between these and higher education authorities at the national and state (regional) levels. In some member-states, like the UK, international trends had already induced the system of higher education to adjust to demographic and cultural developments by adopting many of the reforms that later became the focus of the Bologna Process and the Lisbon Strategy.3 However, although it appeared to be much better equipped to face the challenges of international competition and the knowledge society, the English higher education system proved reluctant to abandon its traditional set-up and to overcome its internal fragmentation and lack of compatibility with the systems of the other member-states. In other member3

Parts of this chapter are also contained in Capano and Piattoni (2009). I am grateful to Giliberto Capano for allowing me to reproduce parts of our conference paper.

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states, like Germany, adjustment also proved difficult, but for different reasons, having more to do with the competing roles that national academic boards and Land education ministers played within it. The historical connection between academic degree and career options that existed in Germany clashed with the new understanding of higher education as a flexible and dynamic system meant to overcome social segmentation and promote international competitiveness. In both systems, the autonomization of HEIs upset the conventional state-society and central-peripheral relations. The English system of higher education4 has traditionally been highly complex and segmented, characterized by different tracks that led directly from secondary to post-secondary studies. Post-secondary (i.e. higher) education offers would-be students a variety of degrees. After earning a three- (or four-) year Bachelor of Arts (BA) or Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree,5 students can follow a one-year curriculum that awards a Master of Arts (MA) or Master of Science (MSc) degree or obtain a Master of Philosophy degree after two years of studies as a stepping stone towards the two-year Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.). The original English system was, therefore, a 3þ1þ1þ2 system (that could be variously lumped as 3þ2þ2 or as 3þ1þ3 or again as 4þ1þ2). The distinction between one-year and two-year Master’s degrees cannot be neatly attributed to their being oriented to professionalization (taught masters) or to research (research masters). The English system, from which the Bologna Declaration took inspiration when it proposed a convergence towards a 3þ2þ3 system, was on the face of it the one that needed to change the least. One of the main bones of contention was the exact identification of the number of credits (ECTS) that a degree program should contain for its completion. The English position was opposed to creating too tight a connection between numbers of credits and degree, which went against the English approach, based on a qualitative (rather than quantitative) assessment of student academic achievement and which would implicitly disqualify English Master’s degrees entailing only 60, 75, or 90 ECTS (most European MAs require 120 ECTS). The one-year Master’s degree had become a characteristic feature of the English academic landscape that everyone liked. HEIs certainly liked it because, thanks to the good reputation of English universities, they could “sell” it very well to international students who would be opposed to paying two years of tuition to receive a degree that they could currently get at half the price. No direct transferability of credits existed among universities, except for a few universities which liaised with each other at regional level. While these may appear trivial details in a highly segmented system, with little mobility across institutional types, and in which institutional academic reputation matters more than the number of credits earned, it is clear that they

4 I will here consider the English system, as Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland have higher education systems of their own. 5 For professionally oriented programs, other degrees exist such as Bachelor of Law (LL B), Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.), and Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.).

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would become grave impediments in a much more fluid and diverse context that aimed at “comparability and compatibility.” Moreover, English universities are self-governing bodies (except for the former polytechnics whose governance arrangements are established by a law issued in 1992). Since the beginning of the 1980s, there has been progressive governmental pressure on higher education institutions, which had the effect of consistent verticalization of internal decision-making and, in consequence, a weakening of the collegial power of the self-governing academic organs. It is necessary to fully appreciate how strongly governmental pressure constrained the historical autonomy of universities: the latter have been forced to direct their actions towards priorities set by the central government, mostly stressing the need to acquire comparability of curricula and degrees. Quality assurance has long been a fundamental component of the English higher education system. Since 1990, quality assurance was buttressed by systematic institutional audits undertaken by the Academic Audit Unit established by the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals (CVCP). In 1992, the “new universities” joined this system, which was entrusted to the Higher Education Quality Council (HEQC). Quality assessment of individual subject matters and departments was, moreover, closely connected to the release of funding decided by the Quality Assessment Division (QAD) of the funding councils. In 1997, the HEQC and the QAD were merged to form the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) (Witte 2006: 319).6 Quality assessment became the topic of a heated and complex debate during the first Blair term (1997–2001), particularly as it was widely felt that the new methods applied by QAA were too intrusive and limiting of institutional autonomy. Associations of higher education institutions and staff and students’ associations (HEFCE, Universities UK, SCOP, NUS) complained and obtained a revision of the methods that were in reality directed more towards institutional audits and less at subject assessments.7 In this field, too, English universities and colleges appeared to be at an advantage vis-a`-vis the rest of Europe. And yet, while the principle of quality assurance was well ingrained in the English system, the details of its implementation had changed several times. Because of this accumulated experience, the High Level Policy Forum (HLPF) and the subsequent UK Higher Education (HE) Europe Unit (both emanations of the main civil society actors) opposed the imposition of Europe-wide quality assurance systems, fearing that they would be overly bureaucratic and would be based on formal requirements rather than on the more fine-grained evaluation of result achievement that was typical of the English system. Furthermore, it has to be underlined how deeply evaluation of teaching and research had been institutionalized since 1992 with the establishment of the Higher Education 6

In some professional fields like medicine, nursing, and pharmacy, the accreditation was performed by statutory bodies, while in fields such as engineering and law, it was performed by professional bodies. 7 Associations such as HEFCE, Universities UK, SCOP, and NUS also injected some awareness of the Bologna Process into the English policy-making process, thanks to their connections with similar associations in other member-states and their European umbrella associations.

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Funding Council for England, which is also in charge of allocating an appropriate amount of public money through its periodical assessments. The Bologna Process put the English system under a certain amount of strain. In terms of degree length, the situation in 2009 is still pretty much the same as it was in 1999. English universities, though pressured into compliance by their government on other policy dimensions, are still fully entitled to design their own degree programs, leaving it to quality assessment and funding policy to discipline inadequate behavior. The English educational system had already undergone an autonomous reform process whose main steps are represented by the Higher Education Acts of 1988 and 1992, the Dearing Report of 1997, the Teaching and Higher Education Act of 1998, the White Paper on “The Future of Higher Education” (2003), and the Higher Education Act of 2004. In particular, while originally quality assurance was based on an informal peer-review system performed by the CVCP, with the increase in the numbers and diversity of HEIs, these assessments have been increasingly standardized. This system had subsequently been revised as it proved to be too bureaucratic and intrusive, and even ultimately skewed. Hence, the reluctance of all institutional actors to further tinker with a system that finally appeared to be working. In sum, the English response to the Bologna Process has been mixed: while the British authorities articulated a strictly intergovernmental position at EU level, higher education policy actors (associations representing HEIs, teaching staff, and students) have been active in linking up with their European counterparts and in reporting the EU debates back at home (through HLPF and the UK HE Europe Unit) (Bache and Olsson 2001). English reforms can be characterized as superficial, belated, and ultimately defensive. UK authorities were slow to take notice of the Bologna Process even though they were among the original signatories of both the Sorbonne and the Bologna Declarations. As happened in other policy areas, the UK (England) believed itself to be in the vanguard in the field of higher education and therefore anticipated that very little adaptation would be necessary. When it realized how intrusive adherence to the principle of growing convergence might be, it assumed a defensive position and strenuously fought to retain autonomy of its HEIs (not just financially, but also in terms of designing degree curricula and awarding degrees), preserve its one-year Master’s degrees, shun the imposition of Europe-wide quality assurance methods, and avoid the strict implementation of a European credit system (ECTS). Diploma Supplements, instead, fitted the English system rather well, as they were strongly based on the capacity of students to independently assess their own progress towards an educational goal. Therefore, Diploma Supplements were easily introduced as they dovetailed with the existing English tradition and cultural experience. The German university system belongs historically to the continental type, which means that institutional autonomy and responsiveness were very low and that power was lodged in the academic guilds and the La¨nder governments. This “bureaucratic” model is currently under substantial pressure for change. Through a slow and fragmented process (thanks to the federal structure of the political system), from the early 2000s, Germany has been gradually moving away from

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this traditional system. Humboldt’s homeland is experiencing a slow transformation, through which governments (at national and regional levels) are trying to render universities more responsible and accountable. What had been a romantic and humanistic educational ideal—the Humboldtian system—increasingly displayed clear limitations in a faster, more fluid, and interconnected world (Weiler 2005). The German case tells us that the need for reform in HE was mainly due to the obsolescence of the original system and its incapacity to respond to the national demographic changes that occurred during the 1960s, when the surge in student population was met by simply opening up access to higher education to larger numbers of students; to cater to the needs of part-time students and adults who wished to go back to school to update or complement their education; and to stem the high drop-out rates of German students and the substantial lengthening of their studies well beyond the official terms. The German degree structure was organized, prior to 1998, into two fundamental types: German universities awarded three degrees (Diplom, Magister, and Staatsexamen) equivalent to a current Master’s degree, whereas Fachhochschulen awarded only the Diplom (FH), which could be ranked somewhere in between the current Bachelor and Master’s degrees. All of these took between eight to ten semesters to complete, with the Staatsexamen (at different levels) taking up additional semesters of preparation time. These differences point to a distinction of HEI types between Universita¨ten, teaching- and research-oriented institutions, offering strong disciplinary specialization, and Fachhochschulen, practice- and trade-oriented, leading to more direct access to various trades. German HEIs traditionally enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy, particularly in terms of curriculum design and method of teaching, but this autonomy was limited by several factors: (a) authorization of programs by La¨nder ministries “based on a control of input measures such as teaching capacity, contact hours, rooms and the like” (Witte 2006: 157); (b) a system of national subject-specific curriculum frameworks (Rahmenpru¨fungordnungen (ROPs)); (c) a strong role for academic unions and individual academics. One aspect which the German HEIs did not have to worry about was funding, as funding was directly transferred by La¨nder ministries on the basis of objective criteria. Even when funding was scarce, there was very little that HEIs could do about it, given that they could not raise money among private investors nor could they charge tuition fees. Quality assurance was not an issue in Germany, simply because the ROPs took care of securing homogeneity among different programs. What also functioned as a sort of quality assurance system was the close connection that was established between certain degree programs (particularly the Diplom, since the Magister degree was prevalent in the humanities and the social sciences) and employment. “The Diplom degree directly conveyed the right to practice” (Witte 2006: 161). One indirect, yet very significant marker of quality was that university graduates could be recruited directly into the higher ranks (ho¨herer Dienst) of the public administration, while Fachhochschulen graduates could aspire to access only the middle ranks of the public service (gehoberer Dienst). The state (both at the national and at the regional level), therefore, was the real quality assurer.

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The Bologna Process, particularly in its “Lisbonized” version, fundamentally challenged this system, which was consequently changed. First of all, the Fourth Amendment (1998) introduced a two-tier (Bachelor and Master’s) degree system on a trial basis, alongside the conventional Diplom/Magister/Staatsexamen, roughly equivalent to a Master’s degree. This caveat was due to the fact that similar innovations had been tried before (by introducing “foreign degrees” into the German system) but without much success. Moreover, since the ultimate authorities in educational matters were the La¨nder, the central government could only recommend adoption of the new system, but not impose reform of the degree structure. The suggested formats were 3+2 or 4+1, for a total of five years of post-secondary studies (more complex options were also possible, but were eventually weeded out). This reform appeared to address the problem of students’ high drop-out rates and to give them the possibility of getting a job after only three years of study. To this end, it was clarified that a Bachelor’s degree was a “‘real’ degree, conveying a proper professional qualification” (Witte 2006: 167). Moreover, since both Universita¨ten and Fachhochschulen could issue both degrees, the distinction between the two was implicitly erased. The 1998 reform also abolished the ROPs. Instead, it was decided that each program should receive individual accreditation through a system set up by the La¨nder. The new system was agreed upon by the German Rectors’ Conference (Hochschulrektorconferenz (HRK)) and the Standing Conference of the Ministries of Education and Cultural Affairs of the La¨nder (Kulturministerkonferenz (KMK)) and involved the creation of a Central Accreditation Council (Akkreditierungsrat (AR)) and several decentralized accreditation agencies. The AR would be affiliated to the KMK, have a “corporatist” set-up, with representatives from academia, employers, students, institutional management, and the La¨nder. The HEIs would pay for the accreditation themselves and it was implied that the new Bachelor and Master’s programs would require accreditation. This new system was meant to inject a certain degree of flexibility into a rather static system and to encourage individual HEIs to experiment with new curricula and programs. Reform of the accreditation system stirred up quite a bit of conflict between governmental levels. “An important forum for cooperation was the German National Bologna Follow-Up Groups, which began work in March 2000” (Witte 2006: 178). The German BFUG was composed of the Chair of the HE Committee of the KMK, three individual La¨nder representatives, and one representative each from the federal Ministry and the HRK, and later it was further augmented by representatives from the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademisher Austauschdienst (DAAD)), the AR, and the students’ association. Paradoxically, this international forum helped national concertation by allowing each stakeholder to fully realize the importance of fostering convergence among European higher education systems. The reports thereby produced chart the cautious implementation of the Bologna Process in Germany. The Research Council (Wissenschaftsrat (WR)) produced documents encouraging the whole-hearted adoption of the new system on the part of German HEIs and the gradual abandonment of the old system. To this end, the AR suggested

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several ways in which the transition could be accomplished. It also developed a further distinction between those Master’s programs that provided a deepening of the subject matter studied during the Bachelor’s (“genuine” Master’s) degree and those that allowed for a more multidisciplinary reorientation (“hybrid” Master’s). “The latter were not supposed to qualify for access to doctoral studies. In many ways, these regulations reflected traditional paradigms: mono-disciplinary, academically driven degree programs were established as the norm; transdisciplinary and applied degrees as the exception” (Witte 2006: 181). This implied a debasement of the multidisciplinary Master’s to a second-class status, thus thwarting the original intention of the reform, which was to inject innovativeness and experimentation into the system. Also highly relevant was the HRK recommendation that the segmentation of entry into the professional world and into the public administration should be abolished in favor of a more flexible approach based on actual knowledge assessment rather than on formal academic qualification. Ideally, segmented access to public service should be given up, but in practice the interim solution was that all holders of Master’s degrees would qualify for higher service and that all holders of Bachelor’s degrees would qualify for higher intermediate service. Among the driving forces behind German HE reform, the perception that the 1998 system was ill-suited to withstanding the competitive pressures deriving from globalization and internationalization was certainly paramount. This perception was mostly harbored at the federal ministerial level, but it was buttressed by the feeling that “public opinion favored a substantial increase of HEI autonomy, a more competitive character of the HE system, and the possibility to introduce Bachelor and Master’s programs in particular” (Witte 2006: 164). Quite clearly, echoes of the Bologna Process were filtering through more audibly in Germany than they had done in the UK. In particular, direct comparisons between German and British degrees and the suspicion that German students might have a hard time being accepted in British universities fanned the fear that German higher education had become inadequate. This led German authorities to push through two important amendments to the federal Framework legislation, in particular the Fourth Amendment (1998) and the Sixth Amendment (2002). These amendments intertwined more directly with the Bologna Process than in the English case, even though it is difficult to find a direct causal link between the two. The German reform was powerfully shaped by two sets of intervening variables. First, the policy legacy was linked to the way in which the system of higher education and the individual HEIs were governed, and the existence of a tight link between different types of post-secondary education and access to various types of employment. Second, institutional and political variables having to do with the federal structure of the German state, the structure of interest participation and intermediation, and sheer political contingencies were linked to the coalition in power at any given moment. The federal configuration of Germany is particularly relevant for explaining the patchy and uneven adoption of Bologna reform items and the tug-of-war that ensued between the center and the La¨nder. While not all La¨nder governments

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decided to radically change the institutional governance of their universities, the national government used the “power of the purse” to try and induce the desired behavior. The federal government now releases substantial extra funding only to the ten best universities or to the best research groups. The need to develop competition also changed the traditional way of governing the whole system: in 2005, a new excellence initiative was launched jointly by federal and state governments to promote quality and excellence in research. The total amount of extra funding allocated is about  2 billions for the 2006–11 period. This is a clear indication of the fact that German political authorities decided to use financial incentives to change the way of governing higher education policy. The German implementation of the Bologna Process, then, is also tentative and incremental, but for completely different reasons than in the English case, Germany, although clearly proud of its HE system, was nevertheless aware of the need to rejuvenate it and to make it more internationally competitive. Cost considerations and concern over the segmentation that was produced in the student population also played a role. What stalled the process and made it so excruciatingly slow, however, was mostly the federal and corporatist format of its policy-making—an institutional setting completely different from the English one.

I N C R E A S E D C I V I L S O C I E T Y M O B I L I Z AT I O N ( X 2 X 3 ) We have seen that elements of several types of governance can be detected below the surface of the many interlocking policy processes within higher education policy, and that the role of civil society has been growing over time. The beginnings of higher education policy (the creation of a European University) were undoubtedly intergovernmental in nature. Later, a second strand (concerned with recognition of educational diplomas and the free movement of workers in the common market) displayed features of “committee governance,” although not of a type that could generate its own epistemic community (Joerges and Vos 1998) and, hence, emancipate itself from the tutelage of the Council. Subsequently, a third strand of higher education policy (favoring student mobility across Europe) acquired the traits of an authentic community policy, managed by a dedicated DG and creating a network of educational associations that could promote and monitor this mobility. Finally, the most recent strand (aimed at the harmonization of higher education systems in Europe and their quality assurance) unfolded mostly as a process of coordination, spontaneous at first and more open and methodical later, with a bigger role for civil society and organized interests. Civil society appears particularly relevant in two regards. First, the gradual formation of a Europe-wide “transnational academic community” that mobilizes the main policy actors: institutes of learning (individual universities, associations of HEIs, associations of Rectors, etc.); academic professionals (national and European thematic associations, professional associations, etc.); academic experts

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and quality assurers (the ENQA circuit, other organizations of quality assurance, etc.); student associations and so on. The “Lisbonization of Bologna” amounts to the creation of a European market for higher education that gives greater power to higher education customers (students) and therefore forces higher education producers (individual HEIs) to adapt to market demands and trends, sometimes under the whip of national authorities that see the advantages of converging towards more compatible higher education systems These “interest” and “pressure” groups clearly represent movements along the X3 axis and their lobbying activities are situated on the X2X3 plane. The second development that is taking place is the increasing mobilization of subnational authorities and societies in the field of higher education (movements on the X3X1 plane). In some member-states, like Germany, regional (state) authorities have formal competence over higher education, hence are directly involved in the decision-making and implementation of these policy decisions. Even in otherwise rather centralized member-states like the UK, higher education is devolved (in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) and decentralized to public-private local councils (in England) (Bache 2001, 2006). In the current situation of severe economic crisis, this process has intensified. With ever tighter national budgets, the increasing autonomization of HEIs (mainly universities) is aimed at making their management responsible for their decisions. In addition, though, the current introduction of market mechanisms into the higher education system, accomplished by tying university financing to quality performance indicators and by encouraging external financing from competitive sources or from private investors, is inevitably inducing a closer interrelationship between individual universities and the territorial context in which they are located. In seeking financial support from regional governments and local firms, universities are induced to direct their scientific endeavors towards areas of interest to the latter. At the same time, the general scarcity of funds has induced the most dynamic universities to restructure their academic offerings, reward scientific excellence, and punish academic mediocrity, which in turn increases the attractiveness of such universities, leading to an increased student and academic population, greater willingness on the part of leading firms to locate in the region, etc. This induces both increased mobilization of subnational authorities in this policy area even in non-federal states and a tightening of the relationship between the “local academic community” and subnational authorities, which are by now acknowledged as fundamental stakeholders in higher education policy and as de jure members of university management boards.

I NC RE A S E D S U P RA NAT I O NA L I Z AT I ON O F H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N ( X 2 ) How can we interpret the complex evolution of the policy area of higher education across different modes of governance, within and beyond the EU? What does it tell us about the EU and the dynamics that move it forward? What conclusions should

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we draw from the analysis of policies, such as higher education, that have become increasingly important for the completion and proper functioning of the common market, but challenge the sovereignty of member-states in identity-sensitive areas (Pettit 1997)? To put it even more simply: what is higher education policy a case of ? The first way in which a complex and rich policy case such as higher education may be used is to try and answer the question of what drives European integration. The progressive institutionalization of higher education policy (Beukel 2001), which now boasts a dedicated DG and stream of funding of its own, points to the way in which European integration proceeds almost surreptitiously below the surface of more visible events such as conferences, councils, conventions, and crises (“integration by stealth”). From the vantage point of this policy, we may argue that European integration is alive and well, driven by forces that some would interpret as coming from the autonomous decisions of national governments, others from the sheer convenience of pooling resources, others from the lobbying pressures of an increasingly Europeanized civil society, still others from the entrepreneurship of European institutions. And yet, what is most remarkable about higher education policy is that its evolution provides empirical evidence that could equally well support several theories of European integration. If it is true that theories allow us to “travel light,”8 that is, allow us to construct plausible arguments starting from the knowledge of even just one case study (the others being implicitly subsumed in the theory), we would then presume that higher education policy would strengthen the intergovernmentalist, or perhaps even the neo-realist, view of European integration. Education is one of the crucial realms of state-formation and nation-building: no sovereign state willingly relinquishes control over one of the institutions through which national identity and allegiance are formed and the competences necessary to run the country are acquired. Yet, like so many other aspects of social and economic life, education too is subject to the test of open market competition: what might have worked well in a period of fairly solid international borders may be faulty in times of increasing mobility of goods, services, capital, and people. Neo-realism and intergovernmentalism are rather good at explaining the reluctance with which European countries move towards greater harmonization of their higher education systems and the firm limits that they have managed to impose on the Commission’s interventionist agenda. In addition, they may explain why these very countries would even begin to compare and contrast their educational systems as a self-interested exercise from which they hope to gain insights on how to improve their system, without revealing the secrets of their own strengths. Yet, they cannot explain the extent of progress in this policy area. If, instead, the functionalist logic of the completion of the common market were driving higher education policy, we would then expect convergence to have happened 8 This is the answer given, at the First General Conference on EU Studies held in Bordeaux in 2003, by Ben Rosamond to a student questioning the usefulness of studying theories. I have used it myself ever since whenever asked the same question. I am indebted to Ben Rosamond for supplying such a concise and powerful reason.

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much more swiftly than it did and we would interpret reluctance as “false consciousness” on the part of governmental authorities who think that they can shut the gates of open competition in the production of knowledge across Europe. We would also be led to underestimate the identity-shaping powers of educational systems which, together with the preservation of distinctive language skills, instill a sense of identity in the citizenry by creating myths and interpretations that shape people’s perceptions. We would, finally, be induced to believe that it might be possible to identify a single best educational system towards which all the others should converge. Instead, we observe the stubborn defense of several national educational systems and continuing disagreement over standards of excellence. Higher education policy also provides us with ample evidence to claim, in a neo-functionalist vein, that it was the entrepreneurship of the Commission that gave momentum to the initial idealism of some Community leaders by inventing and managing simple, but powerful exchange programs; by providing advice and financial support to intergovernmental processes that would, otherwise, have remained just that; and by enlisting in its camp powerful allies such as the ECJ and the EP. Without the help of these institutions, higher education policy would have not passed the hurdles of two critical junctures (in the early 1960s and late 1970s) that risked terminating it altogether. By also taking on board several types of non-governmental organizations—from quality certification agencies to interest groups, from academic associations to youth organizations—the Commission managed to place itself at the center of a crossroads of ideas, interests, and expertise flows which made it into the natural reference point of a policy-making process that had begun in a clear intergovernmental mode. It is perhaps wrong to interpret the Commission as a particularly skilled policy entrepreneur, capable of generating an entire policy agenda and of simultaneously exploiting “parallel developments, competing networks of ideas, as well as traveling ideas that do not materialize in practice” (Gornitzka 2007: 26). So, finally, higher education policy could be analyzed as a case in which alternative frames of interpretative discourses either elicited an alarmed response from member-states or assuaged their fears and made it possible to push several small, but significant decisions through the gates of the Council. In the end, the impression is that each theoretical approach to European integration could equally well be confirmed or refuted depending on the type of empirical evidence and the decision-making nodes one decides to take into consideration. Alternatively, higher education policy could be analyzed as just one of those policies which, by their very nature, involve several levels of government and several types of actors—from central government to local/regional authorities, from public institutions to private interests, from rectors’ associations to students’ organizations.9 Quoting the opening chapter of a fairly recent volume on 9 The term “level” is normally used to denote territorially differentiated (often nested) governmental authorities, but sometimes it is used in a looser sense to denote spheres of authority with different scope and reach (see Chapter 1). Here it points to the involvement of both governmental and nongovernmental authorities.

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European policy-making, “the EU represents a new type of complex, multi-level and loosely coupled decision-making and implementation where processes often have strong elements of informal influence” (Andersen and Eliassen, 2001b: 3). Whether “multi-level” or simply “complex,” European higher education policymaking is certainly “loosely coupled.”

C O N C LU S I O N Although a sui generis policy, characterized by a mix of regulatory (mutual recognition of degrees), distributive (student, teacher, and staff mobility across Europe), and soft constitutional (creation of a European Higher Education Area of quality) features, higher education policy nevertheless is increasingly displaying clear MLG traits. These are most clearly of a Type II, but they are also increasingly of a Type I nature. Autonomy is the codeword for this type of development. In the name of scientific, financial, and institutional autonomy, higher education institutions are lobbying the European Union, joining forces with similar institutions across national borders, and are forging tighter links with their local authorities and societies. After all the “transnational academic community” that is increasingly being mobilized and politicized at EU level has its roots at the national and regional level. Its members will adopt a typical open-ended, dual network-type strategy (Ansell et al. 1997), allying alternatively with subnational, national, or supranational authorities according to the issues at stake. “They [institutions and academics] can address different issues to different representative organizations. Where they feel threatened by expansion of European rules and authority, they will call upon their national governments; where they experience obstacles at the European level, they will call upon their European level representatives to act” (Beerkens 2008: 420). And we might add that, when they feel constrained by national-level financial cuts, they will call upon their regional authorities to help them out and, when they feel constrained by national regulations that depress their potential for international competitiveness, they will lobby the EU through their European-level associations for more stringent quality assurance regulation.

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Part III The Normative Challenge

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9 Normative Analysis Academics, too, have begun to discover that the integration process depends not only on functional efficiency or its furtherance of national economic or defence interests, but also on people’s ideas and perceptions. Consequently, explanation and justification have proved less easily distinguishable than earlier positivistic and behaviouralist models assumed. (Bellamy and Castiglione 2003: 8)

I N T RO D U C T I O N As we have seen in the first part of the book, multi-level governance (MLG) challenges the analytical boundaries normally associated with the “business of rule”: authoritative decision-making. This activity is conventionally associated with the nation-state, as the sole authority with jurisdiction over the national territory and as the sole authority legitimated to enter international agreements, thus placing itself at the origin of three-dimensional axes describing, respectively, the internal decentralization of governmental activity to subnational units (center-periphery dynamics), the involvement of non-institutional actors in policymaking (state-society dynamics), and the management of positive and negative externalities (domestic-foreign dynamics). Domestic and global developments— which were discussed in Chapters 2 to 4—have modified this received wisdom and have led us to question the nation-state’s internal unity (movements along the X1 axis), its external autonomy (movements along the X2 axis), as well as the specificity of its action vis-a`-vis society (movements along the X3 axis). These dynamics signal that the nation-state no longer manages—perhaps, no longer wants—to guard the boundaries between center and periphery, domestic and international, state and society. Although clearly not the only concept capable of capturing these transformations, MLG reverberates these developments in its own specific way, that is, by shedding new light on the complexity of subnational level mobilization in interaction with the national and supranational levels, by involving various expressions of civil society at trans- and infra-national levels. By drawing attention to this new multi-level political mobilization and participation in policy-making, MLG suggests that the old hierarchies are weakened and that new polity structures may be nascent. For this reason, MLG appears more apt at revealing what is “being undone” than at precisely sketching what is “taking

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shape.” And yet, the contours of the new governance structures are beginning to emerge. In the second part of the book, I took a closer look at these structures by analyzing the concrete governance arrangements surrounding three policy areas: cohesion, environment, and higher education. All three belong to what is commonly called the “first pillar” of the European Union, in which the Council and Parliament co-decide, the Commission has a monopoly on initiative, and the ECJ adjudicates. Although comparable from a procedural point of view, the substance of these policies was so different as to lead us to expect that the actual decisionmaking processes might unfold rather differently. Empirical analysis revealed few surprises. What seemed to matter in determining effective mobilization was the match or mis-match between the level at which subnational authorities and non-governmental organizations believed it was appropriate for them to get mobilized and the level at which the problems were addressed. In other words, what mattered in determining infra- and subnational mobilization was whether subnational authorities and non-governmental organizations thought1 that they could competently contribute their knowledge and capacity to mobilize consensus. Although all governmental levels were activated in due course in all policy areas, different levels might predominate during policy decision, policy implementation, and policy evaluation, thus leaving the other governmental levels and NGOs to figure out exactly how to contribute to each phase. Which level would be predominant was never obvious, in part because formal competences and factual knowledge steered the geometry of influence in different directions, according to what was at stake at each moment. We thus observed that while some subnational authorities were active in cohesion policy because their competences were coterminous with the level at which economic cohesion was sought and this made them legitimate actors in that policy area, in other cases they remained rather passive not so much because they did not have the “formal competences,” but because they were not used to being—nor perhaps did they think they were entitled to be—active in that policy realm. Policy legacies and different political cultures concerning the loci/levels at which certain policies should be decided and implemented matter in explaining the patterns of mobilization more than sheer institutional competence. There is obviously a relationship between the two, but it is not a one-to-one correlation. Non-governmental organizations have a relatively easier time mobilizing around environmental issues because they are addressed at a territorial level at which they feel they can competently contribute their knowledge, expertise, and consensus. Higher education policy is, instead, still very much “up for grabs” because solutions 1 To use the word “think” in relation to an institution means inviting accusations of personification and methodological individualism. One could respond by referring to the authoritative literature that explicitly argues that “institutions think” (Douglas 1986) or by engaging a rich debate in the philosophy of the social sciences (Kratochwil 1989). Or, more simply, one can say that persons in institutions think, and that when decisions are made, the process that led to those decisions can be figuratively imputed to the institution itself. The same applies to “feel” (used below).

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are sought simultaneously at various levels: that of the nation-state, that of the educational location, and that of the individual higher education institutions. So, whether or not subnational authorities and social groups mobilize around these three policy areas depends not just on the “political opportunity structure” of the formal policy framework at each given stage, but on their assessment of whether they could legitimately bring to the policy process whatever competence, commitment, and consensus they could muster. Hence, the different shapes of the MLG triangles describing the three policies.

AC TO R M O B I L I Z AT I O N A N D N O R M AT I V E C O N S I D E R AT I O N S I have already remarked, in the context of discussing the policy cases, how the glossy terminology employed by the Commission reveals, under a veneer of goodwill and cooperation, the fault-lines of multi-level mobilization. Thus, the partnership principle, which should govern the consultations and negotiations surrounding the Structural Funds of cohesion policy, instead reveals how difficult it is for supranational institutions, central governments, subnational authorities, social partners, and non-governmental organizations to find common ground on which they all can meaningfully contribute their vision, expertise, and capacities throughout the various policy phases. In particular, non-governmental and civil society organizations often sit uncomfortably next to the other governmental tiers within the structures created for MLG. Social partners are organized nationally at industry level, and, although they sometimes have regional offices, these are normally not equipped with the relevant territorial planning capacities. The other civil society organizations, in their turn, are organized around “values” and do not necessarily have the expertise to contribute significantly to developmental matters. Conversely, the ideas and capabilities that these organizations can provide do not necessarily find their optimal expression at the regional level. As economic and “value” issues cannot be geographically apportioned, no single territorial level will be the most appropriate for all of them. Sometimes, partnership arrangements remain symbolic exercises through which the “partners” reciprocally acknowledge each other’s potential role in the policy solution. Sometimes, the only “solution” is to agree on the attempt to cooperate and to reiterate the need to pursue partnership. Occasionally, when developmental issues acquire specific cultural or ethnic dimensions—and hence, a “value” dimension—because they affect regions with a particular cultural (linguistic, religious, or ethnic) profile, then local NGOs and CSOs can indeed contribute ideas and solutions to a situation which is perhaps the product of a “cultural division of labour” (Hechter 1975). Otherwise, they may remain somewhat aloof in the debates surrounding SF allocation and utilization. Conversely, subnational authorities are quickly mobilized in this policy area, although in different ways depending on the institutional setting.

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Subsidiarity is a term that simultaneously conceals and reveals the competence conflicts between governmental levels in environmental policy. In this policy, nongovernmental organizations had no particular structural or cognitive difficulties organizing at both national and international level, and getting regulations approved and monitoring their implementation. The same applied to economic actors that could provide valuable technical input and thus contribute to shaping final decisions. National authorities were the ones that felt bypassed by regulations that were decided at the supranational level and then often activated and implemented at the local level. The fight over subsidiarity bears witness to the ongoing need to find a level at which all relevant actors can meaningfully contribute to authoritative decision-making and, at the same time, the difficulty of identifying what level that should be. The temporary solution to this problem has been to leave matters open for case-by-case specification and to further jockeying between the various levels. The final keyword in higher education policy is autonomy. While there is pressure on member-states to overhaul their higher education systems in such a way as to make degree comparability and student and scholar mobility as simple as possible and thus foster the creation of a European Area of Higher Education—and, according to the Lisbon Strategy, a more productive, because bettereducated workforce—the practical manner in which such convergence is sought is to leave maximum autonomy to each member-state and, in some cases, to each higher education institution. The starting point, however, is one of extreme segmentation of national educational systems, often maximum centralization of educational curricula, and growing mobilization of societal actors. Here, too, autonomy indicates the fault-line of mobilization, the difficulty for the multiple levels of government and other non-governmental actors in finding common ground on which to contribute a solution and the growing, though not yet complete, mobilization of non-governmental actors. What is common to these three “principles” is that they point to problems involving bringing together actors with different jurisdictional boundaries and different competences, and that they propose rather open-ended “solutions.” None of these “solutions” dictates that one specific territorial level should be clearly pre-eminent in any given policy phase nor do they indicate which one level is “best” for tackling all policy issues. MLG, then, correctly draws our attention to the problems of compatibility between the scope of the problem at hand and the jurisdictional reach of the governmental and non-governmental actors called upon to solve it, and suggests that solutions must be found flexibly, policy issue by policy issue, and phase by phase—the trademark of a “loosely coupled” system. As no single level of government can become the level at which all problems find their ideal solution, MLG indicates the coexistence of shifting and flexible governance arrangements within which different territorial governmental and non-governmental actors contribute whatever they can to the problem at hand. . . . the EU’s “polity” legitimacy is both fragile and fragmented and has to contend with the much more robust existing “polity” structures of the member states. Moreover, it involves a number of cross-cutting “regimes”

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operating between different aggregations of “polities”. Thus the legitimacy of any EU constitution requires constitutional dialogues at both the “polity” and “regime” levels, with the two to some extent cutting across each other. (Bellamy and Castiglione 2003: 23; emphasis added)

Acknowledging each other’s potential contribution to policy-making does not necessarily bar governmental and non-governmental actors from trying to define a policy issue in such a way as to steer the governance process in their favor. We know from public policy analysis that setting the policy agenda is a crucial phase in the policy-making process that often predetermines the solution (Kingdon 1984). Defining the level at which a policy issue should be tackled also implies empowering certain stakeholders over others. Indeed, the “solution” is more often a process, a governance arrangement rather than a single legislative decision. Actors often accredit themselves as legitimate stakeholders by arguing that a particular policy issue requires tackling at this or that level (at which they are particularly relevant, strong, or comfortable players). Polity restructuring and policy strategies are jointly pursued through strategic political mobilization. The playing-field, however, is not completely level: organizational path dependency, how players assess their own strengths and weaknesses at each level, and entrenched beliefs about the legitimacy of the different actors’ participation in the policy-making process all impinge upon the strategy that they will try to pursue. This shared apprehension of the actors’ legitimacy sometimes prevents them from mobilizing at levels at which they could in fact make fundamental contributions. Thus, in order to understand the actual format of MLG arrangements we must also consider the norms and values that inform the strategic considerations of the actors involved and that color their assessment of their own and the other actors’ legitimacy to mobilize at what level. The actors’ choice of whether or not to become involved in a particular policy area, the way in which they do so, the expertise and resources they bring to the process, the solutions they propose—all of these are shaped by calculations, norms, and values about what is feasible, appropriate, and effective. Because it invites actors to cross established action boundaries, the actual configuration of MLG arrangements cannot be fully grasped without engaging in a normative analysis that evaluates not just the desirability of their outcomes but also the desirability of the actions that they sustain. Because they reshuffle existing hierarchies and upset accepted divisions of institutional labor, the values to which MLG appeals must be justified. In this chapter, I will argue for the need to complement a theoretical and empirical analysis of MLG with a normative one, and will propose three concepts that can help us in this normative assessment of MLG.

T H E N E E D F O R A N O R M AT I V E A S S E S S M E N T In times of change, theories fail and descriptions abound: theories that were once considered unassailable start to look like mere descriptions, and not even very

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convincing ones at that, and what used to appear as a mere description may soon turnout to be a fledgling theory. This state of affairs signals an upcoming “paradigmatic revolution” (Kuhn 1970). All theories—sets of propositions that connect certain antecedents to given consequents—are grounded on untested assumptions that command wide acceptance. When these assumptions start to falter, so do the theories that are grounded on them. What makes a theory more or less convincing, then, is not so much how well it fares at describing reality, but rather whether the factual and normative assumptions that it embodies command wide acceptance. State sovereignty has been the untested assumption on which both international relation theories and comparative politics theories—and, consequently, European integration theories—have been grounded for more than half a century. State sovereignty embodies several such factual and normative assumptions: that communities of destiny called nations have the right to protect themselves and secure their own perpetuation by exclusively controlling a territory, in other words, build a state; that they can unilaterally decide who belongs to the community and who does not; that sacrifices (most significantly, taxation and conscription) can and should be requested of the members of the community and only of them; that redistribution is justified only towards members of the community; and that, to these ends, the community selects a government that decides for the entire community. If state sovereignty begins to be questioned, many of the theories that are predicated upon it obviously begin to appear a lot less convincing, and alternative descriptions (not yet theories) begin to look a lot more compelling. In reality, this fairly basic picture of state sovereignty was variously complicated by the particular governmental arrangements that reflected the historical contingencies of specific nation- and state-formation processes and their continuing evolution. The processes through which states managed to claim exclusive control over territories and their inhabitants, and therefore establish themselves as the main communities of reference, saw the displacement and subjugation of alternative communities—churches, clans, tribes, families, other national communities—though never easily or completely. Although these alternative communities remained in existence alongside the nation-state, the latter succeeded in becoming the main community of reference. This, in turn, made the state that exerted control, defined identity, received allegiance, and made decisions for its citizens “sovereign.” Although often contested in sometimes fundamental ways throughout the postwar period, state sovereignty proved stronger than any alternative assumption because it mobilized factual and normative expectations that obliterated all alternative visions and narratives. More recently, other narratives and visions have begun to command greater acceptance: globalization is certainly the most relevant of these, apparently driven by impersonal forces that no nation-state seems able or willing to stop. Regional integration and Europeanization are only apparently less impersonal narratives. Alternative visions and narratives are sometimes generated by peoples and communities that live in particular borderline situations: whose identity is different from the national one, whose protection and welfare derive from non-state or other-state agents, and whose sense of control over their own destiny is dimmed

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by this particular situation. Such peoples and communities tend to inhabit the peripheries of nation-states and of the globe, not just geographical peripheries, but also economic, social, and cultural peripheries. Because they experience in their daily lives the contradiction between official myth and actual practice, these peoples and communities are able to generate alternative visions and narratives that question the untested assumptions on which the mainstream theory of the state is based. Marginal visions and narratives spread slowly and may become the next conventional wisdom. State sovereignty—its autonomy, unity, specificity—is the untested assumption which is being undermined by the “global” and “peripheral” visions and narratives of the late twentieth century. Real-life developments may help boost the credibility of these alternative visions and narratives by supplying fresh evidence that runs counter to consolidated wisdom. However, because evidence is such only in the light of some alternative conceptualization, the processes through which alternative visions and narratives are crafted and evidence is collected develop together. Lately, globalization has offered the new vision and novel narrative to explain the fresh evidence. Various scholars have tried to argue that globalization is not a particularly novel phenomenon and that higher degrees of globalization were recorded in the past (Storper 1997b), but to no avail. The Pandora’s box of state sovereignty has been opened and its demons cannot be driven back. The myth of the sovereign state cannot be restored (Krasner 1999): other subjects—supranational institutions, transnational groups, subnational authorities—are by now seen as sharing in this sovereignty. MLG is one of the new narratives that tries to conceptualize the possibility of a world in which nation-states are no longer sovereign. In this chapter, then, I want to ask “what it means for policy outcomes to be legitimate when they are produced in a world of multi-level governance, and, then, more concretely, what mechanisms and modes of governance lend themselves to creating or sustaining such legitimacy” (Howse and Nicolaidis 2001: 4).2

QUESTIONING UNTESTED ASSUMPTIONS State sovereignty has three dimensions: autonomy vis-a`-vis other states, unity vis-a`-vis subnational entities, specificity vis-a`-vis society. We have seen, in the first part of the book, how these three dimensions have been theoretically challenged and, in the second part, how they are empirically refuted in daily practices surrounding three policy areas. We now discuss why their normative force is also weakened.

2 The entire thrust of the Nicolaidis and Howse (2001) volume is very close to what I am trying to accomplish here with reference to MLG. Their introduction and several contributions to the volume are absolute “musts” for anyone interested in MLG.

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Unity Until the 1970s, democracies were mostly unitary. With the exception of a few federal states—the United States, Switzerland, Canada, Germany, and Austria, whose territorial format was meant to better preserve “unity in diversity” (Elazar 1987)—the other democracies were unitary states. Mainstream thought, since the French Revolution, held that the unitary state was the highest expression of democracy because it acknowledged no differences among its citizens and allowed no intermediate bodies between itself and them. Admittedly there were a few non-democratic federations (the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, India, etc.; Burgess 2006) whose raison d’eˆtre, however, was better control of the territory, not the realization of a fuller democracy. The fait re´gionel was still to come. Since the 1970s, most probably with the emergence of post-materialist values (Inglehart 1977) among them the “right to roots,” subnational identities began to resurface and claim their share of territorial sovereignty. Various forms of devolution and regionalization were experimented with, variously acknowledging historical regions, special status regions, linguistic communities, and giving rise to a plethora of diverse forms of devolved unitary states, weakly and strongly regionalized states, asymmetric federal states, and new federal states (Loughlin 2001). The factual and normative expectations embedded in the idea (and ideal) of the unitary state were reconsidered. First, it appeared that citizens did indeed hold specific territorial identities (mostly rooted in minority languages, ethnicities, religious traditions, and, more generally, the sense of a common history and a common destiny) that had not been completely effaced by the formation of nation-states. Second, the existence of these territorial identities legitimized claims to have them recognized by the central state and enabled the representatives of these communities to have a greater say in the government of their own territory. Third, a certain degree of decentralization, devolution, or even federalization appeared to allow for improved management of a series of problems that the central government could no longer tackle alone. Subnational government suddenly appeared, at once, genuine, legitimate, and effective. In this case, too, scholars began to theorize this new trend: concepts like intergovernmental relations, multi-level governance, and federal theories saw a veritable revival (Ongaro et al. forthcoming a and b). We reviewed in Chapter 2 the literature that variously theorized the re-emergence of territorial identities and economies, and their possible ties with the concurrent globalization trends. This new subnational assertiveness managed to acquire increasing approval amongst the wider public and to draw governmental attention toward phenomena that had been regarded as quaint oddities until then. Diversity was no longer perceived as a threat to democracy, but rather as a source of enrichment. Unity was replaced by “unity in diversity” as a foundational value.

Autonomy It is patently clear to everyone that nation-states can no longer effectively tackle the many problems that increasingly exceed the scope of their territorial jurisdiction.

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Jurisdictional conflicts have been handled since the Middle Ages through war and diplomacy, commercial penetration, and commercial agreements: what is novel about the current age is the growing number of issues for which conflict is no solution, but where collaboration and coordination are. The smart way to deal with problems and devise solutions that supersede the reach of individual states is to seek the collaboration of other states and to coordinate action with them. Environmental pollution, migration flows, cyclical depressions, terrorist threats—none of these issues can be satisfactorily tackled by any one state in isolation. One state’s solution may turn into another state’s problem: in a globalized world, what is kicked out of the front-door comes straight in through the back-door. Globalization has induced a generalized feeling of a “shrinking world,” a world in which my neighbor’s problems are also mine and in which my profits are boosted by those of my neighbor. Negative and positive externalities now enter the utility function of each nation-state: it is smart to factor these interdependencies into each state’s calculations and act upon them. International cooperation is one way to act; the creation of international regimes another. We have already seen in Chapter 3 how the international relations literature has acknowledged and theorized such interdependencies. Interestingly, international relations have also been the first subdiscipline of political science to explicitly acknowledge the relevance of taking norms and values seriously.

Specificity State sovereignty also entailed the idea that there was a qualitative difference between state and society. The realm of state action was by definition “public,” while society acted in the “private” sphere. State was in charge of the “general” interest, while society was riddled with “particular” interests. These antinomies have structured our way of thinking about the state for centuries. Despite the varying degrees and manners in which “private” or “special” interests have been actively involved in public policy during the last century, the distinction remained. The qualitative distinction was buttressed by normative assumptions. Political theory after political theory showed how the very raison d’eˆtre of the state was to preserve the integrity of a society which, left to its own devices, would probably disintegrate under the devastating impact of internal and external conflicts. Whether society was the outcome of a social compact among autonomous individuals3 or rather existed prior to them, political roles and institutions

3

In drawing an interesting parallel between the EU process of constitutionalization and the handing of God’s Decalogue by Moses on Mount Sinai, Weiler (1999b: 6) observes tongue-in-cheek that “Even the Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, chooses a covenant, a treaty.” What he means to stress is that “one of the things this Covenant did was to constitute in a new way its very subject . . . The Covenant is revolutionary and radical not simply, though that too, in its substantive content, but in the very ontological underpinning of its subject” (Weiler 1999b: 5). The Covenant creates the subject which is supposed to endorse it. The idea that a community, a people, is constituted through a covenant runs very deep indeed in western thought. See also Bellamy (1996) and Elazar (1978).

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capable of carrying out the business of rule and to cater to the “common good” were identified. Liberal thought—the dominant tradition during the postwar period—saw in the provision of “public goods” the one fundamental justification for the state and the yardstick by which to measure the legitimate scope of its action. In addition to providing fundamental public goods such as law, order, and security, state intervention was also justified in the case of market failures. Yet, while private monopolies can be replaced with public monopolies—the preferred solution on the European side of the Atlantic—they can also be broken with anti-monopoly laws and regulation—the preferred solution on the American side. Hence, the actual amount of state presence is left undefined by the liberal view. In a nutshell, the liberal state is not supposed to do much more than provide a “level playing-field” for economic and social actors. The communitarian and republican traditions instead propose a different view of the state as providing also the meaning and context within which the individuals—or, rather, the persons—may fulfill their aspirations (Chryssochoou 2001a, 2001b, 2002). In this theoretical tradition, the state is not a “minimal,” “watchman” state, but a state that also has to carry out substantive goals. As the embodiment of the community, within which people’s lives acquire a meaning, or of the republic, within which citizens experience the fullness of their citizenship, the state performs a distinct function. In all three traditions, then, the state lies on a different (public) plane from that of single individuals, persons, or citizens. The factual and normative assumptions connected to the specificity of state action are, therefore, supported by normative considerations. The specificity of state activity continues to be when non-state, non-governmental actors participate in it. The public character of governmental activity lies in the fact that, in making decisions which have force vis-a`-vis the entire community, self-interested considerations should be kept to a minimum, tempered by due consideration for the well-being of all others (the “national” interest). If they behave in this way, then, private actors that participate in state activity may perform a public function. But, then, the adjective “public” cannot be assigned only to state institutions and actors, but also to all the actors that contribute to making and implementing authoritative decisions. The upshot of this is that state action has lost its specificity and that the legitimacy criteria upon which traditional governmental institutions were grounded have migrated in part to the other actors that increasingly participate in current governance structures. This transfer of legitimacy, however, is only partial. Admittedly, interest groups have been formed whose aim is not the promotion of a “particular” or “special” or “sectional” interest, but rather of a “general” interest: these groups are commonly denoted as “public interest groups.” Despite their public character, their relationship to society is ambiguous, as they do not claim to represent or act on behalf of any community or society in particular, but rather to stand for a general value. Their linkage to their membership is sometimes no deeper or stronger than that which exists within political parties between the leadership and the rank-andfile, that is, not very strong, since political parties have undergone a process of distancing from and disenchantment with their membership (Dalton and Watten-

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berg 2000). We thus witness the emergence of a paradox: just as societal interests acquire a public character and are increasingly called upon to participate in governmental activities, they run the risk of losing their ties to society. This “paradox” affects both individual western democracies and the European Union. In observing the multiplication of new subgovernmental, public-private structures that characterize both member states’ and EU governance today, Andersen and Burns remark that “‘Public’ authority is dispersed in these arrangements integrating public and private agents” (Andersen and Burns 1996: 234). Along all three dimensions—autonomy, unity, and specificity—then, a combination of new visions, novel narratives, and fresh evidence has shaken the conventional factual and normative assumptions. As Andersen and Burns (1996) remark, Western societies have become highly differentiated and far too complex for a parliament or its government to monitor, acquire sufficient knowledge and competence, and to deliberate on. Today manifold discourses, negotiations, policy-making and implementation take place in thousands of specialised policy settings or sub-governments. Each specific policy area requires specialised technical and often scientific expertise and engage multiple interests and groups with special concerns or interest in the particular, specialised policy matter. (Andersen and Burns 1996: 229)

The myth of omnipotent and omniscient governments was definitely exploded in the 1970s, when the interdependency and vulnerability of theoretically autonomous states were suddenly exposed. No single governmental institution seemed any longer capable of mastering the complexity of these processes. Therefore, as we have already seen, problems began to be shifted downwards, to subnational authorities, sideways, to representatives of societal interests (experts and scientists, employers’ and workers’ organizations, sectoral representatives, single corporations, non-profit organizations, single issue movements, churches, etc.), and upwards, to supranational structures (such as various international organizations). To conclude, no theoretical innovation occurs without challenging the factual and normative assumptions of the conventional wisdom. Fresh evidence cannot even be perceived and tends to fail to convince unless buttressed by new theoretical propositions that propose to explain why what seems inexplicable in the light of the old theories should be indeed happening. Similarly, no new theory is found convincing unless its conclusions dovetail with some pre-existing normative criteria. Because new theories tend to be premised on, as well as to prompt, a normative reorientation—a new way of evaluating what is happening and of assessing the adequacy of the theory to explain it—we need to examine the “normative turn” associated with the emergence of MLG theory.

TH E QU E S T I O N O F S TA N DA R D S Before we can assess MLG’s legitimacy, we need to decide the criteria by which we are going to assess it. A vast literature has stressed time and again that before

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embarking upon a normative assessment of the EU—and hence, also, of its MLG arrangements—it is necessary to tackle the “question of standards” (Majone 1998). Because the EU is not a parliamentary democracy, but rather a postparliamentary polity (Andersen and Burns 1996), we cannot immediately apply to it criteria that were developed to assess the quality of parliamentary democracies. Because it is not a nation-state, but rather a post-national polity (Caporaso 1996), we cannot immediately apply to it criteria that were developed to assess the functioning of nation-states either. And because it is not based upon a majoritarian model, but rather upon a consensual model (Majone 1996), we cannot immediately apply to it criteria that were developed to assess the effectiveness of majoritarian democracies. Finally, because it is not grounded upon a constitution, but rather upon a treaty-based, court-led process of constitutionalization (Weiler 1999), we cannot immediately apply to it criteria that were developed to assess the coherence of constitutions. So, what standards should we apply to a post-parliamentary, post-national, post-majoritarian, post-constitutional polity? I will approach the issue of EU democracy from the point of view of MLG: to what extent can MLG arrangements be said to contribute to rendering the EU more democratic and its decisions more legitimate? MLG is one of the many descriptors of EU governance available on the scholarly market and perhaps just one of the many governance modes simultaneously employed in the EU—though a particularly interesting one precisely because of the ambiguities and tensions that it points to. While criticized by some as being not particularly innovative and, somehow, still caught in a web of thoughts used to spin different theoretical patterns (those of unitary or federal states), I find it useful precisely because it forces us to remember the theoretical paradigm that we are trying to challenge— the sovereign state and, in particular, the territorial, national, parliamentary, constitutional democracy—and how sticky the factual and normative assumptions connected with it can be. Extending the notion of “level” to denote just any jurisdiction or sphere of authority (Conzelmann and Smith 2008) is tempting, but at the cost of devising only a verbal solution to the problem of combining public, universalistic, territorially defined jurisdictions with private, functional, non-territorial ones in a single legitimate and democratic architecture. Obviously, I need to heed the warnings that Christopher Lord issues to the apprentice theorist. She will have to address the following three problems. First, “one-by-one appraisal of policy instruments or institutions risks excessive disaggregation by failing to pick up those democratic qualities or problems that arise from interactions between the multiple institutions and practices of the Union. . . . Any method of assessment thus has to achieve the difficult task of being both discriminating and holistic: of cross-checking appraisals at a level of single institution with those of the political system as a whole” (Lord 2004: 4). This is the problem of composition. Second, “we have to accommodate the internal complexity of democracy itself. Democratic rule often involves trade-offs between values associated with democracy itself, and between democracy and non-democratic values. Those trade-offs may, in turn, be made more acute by technological limits

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to what is institutionally and socially feasible in any place at any one time” (Lord 2004: 5). This is the problem of democracy’s inherent complexity. Third, “much of the empirical literature just assumes what is by no means self-evident, namely that the EU ought to be democratic” (Lord 2004: 5). This is the problem of justification. I will address these problems in reverse order, starting with justification. Should the EU be democratic? Is it reasonable for us to expect it to be democratic? I believe it is. The peoples of Europe, together and severally, are by now accustomed to being ruled by democratic governments. Indeed, democracy is one of the fundamental prerequisites for entering the EU and one of the stated goals of the Union is to further promote democracy. It would be rather odd if these criteria were not met by the Union itself and if the commendable pursuit of fostering democracy elsewhere were to be performed by a non-democratic polity. And yet the attempt to “evaluate the EU by analogy with other political systems” is bound to fail because “standards of democratic governance may be justifiably different between state and non-state political systems, national and transnational ones” (Lord 2004: 6). This remark prompts me to address the second problem, that of complexity. Clearly, as Lord again acutely observes, the EU will always fail to meet the standards set by any one of its current and future member-states, because each democracy represents a unique trade-off between democratic and non-democratic values, so that no two democracies are totally identical. Since its Member-States have responded differently to unavoidable trade-offs between standards associated with democratic rule, the EU cannot reproduce all the standards to be found in all its Member States in the one political system. The classic definition, taken literally, would mean that the democratic deficit would always exist for someone. If in this way the classic definition is too demanding, in another it is not demanding enough. It does allow for the possibility that both national and European political systems might be in democratic deficit at the same time, since it assumes that the EU only needs to be as democratic as the states from which it derives its powers. (Lord 2004: 6; emphasis added)

This means that any assessment of EU democracy cannot presume to take any of the existing democracies as a benchmark and that, in turn, it is bound to prompt reflection on the democratic quality of its current and prospective member-states. Nor should one take the ideal-typical of democracy as its standard, as that would be unfair (Papadopoulos 2005). The democratic assessment of the European Union is, by its nature, an ongoing activity that also questions the democratic temper of its member-states. The third problem, that of composition, is the most difficult, because verifying the democratic credentials of MLG is not the same as verifying the democratic credentials of the whole EU. Unless I can argue that MLG describes the functioning of the entire Union, my analysis will be partial and potentially misleading if extended outside its scope of application. Although I am not ready to claim that MLG describes the entirety of EU policy-making, I nevertheless believe that it can fruitfully contribute to assessing its overall democratic

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character. In the light of Lord’s warning, my intent will be simply to establish the elements that a normative assessment of MLG can contribute to a more holistic evaluation of EU democracy, leaving to others the task of assessing the entirety of EU democracy. So which standards should I use to assess MLG? I decided to conduct my normative analysis with the aid of three extremely versatile and common criteria, often employed to assess EU governance: input legitimacy, output legitimacy, and the contribution that MLG gives to EU democracy (possibly the strongest legitimizing criterion of all). Input legitimacy points to the importance of securing ample representation of all relevant interests and points of view when making authoritative decisions, if these decisions are to be regarded as legitimate. Legitimate decisions are more willingly complied with, even by those whose interests are sacrificed and whose preferences are not reflected in the final decision, if people have reason to believe that their own point of view was seriously taken into consideration—and they will be more inclined to believe this if they were represented in the decision-making process. Output legitimacy points to the quality of the decisions produced and to their effectiveness in solving the problems that they supposedly address. Input and output legitimacy stand in complex reciprocal relations. On the one hand, they may reinforce one another: ample consultation may secure a more informed decision-making process, which, in turn, should result in more effective (or in what are perceived to be more effective) policies. On the other hand, they may work at cross-purposes: the inclusion of too many interests and points of view may stall the decision-making process or complicate it excessively, and fail to address the problem because of delayed, lukewarm, or otherwise ineffective decisions. Finally, democratic assessment is a complex exercise that requires much more than analysis of MLG. However, my point of departure will be that MLG contributes to EU democracy—minimally defined as “political control with political equality” (Lord 2004: 10; Weale 1999b: 14)—to the extent that it secures wider participation and greater effectiveness, that is, to the extent that it contributes to both input and output legitimacy. Constitutionally speaking, moreover, MLG ensures that subnational authorities participate in decision-making and implementation not only for the specific point of view that they may contribute or for the implementation capacity they may bring to the process, but also because they have an established right to be consulted in the constitutional provisions of many member-states that should not be abandoned by shifting the decision-making process to the supranational level. And even those member-states that do not grant their subnational authorities the right to be consulted when decisions affecting them are made may in fact wish to involve them in the policy-making process for reasons of institutional emulation or political calculation. There is, then, an EU-driven semi-constitutional pull towards consultation of SNAs and CSOs.

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C O N C LU S I O N If democracy is minimally defined as “public control with political equality,” how does MLG contribute to it? One approach is to assess it by looking at its fundamental “mediating values,” such as authorization, participation, responsiveness, representation, transparency, accountability, and solidarity (Beetham 1994), which are relevant for both the input and the output side of democracy. To simplify matters a little, however, we may say that authorization, representation, and participation are particularly relevant for the input side of democracy (public control), while transparency, responsiveness, and accountability are more relevant for the output side of democracy (political equality)—with solidarity acting as a nice complement to both. Alternatively, democracy can be more conventionally defined as: “government of the people, for the people, by the people (and, with the people)” (Scharpf 1999; Schmidt 2006). Government of the people and for the people clearly describes the output side of democracy and the related values of transparency, accountability, and responsiveness. Government by the people and with the people, in turn, describes the input side of democracy and the corresponding values of authorization, representation, and participation. Classical democracy might have been satisfied by mere authorization; modern democracy additionally requires representation; contemporary democracy certainly also demands participation. Similarly, procedural democracy may require only accountability; welfare democracy would also expect responsiveness, while global democracy increasingly also demands transparency. This is, already, a rather telling progression: current societies are no longer satisfied with authorizing accountable and responsive representatives, but require a higher level of transparency and a measure of direct involvement by citizens in their own self-government. In the following chapters, then, I will investigate both the input side (authorization, representation, participation) and the output side (transparency, responsiveness, accountability) of EU democracy as well as their reciprocal relationship. I will therefore try to answer the following questions:






Does MLG contribute to a fuller examination of all possible interests and points of view so as to make the decision-making process more inclusive and, therefore, input-legitimate? Does MLG contribute to the more effective implementation of policy decisions, and, hence, contribute to its output legitimacy? Does MLG allow the citizens of Europe to experience a greater sense of ownership of and empowerment by policy decisions, which in turn would increase “public control with political equality”?

10 Input Legitimacy Is it possible to “federalise” the Community significantly while retaining a key policy-making role for national governments? Clearly the EU is an excellent example to highlight the contemporary significance of the question “Who or what is represented in a federal Europe?” Is it EU citizens, national governments, regional and local governments or organized minority interests and identities? (Burgess 2006: 204)

I N T RO D U C T I O N In this chapter, I will analyze whether and how multi-level governance (MLG) contributes to the input side of democracy, that is, to political equality, by looking at the dimensions of authorization, representation, and participation. How does MLG contribute to securing the authorization, representation, and participation necessary to input legitimacy? Who are the subjects that authorize MLG arrangements, that are represented in MLG structures, and that directly participate in MLG management? Are they national governments, subnational authorities, the interests and values present in society, or all of the above? Much of the answer will depend on whether we consider the EU as a polity of sorts or just as an international organization. If we consider it as an international organization of sovereign states, which delegates to a (particularly complex and powerful) secretariat the management of the details of the issues they jointly decide (Moravcsik 2001), then MLG does not pose a democracy problem. Indeed, the term itself is void of any theoretical content and it serves at best as a compelling description. The masters of the EU Treaties are the member-states (the principals), which delegate upwards or downwards, as they please, to various agents the implementation of the policies that they jointly decide (the descending phase of EU policy-making) and may even allow these other entities to express their point of view before a decision is made (the ascending phase of EU policymaking), but they do not relinquish any actual share of sovereignty. Some special acknowledgment of sovereign power is reserved only to those subnational units that enjoy domestically commensurate constitutional rights. The concession granted to the German Bundesla¨nder to send their ministers to participate in (selected) Council of Ministers meetings in place of their national ministers—

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although only as mere replacements for the central ministers and, therefore, with the duty to convey the position of the whole country, and not that of their Land or even of all the La¨nder—simply translates at the EU level the domestic prerogatives that the German La¨nder enjoy at home. It is interesting to recall that this concession was not granted from the start as a matter of fact, but had to be obtained by the La¨nder the hard way (see Chapter 6); this exception would not disconfirm the rule that the member-states are still the principals. Theories of delegation such as Moravcsik’s are powerful tools, but they still fail to capture the entire story. From the strict principal-agent dynamic that informs Moravcsik’s liberal intergovernmentalism, some EU multi-level features would appear at a minimum bizarre. I have reported and commented previously on Moravcsik’s reading of cohesion policy and his dismissal that it represents nothing more than an instance of delegation (Chapter 6). Yet, Moravcsik does not really explain why the member-states should have allowed—or indeed, wanted—the creation of a rather complex and costly institution like the Committee of the Regions. If the sole purpose of that Committee were to provide the “regional point of view” on selected policy areas, why not allow each nation-state to perform that consultation domestically, according to established constitutional norms and policy traditions? Would not a domestically organized consultation be a prime example of liberal intergovernmentalism? To conduct this consultation in Brussels within a Committee that, despite its peculiar composition, dangerously resembles a representative chamber and that runs the risk of empowering some subnational authorities while disempowering others—thus potentially upsetting internal constitutional equilibriums—would appear to be an extravagant and cavalier waste of national resources. Unless, of course, the purpose of the Committee were actually to create a sort of gilded prison—a “Versailles of the Regions,” so to say, where different subnational tiers would waste their time figuring out their pecking order—whose objective is to weaken the subnational levels of every single member-state and shift real power to the national centers. Such a devious (though brilliant!) plan would, however, not be in line with Moravcsik’s liberal intergovernmentalism, which does not assign to national governments any particular desire to disempower their respective subnational authorities. Majone’s own version of delegation does not fare any better. According to Majone (1996), the business of the EU is regulation. Regulatory policies solve collective action problems that would otherwise thwart the functioning of the common market. To prevent free-riding and secure credible commitments, member-states must entrust regulation to common institutions, particularly the Commission (Pollack 2003a). Majone (1999) acknowledges the existence of a legitimacy problem in the EU, but only for the “supranational component,” not the “intergovernmental component.” When decisions are made without the unanimous consent of the member-states, legitimacy problems ensue. “[D]emocratically accountable principals can transfer policy-making powers to nonmajoritarian institutions, but they cannot transfer their own legitimacy. This loss of legitimacy can be an important, in some cases the most important, ‘agency cost’” (Majone 1999: 7). Certainly, the delegated agency (the Commission)

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cannot further delegate policy-making to independent administrative agencies or to de facto policy-making committees without incurring significant legitimacy costs (non-delegation doctrine). “Hence, the supranational institutions of the Union cannot be legitimated by proxy, but must establish their own autonomous legitimacy, either through electoral channels (the case of the European Parliament) or by other procedural or substantive means” (ibid. 9). Among these latter, Majone (ibid. 14) lists: reason-giving requirements, procedures for principals to overrule agency decisions, allocation of resources, ex-post monitoring (ongoing legislative and executive oversight, budgetary process, judicial review, citizens’ complaints, peer review). Far from theorizing MLG arrangements, Majone does not even discuss the non-regulatory policies in which the regions are mostly involved. Both Moravcsik’s and Majone’s positions have in common that, if the EU is considered as a (particularly complex and articulated) international organization, multi-level arrangements have no reason to be taken seriously and accordingly must be dismissed as either expensive toys or sophisticated decoys that allow the principals to carry on with their job. A fortiori, then, there is no need even to consider whether MLG might be legitimate or might contribute to EU democracy (which, in turn, is also a non-problem; see Chapter 12). Only if the EU is considered as a polity in its own right can we start taking the problem of the participation of multiple levels of government in policy-making and their relations to civil society seriously and investigate whether and how they contribute to the input and output side of democracy.

O RG A N I C A N D F U N C T I O NA L G OV E R NA NC E There is another analytical position in the literature that, though acknowledging the EU as polity and, hence, accepting its governance phenomena as relevant, nevertheless treats MLG as an annoying diversion that confounds more than it clarifies. This position emphasizes the role that civil society plays in EU governance and is variously labeled as “organic governance” (Andersen and Burns 1996) or “functional governance” (Smismans 2004) and is most often connected with the notion of “network governance.” The starting point is the recognition that modern societies have become increasingly complex, to the extent that parliamentary forms of democracy are no longer capable of guaranteeing effective governance. The increasing complexity of society is due to a dual trend: . . . on the one hand, increasing monitoring and regulation of more and more areas of social life, and often greater systematic and rational regulation and, on the other hand, the diffusion into civil society of governance powers or simply its appropriation by agents in civil society. In a word, state government and society appear to interpenetrate—and to dissolve into—one another. Administrative agencies penetrate into areas formerly free of state involvement, opening these areas up to regulation, bureaucratisation, professionalization and, in general, to discipline. (Andersen and Burns 1996: 235–6)

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As the state intrudes into previously unregulated spheres of social interaction, civil society reacts by requiring greater involvement in the regulation of these spheres. This, in turn, fosters the creation of new forms of governance in which governmental and non-governmental, public and private, agents interact. Indeed, it even fosters the emergence of often informal “private sub-governments,” that is, regulatory structures that are totally managed and staffed by non-governmental agents. These developments are presented as unequivocally pointing to “the ineffectiveness of the territorial, parliamentary system (and government) to deal with the highly differentiated, complex society of today” (Andersen and Burns 1996: 239). From the superior effectiveness of these new forms of governance vis-a`-vis more conventional forms of representative, parliamentary government, the authors derive their normative legitimacy. In general, the many informal sub-governments and related forms of governance provide effective alternatives to territorial, parliamentary representation. Group mobilisation and specialised representation, mobilisation of specialised knowledge, engagement with key actors in the particular area are effective in governance and enjoy some democratic legitimacy. In other words, the robustness of these forms of governance is based in part on their effectiveness, but also on their democratic legitimacy. (Andersen and Burns 1996: 240; emphasis in the original)

The authors admit that the legitimacy of these new forms of governance is still somehow negatively affected by a preference, among the general public, for territorially based, parliamentary representation, but it is clear that they consider such a preference as misguided and due to some sort of “false consciousness.” First, these authors argue that more direct forms of governance are already legitimate as they embody a concept of representation that is present also in parliamentary representative democracies, albeit normally in an ancillary position: namely, functional forms of representation (Andersen and Burns 1996: 240). Second, and more fundamentally, they state that it is parliamentary, territorial representation that should by now be suspect as ineffective and only dimly legitimate (Andersen and Burns 1996: 241). So, while conventional forms of representative democracy lose their legitimating force, though still holding a central place in “established political mythology,” the new forms of organic governance may not yet command wide acceptance. We are left with major discrepancies and a serious crisis of modern governance. Namely, there is a frustrating and delegitimizing gap between representative democracy’s responsibility and its lack of structural capability and control. At the same time, there is a corresponding major gap between the actual control exercised by the agents and institutional arrangements of organic governance and their public accountability. (Andersen and Burns 1996: 243; emphasis in the original)

Andersen and Burns know that the institutions and agents of representative democracy have not yet disappeared and that they are regularly involved in various ways with the agents of organic governance. Yet, particularly at the EU level, they see a democracy of direct participation and organic governance emerge

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with particular force: a type of governance that they certainly welcome as more effective and more legitimate than parliamentary democracy. However, they recognize at least five potential problems with “organic governance.” First, “economically well-endowed groups” and “impassioned movements with focused interests” are certainly better placed to influence policy-making than “unwieldy citizen populations.” Second, specialized self-government structures can deal with specialized issues, but can hardly deal with “general legal and administrative functions as well as police functions.” Third, they cannot effectively deal with the externalities that may derive from very specialized regulation and with “general economic, social or even environmental issues.” Fourth, as already remarked, “specialised organic forms” may have a hard time being perceived as legitimate. And, fifth, they cannot deal with certain types of “ethnic or religious conflicts.” Despite these problems, their faith in the current shift from territorial, representative democracy to organic, specialized governance is unshaken, as is their confidence that the issues of legitimacy will also be resolved eventually: “the institutional arrangements of organic governance effectively compete with and crowd out those of representative democracy” (all of the above quotes are from Andersen and Burns 1996: 243). Meanwhile, some sort of accommodation may be reached between old and new structures of governance. Parliaments, in particular, might perform several useful functions in support of organic governance: they could authorize the new forms of governance, thus contributing to “defining, controlling and legitimising post-parliamentary forms of governance,” and they could monitor and hold accountable these specialized systems of governance, “possibly addressing problems and issues of long-term global development, the tensions and contradictions between sectoral developments, and overall social stabilization” (ibid. 248–9). That is, in many ways, they could perform functions that are identified, by other scholars, as “meta-governance” (Jessop 2004; Gerstenberg and Sabel 2002). All in all, however, Andersen and Burns (1996) believe in the self-governing capacity of these specialized forms of organic governance and in their capacity to legitimize themselves through the sheer effectiveness of their output. They also ultimately believe that conventional structures of government will recede and wither away, overwhelmed by the regulatory capacity of the new forms. Smismans (2004) covers much of the same ground. Though not presuming to delineate the general trend of future governance like Anderson and Burns, he starts from an equally scorching critique of territorial representative democracy (the “parliamentary model”) to make a compelling case for the growing importance of “functional representation.” According to Smismans, territorial representation presupposes the capacity of parliaments to express the “general will,” whose enactment is then entrusted to a “hierarchical and neutral bureaucracy.” The parliamentary model has traditionally been associated with the idea of a “hierarchical and neutral bureaucracy.” The general will is expressed in the elected parliament, of which the generally formulated rules will be applied in concrete cases by a neutral bureaucracy. The system is legitimate because the

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bureaucracy does not deviate from the generally expressed political will. These “transmission-belt model of the administration” and the parliamentary model are two sides of the same coin. (Smismans 2004: 7; emphasis added)

According to Smismans, this model is as outdated as it is firmly impressed on the minds of citizens and (one would assume) scholars alike. Even in a sui generis polity like the European Union, the perceived democratic deficit seems to derive from the failure of the European Parliament to conform to the role that the “parliamentary model” (Hix 2008) would assign to it, to the point that most suggestions normally advanced to fill the democratic deficit thus conceived have to do with the reinforcement of territorial representation.1 Unfortunately, this is, according to Smismans, a dead-end: in order for the European Parliament to really play the role assigned to it by the “parliamentary model,” it should indeed be possible for it to express the “general will” of EU citizens, and this in turn would require the existence of a European (or EU) “demos.” Smismans, thus, embraces the “no-demos” theory and forecloses the possibility of realizing the “parliamentary model” at the EU level. But there is a second reason why, according to Smismans, the “parliamentary model” is not viable in the EU (and perhaps at all). Even assuming that the European Parliament could express the “general will” of EU citizens, still this “general will” could not be translated into action by a “hierarchical and neutral bureaucracy,” because such a bureaucracy does not exist in the EU, any more than in the individual member-states. Instead of a “hierarchical and neutral bureaucracy” the European “administration” is dispersed both vertically and horizontally. Thus the execution of European legislation is assured mainly by the Member States (and thus also through their national administrations), in some cases by the Commission, and exceptionally even by the Council. Moreover, the execution of some policies may also occur through collaboration between administrations at different levels. . . . As most of these administrations enjoy an important level of autonomy, their cooperation can hardly be identified with the hierarchically structured one-dimensional administration of the “neutral bureaucracy” idea. (Smismans 2004: 15)

Where, then, should the EU seek legitimacy for its own governance? Smismans, much like Andersen and Burns, turns his gaze to what he believes is already happening and notes that, because of the highly technical nature of most policy issues, the state increasingly delegates authority “sideways” to independent administrative authorities, semi-public institutions, private standardization organizations; civil society increasingly performs self-regulatory tasks; power gets dispersed; and the distinction between public and private gets blurred.

1 Smismans (2004: 3–6) mentions: (1) strengthening the powers of the European Parliament; (2) creating a chamber of representative regional authorities (the Committee of the Regions); (3) involving national parliaments more closely in EU governance; and (4) resorting, where all else fails, to a territorially understood notion of subsidiarity.

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The parliamentary model, in other words, is irremediably outdated. If our analytical models fail to describe current practice, then the normative assumptions therein embedded cannot be used to legitimize it. “The model of popular sovereignty and the rigid separation of the private from the public realms in liberal thought created a situation in which ‘the political order we have in fact created in the twentieth century is inevitably suspect in our own eye’,” as Charles Anderson (quoted by Smismans 2004: 16) remarked. We need an alternative narrative (or several alternative narratives) to compensate for the failing narrative of the parliamentary model. According to Smismans, “functional representation” could be one of them. The European Commission is ahead of the game and is already amply encouraging “functional representation” on the part of various expressions of civil society by opening up ex ante the decision-making process to groups, lobbies, associations, NGOs, etc. and also by encouraging ex post the challenging of decisions made through litigation. [The European Commission] opened the door—particularly in a normative sense—to a certain fusion of private and public sectors in administering Europe, and to the involvement of “stakeholders,” or still “civil society (organizations).” While leaving conceptually some room for a horizontal decentralization of European administration, via tools such as agencies, contracting-out, outsourcing, etc. the main focus of the Commission is on opening its own administration to civil society. (Smismans 2004: 24)

Both Andersen and Burns’s “organic” and Smismans’ “functional” governance are grounded in what Burgess (2006: 163–77) considers to be the European continental federal tradition which, in turn, has its roots in the works of Johannes Althusius and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (and in the social doctrine of the Catholic Church). Both thinkers saw society as “based on natural law whereby individuals freely organized themselves into associations, both religious and secular, that were the fundamental essence of the state” (Burgess 2006: 170). Both “focus upon collectivities, functional and territorial representation, the organic conception of state and society, based on corporatism and subsidiarity, and the emphasis on the whole person rather than the isolated, atomistic individual” (Burgess 2006: 172). Accordingly, “federation is construed as a living pluralist order that builds itself from the ground upwards, constructing its tiers of authority and decision-making according to the principle of subsidiarity. . . . There is, then, a continuous, unbroken link between the citizen, associated groups, the state and the international community. Subsidiarity as a principle is universal” (Burgess 2006: 176). The problem with such a conception is that it tends to sweep both vertical and horizontal conflicts under the carpet, and that it feeds suspicion that, at the end of the subsidiarity chain, lies the magisterium of the Catholic Church (often in alliance with those state authorities whose legitimacy supposedly derived from it). While these lines of tension may be slightly (but only slightly) out of date in our secular societies, what is interesting to note is how this tradition anchors in one and the same social source two principles of representation—the territorial and the functional—that we have come to see as springing from two different

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types of association. Smismans draws inspiration from this tradition of thought and accepts the substantial equalization between these two forms of representation which I, in contrast, believe should be kept separate. Daniel Elazar has a different interpretation of Althusius’ thought and of subsidiarity. He starts from the observation that federalism was invented and practiced by the “Protestant republican polities” that were “expected to succeed those of medieval Catholicism, to foster a Europe that rejected the authoritarian rule of kings and prince by divine right in favour of power-sharing in communities of different composition and function within a comprehensive framework” (Elazar 2001: 33). In particular, Althusius’s work, Politica Methodicae Digesta, contained “a comprehensive theory of federal republicanism rooted in a covenantal view of human society derived from, but not dependent on, his theological system. . . . a theory of polity building based on the polity as a compound political association established by its citizens through their primary associations on the basis of consent rather than as a reified state, imposed by a ruler or an elite” (Elazar 2001: 33) (which was rather the essence of the Bodinian model). As Elazar clarifies, both territorial and consociational elements can and must coexist within this federal system. The idea of doing away with the territorial levels of government, or of retaining them only insofar as they carry out ancillary functions, is to be discarded as naı¨ve. The Althusian model directly addressed the complexities of the European situation, taking into consideration families and voluntary associations as well as formal political institutions, corporations, and territorial units. In his Politica, he methodically constructed a federal system that was both territorial and consociational. (Elazar 2001: 34; emphasis added)

But there is another danger inherent in the overly enthusiastic acceptance of Commission-sponsored involvement of civil society in EU governance. As Smismans himself recalls, the concept of civil society knew a veritable revival in the 1980s. Evidence from the democratization processes in Eastern Europe and studies of administrative performance in western societies showed that a vibrant civil society was a fundamental ingredient of both democracy and good governance. According to Putnam (1993), who spearheaded the reappraisal of civil society’s role in political science, civil society draws its strength from the relationships that it forms in the social sphere, particularly during leisure activities. These, by breeding generalized trust and creating norms of reciprocity, end up favoring habits of civic engagement. Tapping into this “social capital” and inviting segments of civil society to partake in the administration of decisions and in the implementation of policies may probably improve the quality of both, but it may also end up sapping civil society’s own strength. Particularly when civil society is “engineered” from outside (as often happened in Eastern Europe) or “cultivated” from within through public subsidies, it runs a serious risk of becoming a mere phantom of what it should be. Take one of the fundamental roles of civil society on Putnam’s view of “good governance”: the provision of independent scrutiny of governmental activities. When civil society is nurtured too attentively by those very institutions over

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which it is supposed to watch and when it gets involved too closely in the very activities that it is supposed to monitor with critical eyes and independent judgment, then there is a high risk that the goal for which it was involved in the first place will be diverted. Indeed, the roots of a vibrant civil society may thus wither. The other, more conventional, danger is that some segments of “civil society” might take advantage of their superior technical knowledge, tighter organization, and more abundant resources to exert a disproportionate influence over policy-making. The dangers of state and societal capture are not new, but rather a staple feature of neo-liberal thought. What guarantees are there against such occurrences? Legal scholars (Joerges and Dehousse 2002) have documented how the European Court of Justice has indeed tried to maintain a certain “institutional balance” by defending and promoting the role of the Parliament, even beyond its Treaty-established powers, probably as a way of shielding “territorial representation” from a preponderance of “functional representation.” This should indicate that the ECJ itself is not willing to discard so lightly the representative function performed by the European Parliament.

TA K I N G M LG S E R I O U S LY As was argued at the beginning of this chapter, if one wants to discuss EU democracy, one must at the least conceive of it as a polity in its own right. Here I discuss MLG’s contribution to the EU’s input legitimacy. Two claims have been made in this regard. The first is that, thanks to the involvement of lower levels of government, policy-making can more closely reflect local citizens’ preferences and, hence, be more legitimate (Scharpf 1988). The second is that, because MLG processes are normally “loosely coupled”—the national and supranational levels normally deciding the framework conditions within which the subnational level can make adjustments and better fit the substance of the decisions to local preferences—redistributive (coordination) issues are insulated from distributive (collaboration) issues, and conflicts are thus for the most part avoided (Benz 2000). I will argue in the next section that federalism is a particularly apt theoretical framework within which to discuss MLG input legitimacy because of its unique attention to the problem of reconciling the involvement of already constituted governmental levels (SNAs) with that of the citizens who are represented at those levels (CSOs) in policy-making. I will now look in greater detail at how MLG specifically fares on the “input side” of the legitimacy equation, by looking at the dimensions recalled by Lord (2004): authorization, representation, and participation.

Authorization Who are the subjects entitled to authorize a constitutional balance that may give rise to a federation? Luckily I do not have to answer this question, but rather the

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more manageable question: who, according to MLG, are the subjects entitled to authorize the governance structures that may legislate over important aspects of the life of EU citizens? According to the theories of “organic” and “functional” governance discussed above, these governance structures are rather flexible (network-like) arrangements composed of individual and collective agents from civil society that succeed in claiming to have specialized knowledge that they can contribute to a specific policy. These agents are either authorized by the Commission (Smismans) or they are self-authorized (Andersen and Burns). The basis for their authorization as relevant “stakeholders,” hence, as members of the policy networks, is technical knowledge and (less frequently) legitimate concern. Assuming that technical knowledge can be objectively assessed, determining “legitimate” concern begs the question that it is supposed to answer. Faith must ultimately be placed in the capacity of society to spontaneously select the bearers of truly relevant and dispassionate knowledge and of genuinely concerned societal groups, or in the capacity of the Commission to do so. MLG is somewhat old-fashioned and stodgy in this regard and claims that the legitimate members of MLG arrangements are representatives of the Commission, of member-states, of subnational authorities (i.e. of different levels of government), and of social partners and expressions of civil society, as authorized by these latter (i.e. of state and sub-state actors). Clearly, both national and subnational authorities could collude to exclude all truly legitimate societal interests and all truly relevant experts, but it is unlikely that they would want to do so or that the Commission would allow it. Even though it does not have the power to override the member-states’ and the subnational authorities’ choices, the Commission normally insists that certain societal concerns be included in MLG arrangements. Moreover, to the extent that subnational territories are characterized by specific economic, social, and cultural profiles, the chances are that the social partners and representatives of civil society involved in MLG arrangements will introduce real variation: ambition may indeed be made to counteract ambition (Madison’s famous quip). The real danger with MLG arrangements rather is that, given their territorial scope, they may fail to elicit the participation of “truly relevant” knowledge and “truly legitimate” concerns, not because of any conspiratorial scheme, but because relevant knowledge and legitimate concern may not be organized at that particular territorial level or because SNAs and CSOs may not feel legitimated to participate at that level. Whether something like this will happen is heavily dependent on the congruence between the territorial scope of the policy at hand and the organization of knowledge and concern. In sum, the authorization mechanism utilized by MLG seems less arbitrary than that produced by organic or functional governance, but also potentially less effective, unless relevant knowledge and legitimate concerns are channeled by representatives of subnational authorities and civil society organizations. We are back to the faith in “representative government” on a smaller scale, corrected by a robust injection of civil society participation. Are there reasons to believe that scale itself may influence the likelihood that relevant knowledge and legitimate

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concern may be forthcoming through representatives of subnational authorities? That is the implicit hope in federal and republican thinking, in particular, and in all forms of self-government, in general: that by reducing the level at which representatives are selected, these may reflect more accurately the concerns of the represented and will be providing the relevant knowledge to the solution of the problem at hand (Scharpf 1988: 239–40). This is a faith, or a hope, that MLG proponents do not find unrealistic.

Representation The issue of representation is in part already contained in that of authorization, but it also has its own specific dimension. Authorization indicates the activity of selecting legitimate participants in MLG arrangements; representation refers to the conveyance of legitimate identities, values, and interests to MLG arrangements. “Organic” and “functional” governance proponents regard as legitimate only the conveyance of ideas that are directly relevant to and of interests that are directly affected by the policy at hand. Through organic and functional governance a very partial microcosm of individuals and groups directly touched by the policy in question gets represented: broad societal interests, values, and identities are left out as irrelevant. MLG tends to represent a less specific, but broader universe of interests, values, and identities, as represented in the representatives of public bodies such as member-states and subnational authorities, sectional interests and value-oriented groups. The spectrum of interests, values, and identities conveyed by MLG arrangements is less immediately relevant, but wider than that conveyed by organic or functional governance. Non-expert, non-economic, and non-technical points of view are likely to be expressed in MLG arrangements, which may “divert attention” from the technical issues and “waste time” on non-strictly relevant questions, but which will most certainly probe the available knowledge, question conventional technical solutions, raise broad social concerns, and challenge vested interests and established identities. Discussion will probably be less pertinent and focussed, but at the same time more substantial and critical. To the question: “To what extent can we trust institutional representatives from national ministries and subnational authorities to convey nothing more than their institutional interests?” MLG replies that these institutional representatives will most probably also bring their partisan ideas and visions to the policymaking process. This was the essence of MLG’s “actor-centeredness”: institutional actors cannot be reduced to mere mouthpieces for their institutions. Broader political values are channeled through MLG arrangements. But is this just wishful thinking or does it really happen? Much will depend on the manner in which governmental and non-governmental representatives are selected for their positions in MLG arrangements (I am thinking here particularly of the Monitoring Committees established to monitor the implementation of the Structural Funds), that is, it will depend on the administrative, political, and civil society traditions of the different countries. Directly elected regional representatives will probably

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reflect their subnational, partisan and also personal position; centrally appointed local administrators will probably reflect a more national, bureaucratic, and technocratic position. My personal research on the Committee of the Regions confirms a well-known secret: that the members of this consultative Committee perceive themselves more as “representatives of regional/local constituencies” than as “technical advisers,” and that they interpret their own role more as “releasing powerful political statements” and “standing for their own regional/local society” rather than as “releasing technically sound opinions.” Even more important for them, however, is “developing a common regional/local position” and even “developing a common EU position.” While all CoR members know full well that the Committee is formally a consultative committee, still the nature of their consultation is not that of a technical expert, but that of a subnational representative. To this end, they are expressly willing to dampen their internal conflicts and to try and articulate a common subnational view of things.2 I need not repeat here what I already noted in the second part of the book when reviewing the cases of Germany and the UK in cohesion, environmental, and higher education policy in order to underscore the different sets of values, interests, and ideas that were conveyed by institutional representatives in these two national settings. The mix produced by both countries in each policy area reflected their different bureaucratic and governmental traditions. So, in the UK, MLG structures tended to be dominated by hands-on, non-political administrators and central political representatives, which ensured that the debate would be matter-of-fact, looking for solutions that did not challenge central governmental control of ends and means. In Germany, political and even constitutional issues connected to the nature of subnational representation were debated with reference to stylized recipes for policy-making (connected to the neo-corporatist nature of much of German policy-making), ensuring that debate was more rehearsed and often beside the point. The British seemed to miss the potential to express truly local preferences, while Germans seemed to get trapped in their own schemata. In both cases, there was indeed a certain waste of time and energy due to the oft-noted mis-match between the level at which policies were tackled and that at which the ideas, values, and interests that MLG arrangements mobilize are produced. Paraphrasing Burgess (2006: 207), I could conclude by saying that: for the answer to the question “‘Who or what is represented in MLG arrangements?’ we must perforce return to the origins and formations of national democracies . . . Put simply, the concept of representation reflects historical specificity and comparative political development in the modern democratic era. . . . recent research . . . has confirmed that representation varies considerably 2

This research was carried out between Febryary 2008 and February 2009 and involved semistructured interviews with CoR members with institutional roles—Heads of National Delegations, Commissions’ Chairs and Chairs of Political Groups—and the distribution of a closed-answers questionnaire to all regular members. Preliminary findings have been presented at the EU-CONSENT Plenary Sesssion, Brussels, March 26–7, 2009. See also Piattoni (2008).

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across MLG arrangements and that the relationship between democracy and representation is not a one-way street.”3

Participation Contemporary citizens desire to participate directly in policy-making as a way of feeling more involved in public life. One of the complaints of the late 1960s was that public administration was too distant and insensitive to individual needs and that citizens felt alienated from their own state. A reaction to this remoteness was citizens’ attempt to take some issues into their own hands and become directly involved in policy-making and policy-delivery. This direct participation is supposed to confer a sense of ownership of public issues and to allow service delivery to be better tailored to citizens’ needs. Regardless of the ultimate quality of the policies thus enacted, direct participation is a value in itself. Citizens’ juries, participatory budgets, self-managed schools are all examples of how citizens have not recoiled from taking matters into their own hands and, rather, have decided to get personally involved in the administration of given services and policies (Benz and Zimmer 2008). By doing so, it is believed that they gain a sharper perception of their own capacities, a better understanding of governmental issues and, ultimately, a deeper appreciation of democracy itself (Tocqueville 1988/1835; Putnam 1993). Clearly, organic governance appears to be at an advantage vis-a`-vis both functional governance and MLG in securing the direct participation of citizens. Indeed, this is the very essence of its definition. Functional governance also entails a certain degree of direct participation, but mainly in sectoral policies, while MLG scores lowest on this dimension because it only requires the involvement of fairly conventionally defined social partners and of limited expressions of civil society. The general drive towards direct involvement has had the paradoxical effect of inducing all types of associations and organizations (governmental and non-governmental, public and private) to make ample recourse to lobbying, the typical mode of pressure employed by functional groups and associations, as if they were roughly equivalent expressions of the same society. Whether this is due to the failure of the “parliamentary model,” as the proponents of “organic” and “functional” governance would argue, or because the EU is in fact grounded on a social Christian notion of society and subsidiarity, the fact is that civil society organizations, social partners, national experts, individual corporations, and subnational authorities all employ lobbying 3 The original quote was “For the answer to the question ‘Who or what is represented in federal states?’ we must perforce return to the origins and formations of federations . . . Put simply, the concept of representation reflects historical specificity and comparative political development in the modern democratic era. . . . recent research . . . has confirmed that representation varies considerably across federations and that the relationship between federalism and representation is not a one-way street” where “federal states” and “federations” are replaced by “MLG arrangements,” and “federalism” is replaced by “national democracies” and “democracy.”

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as their main mode of pressure. As Andersen and Burns observe, “There is an element of lobbying in all EU member-states. In the EU itself, however, lobbying has become the most important form of direct interest representation” (1996: 254). In describing the participation of state and sub-state interests in US politics, Alberta Sbragia (2007) contrasts the US and the EU, highlighting how in the US territorial interests have been increasingly assimilated to other types of interests: As the influence of state and local leaders lessened, the influence of the federal government over state and local governments increasingly became treated as if they belonged to the private sector rather than to a privileged portion of the public sector. In fact, state and local officials are forced to lobby just as are other interests. Governments are represented by lobbyists rather than being integrated into national decision-making as they are in Brussels. State and local officials have organized what are known as governmental interest groups which represent governments rather than voters. These are known as “public interest” lobbies and are viewed as being interested in who gets to implement federal policy to a greater extent than its outcomes. (Sbragia 2007: 14; emphasis added)

If the EU is indeed becoming more similar to the US (Fabbrini 2007), then subnational authorities may well be fighting a rearguard battle against being demoted to the level of “public” or “governmental” interest group. But it is equally possible that the EU, perhaps because of its stronger statist tradition, may be preserving a particular role for territorial interests: I would argue that the conflict between territorial governments and functional politics lies at the heart of the politics of federalism in the United States. National institutions, Congress in particular, are organized by functional areas whereas the representation of subnational governments’ interests involves the introduction of territorial criteria into that functionally dominated process. . . . In the EU the functional takes a secondary role, when it comes to the importance of territorial governments. The dominance of executives allows territorially-based governments in Europe to represent their unitary interests as understood and defined by the executive. (Sbragia 2007: 12–13)

M LG : A FE D E R A L V I EW ? To conclude, I would like to suggest that the discussion of MLG’s contribution to input legitimacy is best placed within a body of literature that puts the question of governmental levels at the heart of its own deliberations: federalism. Federalism is the body of political thought that has wrestled most with the question of levels and, as Daniel Elazar (2001) rightly remarked, it is the tradition that could best accommodate “the European reality of four or five arenas of territorial governance instead of two or three, the accepted number in modern federations” (2001: 34). This body of literature has recently known a veritable revival, which has significantly added nuance to what were once rather rigid typologies.

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As a constitutional theory, federalism affirms that both subnational and national entities constitute the sovereign state. Neither level is super- or subordinate to the other, and both are necessary to constitute the whole. Whether the federal structure is constituted through a centripetal compact among originally independent units (as in the cases of the United States and Switzerland) or through a centrifugal compact among formally interdependent units (as in the case of Belgium), the end-result is a state whose sovereignty is shared equally by federal and federated units. To preserve this (fragile) equilibrium, these units exchange guarantees that are normally enshrined in a written constitution. A fundamental element of this constitutional balance is the provision that no subject—whether federal or federated units—may upset the balance without the agreement of all the others (often through qualified majorities). The equilibrium is fragile not so much because either subject may try to force a constitutional change upon the other, as because daily legislation may de facto alter the constitutional balance. Several authors have noted the existence of an in-built “drift” towards increasing centralization, both within individual federations as well as in the EU “protofederation” (Baldi 2003; Burgess 2006). The theory of federalism is particularly apposite to discuss a mode of governance like MLG which still retains, in its very name, a strong reference to territorial levels. Federalism reminds us that, for a federation to be legitimate and long-lasting, it must acknowledge not just the federated states, but also their local self-governmental units (hence, in the EU context, the importance of considering not just two or three levels, but four or five): first, because there is no viable federation that is not also rooted in a vibrant local democracy;4 second, because the promise to respect, protect, and promote the different national identities expressed by the member-states would be revealed as a sham if it did not also include respect, protection, and promotion of minority nationalisms and the other forms of self-government that are embedded in them. As I argued in Chapter 2, there is no fundamental qualitative difference between any of the Union’s member-states and any of the many historical regions or minority nations encompassed in them. MLG implies the same fundamental recognition of both national and subnational levels as federalism does. MLG contains reference not only to multiple levels of government, but also to civil society. As Marks and Hooghe (2004) have theorized, MLG encompasses both mutually exclusive, general-purpose, territorial jurisdictions (Type I MLG) as well as overlapping, single-purpose, functional jurisdictions (Type II MLG). These are, however, ideal-types. In real life, Type I jurisdictions, typical of federal

4 The American federalist experience drew much of its inspiration and strength also from the relationship that existed between the colonial governments and the townships. Burgess (2006: 52), quoting Lutz (1990), notes how the colonies “created a ‘common colony-wide government with limited powers while preserving town governments to operate in their own sphere of competence’ ” and that “ ‘both town and colony governments were often derived in form and substance from covenants’ and that even when they did not derive from covenants ‘colonial governments functioned effectively as federal polities, having been built up from below’.”

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systems, coexist in a complex relationship with Type II jurisdictions, characteristic of corporatist systems. Neither type can be expected to be wholly dominant or completely absent. Nothing bars Type II jurisdictions from existing in a federal constitutional setting, yet the two Types must not be confused. In this sense, I concur with Livingston when he states that: In using the term federal only in this restricted territorial sense I am taking from it some of the meaning attributed to it by writers who profess to see federal elements in the various forms of pluralism . . . I suggest that these writers have added a meaning that was not there before and one that introduces an element of confusion into the term. No government has ever been called federal that has been organized on any but the territorial basis; when organized on any other it has gone by another name. . . . federalism becomes nothing if it is held to embrace diversities that are not territorially grouped . . . We confuse two distinct principles when we apply the terminology of federalism to a society organized on a functional basis. (Livingston 1952, quoted by Burgess 2006: 30–1)

The Federalists’ notion of “checks and balances” was meant to guarantee that no majority would ever overrule a sizeable minority. This was not meant to be guaranteed just by “separation of powers” and “institutional balance,” but also by the simultaneous coexistence of different types of representation. In a justly famous quote from Federalist 51, Madison proclaims that, in order to protect one part of the society against the injustice of the other part, “ambition must be made to counteract ambition” (Hamilton et al. 1961/1787–8: 322). Society would be made up of “so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable. . . . society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority” (ibid. 324). The real guarantee, however, does not reside in spontaneous self-equilibrating societal pluralism, but in a cultivated balance among different types of representation. Hence territorial representation need not be displaced by functional representation, but can and must coexist with it. The study of federalism5 has undergone a veritable revival since the 1980s, in no small part because it appears to provide an answer to the quest for a democratic 5 It is by now common to use the word “federalism” to indicate the governmental principle which tries to reconcile unity and diversity, and the term “federation” to indicate the concrete political entity that tries to embody this principle, with “federality” indicating the quality of being federal. Much of the reflection on federalism and federation has revolved around terminology, hence the current stipulation may well soon be challenged by some new stipulation. One of the most troublesome terminological disputes has been that between federation and confederation. In this regard, one could follow the suggestion of Bryce, Sidgwick, and Freeman and suppose “the distinction between federation and confederation to lie in the extent to which the central government has entered normally into important direct relations with the citizens rather than acting on them only through the political institutions of the constituent state governments” (Burgess 2006: 23). According to the reconstruction performed by Burgess of the debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists in eighteenth-century America, the term “federal” was effectively appropriated by those who, in reality, wanted to create a

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constitutional format capable of reconciling “unity” with “diversity.” There is no easy way to define a federation or a federal state. One could use Dicey’s sceptical definition—“a political contrivance intended to reconcile national unity and power with the maintenance of state rights” (quoted by Burgess 2006: 20)—or one could opt for a more dynamic definition like that of Carl Friedrich: Federalism can be, and often has been, a highly dynamic process by which emergent composite communities have succeeded in organizing themselves by effectively institutionalising “unity in diversity.” . . . A conception of federalism in dynamic terms . . . understands the relation between the inclusive community and the component communities as a system of regularized constraint upon the exercise of governmental power so as to make power and responsibility correlative with the structure of a composite and dynamic community, its interests and needs. (Friedrich 1962: 528–9, quoted by Burgess 2006: 35)

Assuming that, for military, economic, social, cultural, or even contingent reasons, independent communities should want to live together under one constitutional order, then the question would be how to reconcile the “new overarching ‘political nationality’ . . . with the various local identities and diversities characteristic of the constituent units of the federation” (Burgess 2006: 17). Constitutionalism is the discipline that engages questions of institutional balance. “Bryce believed that the successful American national experience was due in large part to the application of two basic devices: the granting to the federal government of direct authority over all citizens irrespective of the state governments; and the establishment of the Supreme Court to arbitrate disputes and interpret the constitution” (Burgess 2006: 17). Moreover, “a bill of rights, intricate legal variations and the establishment of local autonomy offered the basis for achieving harmony between different communities” (ibid. 19). The fundamental elements of a federal state, then, are “the supremacy of the constitution; the distribution among bodies with limited and coordinate authority of the different powers of government; and the authority of the courts to act as interpreters of the constitution” (Burgess 2006: 20). One of the most often quoted definition of the “federal principle” is that by Kenneth Wheare (1963: 10) as “the method of dividing powers so that the general and regional governments are each, within a sphere, coordinate and independent,” where the emphasis is more on “coordinate” than on “independent.” One must effectively resist the temptation to see federalism as a balance of power which is struck once and for all, as a neat division of spheres of authority such that no unit ever intrudes on the sphere of the other—something which is normally referred to as “dual federalism.” On the contrary, federalism is inherently “cooperative” or

much more “national” state that is best described by the term “compound republic” (Burgess 2006: 56, 74; Fabbrini 2007). The hallmark of federal government, then, is “not so much that federal and constituent governments operate directly upon the citizens but whether or not the powers of government were divided between coordinate, independent authorities” (Burgess 2006: 27). In other words, a federation cannot be a federation without some form of divided government.

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“interdependent,” indicating that the federal and federated units’ spheres of authority are normally entangled in complex and varying patterns. Are not these the characteristic traits of MLG, on a larger governance scale?

C O N C LU S I O N The federal balance between the various levels of government and between Type I and Type II jurisdictions is inherently dynamic: their relative powers and roles will have to be constantly fine-tuned to changing internal and external circumstances. This implies that constitutional revisions—following “polity” and “regime” transformations—will certainly occur within the lifetime of a federation, even with a certain frequency, and that ways of revising the constitution must be found which are mutually satisfactory to all constituent parties. This ongoing search for balance is what Bellamy and Castiglione (2003: 23 ff.) call “constitutional dialogues.” The need for change may come from within, from changes in the economy and society, but will most likely come from without, from the relations that the federal state entertains with other states. The need to enter international agreements or to organize its own defense has been shown to induce a concentration of powers in the hands of the national government that the constituent units will then want to regulate and contain. These same mechanisms appear to preside over the evolution of the European Union itself (Fabbrini 2007). The idea of “federalism as a process” captures the dynamism and sensibility of our own times. It invites us to think that the principle of “federalism” can be embodied, and the quality of “federality” can be possessed, in varying degrees and that the federalization process is never-ending. Traces of federalism can be detected in most polities, even in many formally unitary states (Baldi 2003). In order not to find ourselves in a confusing “night in which all cows are black,” though, a minimalist interpretation should be preserved—perhaps Sawer’s definition of federalism as “geographical devolution with guarantees for the autonomy of the units” (Burgess 2006: 43)—or else we will run the risk of concluding, with Ducachek, that There is no accepted theory of federalism. Nor is there an agreement as to what federalism is exactly. The term itself is unclear and controversial. . . . Federalism has now become one of those good echo words that evoke a positive response but that may mean all things to all men. (Ducachek 1970, quoted by Burgess 2006: 44)

Among these there could be, as Elazar (1987) has argued, various forms of federation, confederation, federacy, associated statehood, union, league, constitutional regionalization, and constitutional home rule. And, indeed, almost all of these terms have been used at one time or another to describe the EU polity—a clear sign that, despite the bad publicity that the “f-word” has recently acquired, particularly in some European member-states, federalism is a highly relevant body of thought for the EU.

11 Output Legitimacy Parliamentary democracy can be understood in ideal-typical terms as a chain of delegation and a chain of accountability (running in opposite directions), from the voters to the ultimate policy makers, in which at each link (stage) a principal (in whom authority is originally placed) delegates to an agent, whom the principal has conditionally authorised to act in his or her name and place. . . . At the European level there is no unbroken chain of delegation stretching all the way from the voters to the EU-level administrative actors, including the Commission. Moreover, there is often not one principal but often multiple principals involved at the European level. (Curtin 2007: 525)

I N T RO D U C T I O N Modern governance—whether organic, functional, network, or multi-level (MLG)—is characterized by the involvement of citizens, either directly or through civil society organizations, not only in policy ideation and decision, but also in policy implementation and delivery. This trait differentiates all of the current forms of governance from the conventional governmental model, according to which it was understood that one set of subjects made decisions and a different set of subjects implemented them, and often neither included the ultimate targets of the policy. Citizen participation in policy output is meant to address two problems. First, the very notion of policy has been questioned. Decision-making is but one step in a long policy-making chain that should lead to some policy result: implementation contributes to “making” policy as much as does policy decision (cf. Sabatier 1999). Second, policy implementation is extremely messy. To entrust implementation to the same subjects that decide on the policy is supposed to alleviate the problems of policy diversion and policy emasculation revealed by study after study (see Pressman and Wildavsky 1973). It is assumed that, if the same subjects that have decided upon a policy solution are also in charge of carrying it out, they will not want to undo during implementation what they accomplished during decision-making. For these reasons, modern governance seeks to involve all stakeholders in the process, that is, all those who have an interest in seeing that a policy is not just decided upon but also effectively implemented.

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But there is a third reason why output legitimacy is particularly relevant for the European Community. The main mechanism through which the Community was built, the “Monnet method,” was explicitly based on output effectiveness. The idea was that the European Community would command legitimacy among citizens of Europe only if it delivered peace and prosperity (Bellamy and Castiglione 2003). In other words, the Community would be justified by its own achievements, and it would be able to proceed on the road to integration insofar as it managed to create economic advantages and bring the peoples of Europe closer together. As scholars have remarked time and again, peace and prosperity appeared to be sufficiently ambitious goals to bestow ample legitimacy on the Community in the immediate postwar period, but they lost much of their glamor as time went on. People have grown used to both peace and prosperity to the point of taking them from granted, and instead have started to pay more attention to the costs of the Community than to its benefits. This is not just a matter simply of the passage of time. In many ways, the EU may be a victim of its own success: in the life of any organization, including the Union, performance gains become increasingly hard to obtain. It is high time we faced up to the need to replace instrumental approval of the Community with a more principled attachment to it. While all forms of modern governance prescribe the participation of the decision-makers in policy implementation, proponents of organic and functional governance (Andersen and Burns 1996; Smismans 2004) contemplate only fairly specific regulatory policies that are, by definition, under the direct control of private or functional agents. In addition, the proponents of organic and functional governance acknowledge that distributive and redistributive policies, as well as far-reaching regulatory policies, are beyond the purview of private subgovernments or functional interests. Consequently, it is unlikely that the arrangements (networks) envisioned will “spontaneously” include all those groups that are affected by these policies (such as utility clients, consumers, the public at large) and, therefore, allow for effective decision-making and implementation. Moreover, these networks will probably not factor in the externalities created by decisions being made by a more restricted circle of stakeholders and they may run into output legitimacy problems. Still, organic and functional governance proponents optimistically regard these as secondary problems which, all things considered, do not detract from the effectiveness of their proposed solutions. The Max-Planck Institut fu¨r Gesellschaftsforschung (MPIfG) school also focusses on regulatory policies, but emphasizes that the simple desire to cooperate towards a common objective is not sufficient to bring such cooperation about. What stands in the way of collaboration is the very difficulty of coordinating actions, particularly when agreement on legislating regulation contains disagreement on the regulatory details or implies distributional conflicts. In such cases, actors will need an external agency to facilitate the exchange of credible commitments or even to cajole the actors into coordination. It is the fear that the regulatory regime that is eventually imposed will be even more costly than the status quo—or the impossibility of returning to the status quo ante (Scharpf 1988:

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257)—that may induce actors to coordinate their actions towards a shared solution (the “shadow of hierarchy”) (Scharpf 1997b; He´ritier and Lehmkuhl 2008). Under these circumstances, the only matters that can be legislated will be those for which the external agency can threaten to unilaterally impose a regulatory solution “by facilitating, approving, lending authority, providing positive and negative incentives, and prescribing procedural rules and the structure of participant actors” (He´ritier and Lehmkuhl 2008). In the case of the European Union, these are typically decisions to eliminate national regulatory barriers or to induce recognition of reciprocal regulatory regimes (negative integration), while equally necessary decisions involving the harmonization of regulatory regimes or EU-wide re-regulation will escape the reach of the hierarchy’s shadow and will not be legislated (positive integration). The danger is that, while positive regulation or re-regulation are prevented by cross-vetoes from individual memberstates, it will at the same time be impossible to return to a pre-regulatory situation: “member governments will be precluded from dealing individually with pressing problems even if the Community cannot agree on an effective solution” (Scharpf 1988: 258). This structural impasse (the “joint decision trap”) will dampen the Community’s legitimacy, and even project negatively onto national democracies (Scharpf 1999). Network governance, according to the MPIfG school, is no legitimacy panacea at all. MLG, in its turn, takes the view that virtually all policies that have a territorial dimension should be addressed by involving democratic subnational governments endowed with extensive administrative (and sometimes legislative) powers over territorial jurisdictions, as they are in the best position to include public concerns in the decision-making process and, if necessary, directly implement most of these policies. These institutional actors, moreover, can address the eventual externalities caused by the policy decision that are coterminous with their territorial extension. Trans-territorial externalities will have to be handled through negotiations and agreements among subnational governments, which are encouraged by existing cross-border cooperation regimes and facilitated by the existence of institutions such as the Committee of the Regions.1 Subnational governments will also have an interest in utilizing successful decision-making and implementation “techniques” in other policy areas under their jurisdiction (horizontal diffusion of best practices), as well as transferring to higher levels of government the lessons learnt at their level (vertical diffusion of best practices) (Gerstenberg and Sabel 2002). The danger that the “joint decision trap” might reproduce itself at a lower level of government should not emerge insofar as subnational governments retain only consultation rights, through the Committee of the Regions, and are involved in the ideation and implementation of policies on a par with other governmental and non-governmental actors. If subnational

1 These are the types of solutions that, for a while, made German cooperative federalism extremely effective: “La¨nder solidarity thus prevented the federal government from playing off the interests of some La¨nder against others in forming ‘minimum winning coalitions’ ” (Scharpf 1988: 246).

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governments were involved in joint decision-making qua governments and not as carriers of a specific set of interests—that is, the interests of “the grass roots” and of “the man in the street” (Scho¨bel 1997: 5–6)—then MLG arrangements would be extremely inefficient and even, paradoxically, undemocratic. According to Scharpf, this is what occurred to the German system of joint decision-making (Politikverflechtung) after the Constitutional amendment of 1969. One might expect, therefore, that the policy output of joint-decision systems, when compared to unitary governments or the American model of federalism, will be less responsive to constituency interests and more oriented towards the institutional self-interests of governments and the “bureaucratic convenience”. . . . In joint-decision systems, the central government is not free to respond creatively to external demands, or to anticipate future consensus; its actions are determined directly by the immediate self-interests of member governments. (Scharpf 1988: 254–5)

In sum, insofar as MLG does not evolve into a joint-decision system, it seems rather well equipped to deliver output legitimacy. Let us look at this in detail.

T H E D I F F I C U LT Y O F M E A S U R I N G O U T P U T L E G I T I M AC Y The difficulties encountered in the discussion of input legitimacy—particularly the difficulty of applying the principles of liberal democracy outside the context of the modern state—have induced scholars to turn to output legitimacy as a compensatory measure. Yet, the difficulties connected with output legitimacy are no smaller. All systems of governance—modern democratic nation-states included—are judged in part by how well they perform. The capacity to respond swiftly and effectively to social and economic problems is one of the main criteria according to which democratic political systems are commonly assessed. Political systems that repeatedly fail to tackle and resolve the problems of the day may not last long: as the experience of the Weimar Republic taught generations of scholars, ineffective governments run the risk of not just losing legitimacy in the eyes of the governed and of being ousted, but much more dangerously of convincing the governed that democracy itself is ineffective and that it had better be replaced by some other system. Less dramatically (e.g. Bellamy and Castiglione 2003: 13), it might suffice to recall Lijphart’s assessment of majoritarian and consociational democracies in terms of their “governmental performance” (Lijphart 1999), and his conclusion that although majoritarian democracies are generally capable of acting more quickly and more incisively, consociational democracies arrive at more consensual and less clear-cut decisions that may command greater legitimacy. On the basis of this classical contrast alone, we can clearly show that there is no simple way of measuring output legitimacy, because the very definition of what is legitimate output is part of the dispute. To presume that the EU might be justified in terms of its outputs, as in different ways both Moravcsik and Majone argue,

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Bellamy and Castiglione (Bellamy and Castiglione 2003: 13) argue that it is not performance per se that legitimizes or delegitimizes a political or a governance system: rather legitimacy depends on more deep-rooted cultural values. This is why they adopt a slightly different approach to legitimacy, one that emphasizes the internal and external legitimacy of both the EU polity—the spheres of authority into which a polity is subdivided, be they territorial or functional, and the subjects that fall within the jurisdictions of these spheres of authority—and of the EU regime—corresponding grosso modo to the EU system of governance, which in turn implies looking at the scope of intervention and the styles with which intervention occurs. In other words, they look at the norms and mechanisms through which the division of labor between different spheres of authority and intervention in the economy and society can be justified. Such justification may be performed by mobilizing the norms that prevail or by utilizing the mechanisms that legitimize both the architecture and the functioning of a polity (internal legitimacy). Or it can be performed by looking at the compatibility of these norms and mechanisms with the formal or substantive norms and mechanisms that prevail internationally (external legitimacy). Legitimation works, as it were, both “from the inside out” as well as “from the outside in.” However, the more the EU resembles a “polity” with a “regime” of its own, the more problematic this scenario [i.e. Moravcsik’s scenario] becomes. . . . there is a mismatch between what they [the electorates of most member states] perceive as the changed external standing of the EU and its member states, on the one hand, and the forms of internal legitimacy they now receive, on the other. They believe that the sphere and the subjects of the EU are changing without either adequate authorization or sufficient popular identification to allow the establishment of a “regime” with sufficient scope and the requisite styles to offer accountable and effective governance. (Bellamy and Castiglione 2003: 17; emphasis in the original)

In this book, I am more concerned with internal than with external legitimacy, therefore I concentrate on the input and output legitimacy of both the regime (MLG) and the polity (EU) from an internal point of view. However, as Bellamy and Castiglione remark, the four dimensions are intimately related, as “each has knock-on effects for the others, with the character of one having implications for the configuration of the rest” (Bellamy and Castiglione 2003: 12). What makes these four legitimacy aspects interrelated is the fact that polity and regime boundaries keep shifting—what was at one point considered a domestic issue is later perceived to be a transnational or supranational one (think of the environment, security, health, etc.)—requiring the redefinition of the spheres of authority and of the subjects entitled to participate, as

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well as the retooling of both regime styles and scope (modes of governance). “If the EU begins either to act externally as a ‘polity’ when people internally regard it as an international organization, or vice versa, that will produce both an internal and an external legitimation crisis” (Bellamy and Castiglione 2003: 16). When this criterion is applied not to entire political systems, but to more limited governance arrangements, things do not become any simpler. One might think that assessing the performance of an entire political system would indeed be a difficult task—though an inevitable task, which citizens are ideally required to carry out periodically—given the multiple dimensions on which any government can be evaluated, but that doing so in more limited contexts should be feasible. There are reasons to doubt that. Even fairly circumscribed policy decisions carry lots of wider implications that must render the wise policy-maker moderately cautious. There are always many different solutions for any given problem, which imply different costs and benefits for different sets of people, often with unknown wider and longer-term implications. Each solution, moreover, is best suited to a given institutional and cultural context, and only rarely are policy solutions truly comparable. The idea that reasonable people could disagree on general principles but agree on specific policy solutions is not crazy (it is indeed the idea behind consensus democracy and, more generally, behind any type of deliberative setting, even in majoritarian democracies), but the idea that they will assess the legitimacy of the solution by the same standards is. So, how can the diverging opinions on whether EU regulations on cheese packaging or banana curvature were effective translate into output legitimacy for the institutions and governance arrangements that produced them? One potential measure would be rule abidance: if people comply with rules, it certainly means that they consider them effective, hence legitimate (Banchoff and Smith 1999). Yet, if rule abidance is an integral part of legitimacy, we cannot reduce legitimacy to it. People obey rules for reasons that may have nothing to do with whether or not they consider them legitimate: (1) because they are used to doing so; (2) because, although they find the rule illegitimate, they are aware of their cognitive limitations and do not trust their own judgment; (3) because the rules that they find illegitimate affect their lives only tangentially; (4) because it may be more costly to disobey than to obey; (5) because, even if rule defiance were cheap, it might be difficult or impossible to articulate the reasons for dissent; (6) because there is little hope that dissent may lead to a change in the current state of affairs. Lack of contestation, in other words, does not necessarily mean that governance output is considered effective and the governance structures that produced it legitimate. To assume as much would amount to taking a view akin to the economists’ view of preferences as “revealed” by people’s actual choices, regardless of the quality of the alternatives and their effective possibility to choose. A second potential measure of output legitimacy could be lack of manifest intention to replace the rulers and to reform the institutions that produced the output: in the absence of such manifestations, output is certainly considered effective and governance structures legitimate. Here what is being assessed are the structures and the people who produce the rules, not the rules in and of themselves. To express dissatisfaction with output under this criterion is even

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more demanding than under the first one. First of all, in the European Union there are no quick and easy ways of ousting the rulers (“throw the rascals out”) and reforming the institutions that produced the output. Indeed, this is the essence of what is normally termed the EU’s “democratic deficit”—that the channels normally in place to manifest dissent in regular democracies are unavailable in the EU. To assume that national governments will be held accountable by their national electorates for what they have produced at the EU level implies skipping too many logical steps—that their Community record is fully known, that governments honestly admit to their failures and place credit where it is due, that the public is sufficiently informed to assess the truthfulness of these statements, that the decision-making rules in the Council and the Parliament are such that vocal and coherent behavior is accurately recorded, etc.—which amounts to assuming what patently cannot be assumed. The evaporation of the “permissive consensus” pronounced any such arguments wholly defunct. For some, output legitimacy is not problematic at all as it mostly entails the provision of public goods that are the mainstay of governmental action everywhere, particularly since the 1980s. Giandomenico Majone (1996) identifies two main drivers for regulatory policy-making. The first of these was the failure in the 1970s of demand-side Keynesian policies aimed at redistributing wealth and stabilizing the economy and the consequent move towards supply-side policies and deregulation or outright privatization. Second, particularly in Europe, was the need to secure the free movement of goods, services, labor, and capital in the common market, hence the need to dismantle all non-tariff barriers still in place, particularly in the guise of local and national regulation. These two powerful forces, coupled with a veritable change of heart and mind in economic orthodoxy, combined to prompt an extraordinary crop of regulatory policies in Europe. European governments tried to attain socially desired ends less and less through direct intervention and intrusive management, and more and more through distant steering and market-enhancing (market-making even more than market-correcting) mechanisms. Regulation through statutory agencies appeared to be not only necessary, but also good and efficient. An intense scholarly production2 explained why, in an increasingly interdependent world, negative externalities can be handled mostly by means of independent regulatory agencies which, alone, have the position, power, and reputation to provide the kind of legislation, execution, and enforcement of regulatory standards that is necessary for cooperation. The second group of scholars who follow a similar approach consists of Adrienne He´ritier, Christoph Knill, Dirk Lehmkuhl, and others, who are, in turn, heirs of the MPIfG tradition inaugurated by Renate Mayntz and Fritz Scharpf. The approach to governance proposed by this “school” is based on the assumption that public and private actors act rationally, responding to the incentives embedded in each regulatory situation. Regulation can, in principle, be obtained either through spontaneous coordination and mutual adjustment on 2

See Pollack (2003a) for a detailed discussion of this literature.

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the part of private actors and without the involvement of authorities, or else it requires the more or less forceful involvement of these latter in order to facilitate joint decision-making (Scharpf 2000). Governance arrangements and actors’ constellations, then, are dictated by objective circumstances and these, in turn, dictate actors’ strategies. But what are the factors that determine which of the possible constellations will in fact arise? The MPIfG answer starts from an analysis of the type of good which must be delivered through regulation. According to this school, regulation will involve mostly common goods (He´ritier 2002a), yet it will still make a big difference whether they are public goods or commonpool resources (Mayntz 2002; Ostrom 2002).3 Both have a tendency to be underproduced, but only the latter will also tend to be overconsumed. The incentives for actors to cooperate spontaneously will, therefore, differ. Without entering into the details of the various configurations (see Scharpf 1997), in both cases public actors will tend to be part of the governance arrangements.4 Governance arrangements in which both public and private actors cooperate to regulate the provision of a common good constitute, therefore, the universe of the cases that the MPIfG school analyses. The properties of a good, and in many cases the attributes of a social situation in which a good is provided, influence the incentive structure of the actors involved. They will determine whether actors find themselves in a dilemma situation or in a different type of strategic constellation. The interest constellation in turn influences the type of institutional solution found for the problem at hand. (He´ritier 2002b: 6)

Not all governance arrangements are equally effective, and hence, command equal legitimacy. Whether or not a governance arrangement will be able to actually deliver will depend on whether the scope of the problem and the scope of the regulatory structure are congruent, on the type of behavior (coordination, redistribution, defection) that needs to be encouraged or restrained, and on “the institutional context.” From these elements, Knill and Lehmkuhl (2002) derive four types of governance arrangements involving different norms of interaction between public and private actors: 1) interventionist regulation, where public actors strongly intervene to provide common goods; 2) regulated self-regulation, where public and private actors both have a strong governance capacity, but public authorities remain ultimately responsible for providing the good in question; 3) private self-regulation, where public actors can no longer intervene in private self-regulation; and finally 4) “interfering intervention”, in which neither public nor private actors have a high governance capacity. (He´ritier 2002b: 6–7)

3

Private goods and club goods do not present any governance problems, but rather take care of themselves, as it were. Private goods are effectively regulated by the market—that the market is a public good is not the concern of this theory—while club goods are fairly easily provided. 4 As Ostrom (2002) has argued, common-pool resources trigger spontaneous coordination regimes under certain conditions that occur, surprisingly, more frequently than one would assume.

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He´ritier (2002c) herself studies two new modes of governance, “benchmarking” and “voluntary accords,” in which the role of public actors is indeed minimal, and concludes that genuine instances of spontaneous coordination are very rare, occurring mostly in the fields of environmental and social policy, and taking place anyway in the “shadow of hierarchy.” For most other regulatory problems, the “shadow of hierarchy” looms particularly large. According to this school of thought, as for Majone, regulation brings benefits to all those involved so that cooperation will always be preferred to non-cooperation. Collective action impasses or disputes regarding the setting of regulatory standards may nevertheless arise, forcing public authorities to step in and solve coordination problems. Governance, then, is a fairly technical matter, not really a political one. One is left wondering why public authorities (the regulators) would want to go through the motions of setting up governance arrangements and involve private actors (the regulated) in the decision-making process if, in the end, the effectiveness of the regulatory regime depends upon their ultimate power to sanction and to force cooperation (compliance) upon reluctant actors. Unless, of course, this were not the only nor the most likely possibility and, in reality, the role of public actors were not that of simple facilitators and the shadow of hierarchy remained just that: a shadow.

M EA S U R I N G O U T P U T L E G I T I M AC Y Like Christopher Lord, I am convinced that, in the context of the European Union, output legitimacy can be judged mainly, if not solely, in procedural terms, that is, by taking as “output” the way in which input is supplied, options are debated, decisions are made. Decision-makers are often required to account for their actions in terms of their consequences. Where, however, causation is complex or unstable, and any one decision is the product of “many hands”, it may be difficult to attribute consequences to particular actions . . . An alternative that requires no attribution of consequences to individuals or institutions is just to ask whether each player acted appropriately—according to the rules and roles assigned to them—in the inputs they made to decisions. (Lord 2004: 131–2)

The literature is not unanimous in arriving at this conclusion. As we have seen, there are scholars who believe that output legitimacy is unproblematic and that it is indeed the main source of legitimacy for the European Union. The EU is seen by these scholars as an international organization, or as a regulatory regime, whose task is to allow member-states to arrive jointly at superior results than they could attain separately. The range of issues that they investigate is, therefore, somewhat narrower than those effectively tackled by the European Union, even though regulatory issues make up a large share of EU policy-making.

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I will assess output legitimacy by looking at the way in which input providers make their input-giving intelligible and controllable (transparency), whether they are in a position to respond to whomever they represent or stand for (responsiveness), and whether they are willing to give an account of their actions and take responsibility for them (accountability). None of these criteria is simple, yet they seem a more practical way of assessing MLG output legitimacy.

Transparency The first requirement for assessing anything is having sufficient information. In the case of MLG, this amounts to asking whether subnational authorities (SNAs) and civil society organization (CSOs) that participate in policy-making facilitate knowledge on the part of their constituencies of the details of the issues that are being debated, of the governance arrangements through which they are debated, and of their own roles and actions within these arrangements. This implies both an activity of general education of the public on what the EU does and what are the loci for SNA and CSO action within MLG arrangements and an activity involving more specific information on the particular initiatives that are taken. In addition, it requires releasing documentation to the general public and facilitating access to this documentation. Virtually all SNAs try in one way or another to alert their constituents to what the EU can and does achieve for them and about what they do to represent the view of the subnational community within the forums in which the relevant decisions are made. They do so because they want to show that they care about their community and work for its welfare. Two problems may stand in the way, though. The first has to do with the public’s lack of interest.5 The EU is complex and unintelligible to most: making it more intelligible and transparent is a daunting task which cannot distract SNAs and CSOs from the more immediate task of acting within it. The media, particularly the local media, has not yet risen to the task of reporting in an intelligible and non-polemical manner on the EU. Media coverage of the EU oscillates between the non-existent and the irritating, with coverage of often the most succulent details (a verbal fight in the European Parliament, an etiquette blunder at a Council meeting, statistics on Commission perks, etc.) that normally distort more than clarify. Yet the corrective to this situation is not less coverage, but more informed and informative coverage. The second problem is connected with the difficult balance that needs to be struck between too little and too much transparency. Too little transparency means inviting accusations of opacity, inactivity, and irrelevance. Too much transparency may give proof of opacity, inactivity, and irrelevance! Explaining to the public

5 This was one of the surprising results of the CIVGOV research projects: the public is not necessarily interested in learning about the EU, even when political and civil society representatives actively seek to inform their members.

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what it takes to make a contribution, influence a decision, propose an implementation schedule, or monitor reluctant implementers may be well-nigh impossible. Yet, a genuine and effective communication strategy of some kind must be adopted if SNA and CSO representatives are to be minimally credible and their input intelligible. Most subnational governments have created European Information Centers where the public can find information about the EU and the action of the SNA within it. The Committee of the Regions tries to reach the local communities (mostly economic and social actors) through a number of publications, activities, and initiatives. The regional representative offices in Brussels act as liaisons between local societies and European institutions (Fargion et al. 2006). Other European institutions do the same, often approaching the most interested and dynamic strata of the population, the students. Yet these structures and initiatives may be useless unless people are convinced that what happens at EU level is important for them and unless they are interested in holding their subnational governmental and non-governmental representatives accountable for what they do in Brussels. Transparency makes sense only if the public is interested in using the information made available. And in this regard, too, SNAs and CSOs may have mixed motives. MLG does not discourage transparency per se, but makes its purpose less immediately apparent. Because responsibility for decisions is dispersed among many levels, none of which is ultimately responsible, disclosing information does not serve the purpose of highlighting anyone’s input. To the extent that it does, it tends to produce an overly complex picture of who does what in the EU. So, transparency requires concerted action on the part of SNAs and CSOs to provide their constituents and the public at large with enough information to make a balanced assessment of their activity within MLG arrangements. While CSOs have similar problems to SNAs in explaining themselves to their membership, such action may help citizens get a better sense of what they and the other actors do in MLG arrangements. The single most effective means of promoting transparency, though, would be for subnational governmental representatives to ask for citizens to vote at subnational elections on the basis of their past record and future program in the EU and be willing to be held accountable for it.

Responsiveness MLG arrangements also have a mixed record with regard to responsiveness. Responsiveness—the relationship between initial preferences and final outcomes—is a more slippery concept than might appear at first sight. To begin with, responsiveness has an ambiguous relationship with democracy. Parliaments all over the democratic world normally discourage or even prohibit constituencies from issuing binding mandates to their representatives. The idea is that parliaments are deliberative assemblies in which decisions should be reached by counting the votes only after open debate has given ample opportunity for delegates to air their best arguments. The very root of the word “parliament” suggests that exchange of ideas and arguments is central to parliamentary

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activity. It is therefore implied that changing one’s mind and allowing oneself to be convinced by other representatives’ arguments is the essence of parliamentary debates. If this is true, then constituencies cannot bind their representatives to issue a specific opinion or to vote in a given way, but must leave them free to decide whether they might not indeed better serve the constituency’s interests by allowing themselves to be won over by better arguments. Responsiveness, then, may hold not between the initial preferences and the outcome of the deliberative process, but between the representative’s interpretation of those initial preferences and the final outcome. This interpretative activity may obviously produce distortions. Scharpf (1988) warned against the expressive rigidity that may ensue from the possibility of issuing binding mandates or from the presence of an overly rigid institutional format, by pointing to what he labeled “the joint decision trap.” In an interlocking federal setting, in which distributional/redistributional policies must be decided with the concurrence of both the federal and the federated units, the willingness of the institutional actors to reach a decision that would serve the common good (distribution of resources, characterized by cooperation) may be held in check by their disagreement over the implementation of that decision that serves the interests of the individual states (redistribution of resources, characterized by coordination). The expected solution in the case of “mixed motive games” is that everyone will end up getting something, which ultimately defies the redistributional purpose. “In addition to being allegedly inefficient, inflexible and, sometimes, unnecessary, joint programmes are also often criticized for their undemocratic character, confronting parliaments with faits accomplis of bureaucratic negotiations between the two levels of government” (Scharpf 1988: 249; emphasis in the original). He attributes this situation to the fact that federal states were constrained in their search for a common good solution by their responsiveness to state preferences, understandably prescribing the maximization of state intake. Non-binding preferences and the decoupling of distributive from redistributive decisions might make it possible for state representatives to reach a joint decision that would realize the common good. Scharpf (1988) himself suggested the latter solution—decoupling—and praised the European Union system for accomplishing just that. In the EU MLG system, distributive decisions are reached among state representatives at some distance from their respective constituencies—an institutional mechanism that reduces responsiveness, but leads, paradoxically, to better legislation. Benz (2000), on the other hand, after observing that even in the German case cooperative and coordinated solutions were achieved more frequently than the “joint decision trap” model would have predicted, suggested that the explanation lay in another factor: loose preferences. . . . joint decision-making in regional policy has led to the evolution of a community of experts including representatives of Economic Ministries and independent analysts . . . formed around common orientations, [that] cooperate on the basis of mutual trust and form stable networks. . . . policy communities shield intergovernmental cooperation from the influence of parliaments and party competition. A greater efficiency in joint policy-making is thus achieved at the cost of parliamentary democracy. (Benz 2000: 25–6)

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Incomplete or insufficient specification of initial preferences, then, may actually help democratic decision-making at federal (Union) level. When constituencies issue only vague policy preferences—a higher level of development, a cleaner environment, better education—without specifying exactly how these goals should be achieved and what the relative costs and benefits will be, it becomes the job of the representative to figure out the details and sell them back to members of the constituency. Obviously, any one constituency may always find reasons to be dissatisfied with the final outcome, but, at the same time, joint decision-making takes place. Non-binding preferences and loose coupling, then, are key to MLG output legitimacy in the EU, but this is achieved at the cost of responsiveness. It also signals a shift from a logic that puts a premium on formal institutional power to one that privileges information and expertise. The term “loosely coupled” signifies that decisions in one arena do not completely determine decisions in other arenas, but have only partial influence . . . This means that politics is linked not by binding decisions but by transfers of information, not by delegates with clearly defined mandates, but by representatives who negotiate on goals and not fixed positions. . . . Independent actors, who formulate agendas and proposals, are often more important (and more powerful in governance) than those who have formal powers to participate in decisions. Loose coupling is realized by a shift in the logic of interaction between actors at different institutional levels. The emphasis of this interaction is not control or decision-making but rather information exchange and persuasion. (Benz 2000: 33)

All of this tells us that strict responsiveness is unattainable or counterproductive. At the limit, it would seem that responsiveness is about educating the constituency into preferring whatever the outcome of the decision-making process may be rather than of faithfully translating pre-existing preferences into policy outcomes. For such a complex and delicate task to be performed honestly and diligently, representatives would need to be in close contact with members of their constituency. Responsiveness, even in its more elaborated form, would be all the more authentic, the more intimate the linkage between the constituency and its representatives. This takes us back to issues of representation. Political science has long debated the changes that political representation has undergone in times of increasing detachment between represented and representatives and in times of transformation (and possible decline) of party structures. It was suggested that representation is less and less a relationship that finds its founding moment “ex ante,” when representatives are authorized by their constituents to represent them, and that conveys the preferences of the constituents “ex fundo” along the chain of representation, and is increasingly rather a relationship that finds its founding moment “ex post,” once the representative gets reconfirmed for not having misperformed and through which they convey “ex alto” their own ideas and projects to the constituency, which will decide after the fact whether it liked the outcome (Andeweg 2003). In other words, representation reflects less and less an organic and tight linkage with constituents (ex ante-ex fundo) and rather

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hinges on the programmatic and leadership skills of the individual representatives (ex post-ex alto). So, how does MLG fare on responsiveness? As usual, the picture is mixed: the answer depends more than ever on the match or mismatch between the level at which problems are experienced, and the level at which solutions are applied and institutional and non-institutional actors mobilized. With regard to highly complex issues like economic and social cohesion, it might prove rather difficult for non-institutional actors to articulate precise preferences at the territorial scale at which cohesion is pursued, that is, the subnational level, and hence influence policy output. In Europe, trade unions and employers’ associations historically built their organizational structures in order to be able to interact with the governmental level that was most relevant to them, the national government. Their ideational and planning capacities, therefore, are mostly concentrated at that level. Subnational branches often lack the technical capacities to interact on a par with local governments on developmental issues. Unless the subnational tier is more than a simple territorial articulation of the nation-state, but is rather characterized by a distinct cultural, social, or economic identity that constitutes it as a relevant territorial actor, then social partners will not have developed historically those capacities that would allow them to contribute constructively to the decision-making process, and will usually take a reactive stance and remain at the margins of policy-making. CSOs will also mostly concentrate on handling social displacement, hence their preferences will also be oriented towards conservative goals. Cohesion issues will then be left mainly to the institutional actors whose expertise and interest are supposedly coterminous with the scope of the problem. When environmental issues are at stake, it is possible, instead, that the clearest preference articulation, and hence the greatest influence on policy output, might come from civil society organizations and social movements, whereas social partners and institutional actors may take up rearguard and defensive positions. Finally, in the case of higher education policy, CSOs and institutional actors may not have much to say, whereas the “social partners”—the teaching staff and the institution’s management—will probably have the most articulate set of preferences (although not necessarily preferences that, if implemented, would ameliorate the problem at hand). Whether or not MLG arrangements allow for policy responsiveness, then, depends very much on the issue at hand and the profile of the actors most directly involved in it. In general, however, MLG arrangements allow for the decoupling of certain framework decisions that are the province of supranational and national institutions and therefore liable to being influenced by national electoral constituencies, from the elaboration of implementation details, which are normally left to subnational authorities, social partners, and civil society organizations. In the case of Structural Funds, for example, financial envelopes and framework regulations are decided by supranational and national representatives, after an extensive consultation process that involves all the other actors, while the allocation of funds across the Union and the precise utilization of the Funds are decided through “objective criteria” (the allocation of the Funds) and

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by lower-level actors (the implementation details). By decoupling framework legislation from detailed decision-making, actors’ preferences may be, within limits, responsively pursued.

Accountability Accountability differs from responsiveness in that it implies “hard” sanctioning powers on the part of the ruled vis-a`-vis the ruler: “paternalistic dictators may be responsive to the needs of their followers without being accountable” (Papadopoulos 2007: 472). In contemporary democracies and in the European Union, inasmuch as representativeness and responsiveness have faltered, greater hopes have been pinned on accountability. Yet accountability, too, is not exempt from problems, particularly in horizontal governance structures where policy-makers and policy-takers “appear as ‘co-producers’ of the collectively binding decisions that affect them” (Papadopoulos 2007: 473). Like many of the concepts that we have encountered so far, accountability too is an “essentially contestable and contested concept” (Bovens 2007; see also Wiener 2007). According to Bovens, there are at least five different dimensions of accountability—transparency, liability, controllability, responsibility, responsiveness—that each society balances in different ways.6 In a narrow sense, though, accountability is just the activity of giving account, which in turn implies a relationship between an accountor and an accountee. In Bovens’s words, “Accountability is a relationship between an actor and a forum, in which the actor has an obligation to explain and to justify his or her conduct, the forum can pose questions and pass judgment, and the actor may face consequences” (Bovens 2007: 450; emphasis in the original). The relationship described by accountability usually involves a principal and an agent, as in the case of a parliament and a minister. However, there are also forms of accountability in which the forums are not the principals of the actor, as in the case of a legal court, a professional association, and the media. Accountability relationships therefore vary depending on: (1) to whom account is rendered (the nature of the forum: political, legal, administrative, professional, social); (2) who is the actor that gives account (corporate, hierarchical, collective, individual); (3) what is the nature of the conduct to be accounted for (financial, procedural, product); (4) why there is a sense of obligation to give account (whether based on a vertical, diagonal, or horizontal relationship) (Bovens 2007: 461). Moreover, accountability may serve multiple functions: it is not just meant to prevent actors (agents) from being diverted from the task assigned to them (democratic accountability), but also to 6

It is inevitably noticeable that the normative EU debate has not yet settled for any widely shared definitions of the fundamental terms. Transparency, responsiveness, and accountability are by some treated as independent measures of output legitimacy, while others consider them as different determinants of accountability. In this chapter, I adopt the first view. Clearly, the conceptual boundaries of these terms have not yet solidified, any more than has the object of their normative assessment.

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keep actors’ behavior in check (constitutional accountability) and to allow them to learn from their own mistakes and to assess their own performance (reflexive accountability). Accountability is complicated by the complexity of European governance arrangements: by the difficulty of attributing to any one actor in particular responsibility for the final decision (the problem of “many hands”)—and by particularly long chains of spurious delegation (Curtin 2007)—as well as by the simultaneous existence of multiple forums to which the actors must give account (the problem of “many eyes”). Moreover, European governance arrangements may seek to preserve a certain degree of opacity in an effort to facilitate decisions that, if made in broad daylight, might induce certain constituencies to regain control in order to tighten responsiveness. To the extent that this succeeds, MLG arrangements may become more responsive at one level only to become less effective at another. Hence, in order to preserve effectiveness, governance arrangements might be best shrouded in a mist of opacity. In the case of MLG arrangements, several types of actors may be asked to give an account of their behavior. Supranational institutions and national governments stand in a particularly odd relationship with one another, as they act, alternatively, as each other’s accountor and accountee. National governments are also supposed to give an account of their actions at EU level to national legislatures, but this is highly unlikely for all the good reasons that discussion of the democratic deficit of the EU has repeatedly highlighted (cf. Curtin 2007). Subnational authorities are accountable, directly or indirectly,7 either to their regional or local legislatures (in the case of regions and local governments endowed with legislative powers) or to the central authorities that appointed them (in the case of administrative regions and municipalities). Social partners and civil society organizations are accountable first and foremost to their membership. More generally, however, all these actors are also accountable to the local or global society, depending on the scope of the issue at hand. The effectiveness of these various methods of account-giving depends on the relationship between actor and forum, on the interrelationships among actors, and on the system of incentives embedded in the MLG arrangement. The segmented nature of MLG arrangements allows only to a moderate degree for responsibility to be assigned where it belongs. Taking the example of the Structural Funds, belated and ineffective utilization of the funds may be attributed to a number of factors: delays in making matching funds available on the part of the central or regional administration; poor coordination between administrations at different levels; scant cooperation on the part of the social partners; opposition to development plans on the part of civil society, etc. Shifting the blame and avoiding retribution may be highly tempting under these circumstances. Perverse behaviors are also possible: ineffective use of the funds may be

7

In some member-states, regional authorities are politically accountable to an assembly of local representatives.

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seen by some forums as the actor’s ingenious strategy for perpetuating the conditions that will keep the funds flowing. Unless there are ways of exposing and punishing this type of behavior, accountor and accountee at one level of accountability may team up to cheat actors and forums at other levels. The Commission has inserted a performance clause in the release of the Structural Funds: unless regions use the funds reasonably rapidly and efficiently, a certain percentage of the funds is withheld and eventually forgone. This is, however, only a blunt prod for virtuous behavior that has not eliminated abuse. The Committee of the Regions, while officially a consultative body of experts in regional and local matters, is perceived by most of its members as a representative assembly and a forum for discussion. Within it, through tight collaboration in political groups, commissions, and working groups, members end up monitoring each other’s work and critically assessing their own performance. While no hard sanctions for deviant behavior are contemplated, the Committee of the Regions could in theory function as a forum in which the activities of regional and local representatives are scrutinized and held to account. In the case of environmental policy, civil society organizations keep the activities of their national governments under tight control and feed information to the Commission, allowing it to question proposed solutions, sanction failed compliance, and push forward policy implementation. In the case of higher education, the introduction of national systems of quality assurance allows central governments to prompt higher education institutions into virtuous behavior through the compilation of statistics on quality performance and through the use of financial incentives aimed at rewarding effective performers and punishing poor performers (Capano and Piattoni 2009). As we can see, actors at one level may act as forums at another level, even if they are not bound by principal-agent relations. Accountability relationships, in other words, function only insofar as there are forums interested in holding the actors to account, there is enough information to allow for the attribution of responsibility for actions, and there are effective ways of administering rewards and punishments. Any MLG structure should make sure that these three factors are present in order to secure accountability.

C O N C LU S I O N Output legitimacy cannot simply be equated to omnipotence (Scharpf 1999). As we saw, MLG arrangements are both facilitated and hindered in their legitimacysupplying function by being “loosely coupled.” The upsetting of established hierarchies among governmental levels that is the core of the concept of MLG also prevents them from lying along a clean line of delegation and accountability. Representative assemblies at each level (when they exist) have a hard time knowing, requesting, and assessing the behavior of their representatives. Social

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partners and civil society organizations have jurisdictions that do not match those of territorial authorities, and therefore have a hard time contributing to the decision-making process (input) and to implementation and evaluation activity (output). They could act as forums to which governmental actors must give account, but only if they were equipped to contribute to decision-making and implementation and therefore capable of evaluating the performance of their respective governmental level. In this way, they themselves would have to give an account of their actions to a constituency which is distant, diffuse, and often distracted. “Loose coupling” gives actors enough space for maneuver to distance themselves from the preferences of their own constituencies—assuming that these are precisely formulated and conveyed—and to legislate for the “common good.” If responsiveness is thus weakened, effectiveness might be boosted. Transparency is generally scarce: attribution of merit and blame where they belong is difficult. When it comes to assessing policy output and asking to give account of the behaviors, MLG experiences problems as well. Whether or not actors are indeed held to account will depend on the congruence between problems and forums before which the actors must explain and justify their actions; on the existence of mechanisms for collecting information on bureaucratic, corporate, collective, or individual behavior; and on the presence of mechanisms for rewarding effective and punishing ineffective behavior.

12 Democracy It [the European Union] can be both a leader and a laggard, lacking in legitimating instruments familiar to national arenas, yet ahead in others that are as novel to states as they are to the Union itself. . . . Whilst this means foregoing such legitimating qualities as mandated political programmes and popularly dismissible political leaderships it, arguably, imparts others, including an emphasis on Pareto-improving, rather than redistributive, policies and on scientifically and normatively demanding forms of deliberation. (Lord and Magnette 2002: 8)

I N T RO D U C T I O N As we saw in Chapter 9, the “problem of composition” prevents us from extrapolating from the legitimacy assessment of MLG arrangements the democratic temper of the EU. Non-democratic, yet legitimate, modes of governance may inhabit our national democracies without affecting their overall democratic temper (Lord 2004: 16). Democracy points to a relationship between citizens and rulers; governance indicates how specific decisions are made. The first is a polity issue, the second a policy one. And yet the two issues are indeed related, both theoretically and practically. From a theoretical point of view, the criteria according to which we assess a specific mode of governance—its procedures and outcomes—are constrained by whether or not we consider the polity that employs them as democratic and which standards of democracy we adopt to this end. From a practical point of view, if it is true, as we have tended to believe, at least since Tocqueville (1988/1835), that participation in policy-making is a tremendous source of democratic training, then we will certainly want participation in governance arrangements to tell us something about what it takes to practice and preserve democracy. These issues are all the more urgent if we accept the idea that MLG does not simply describe a mode of governance—a specific arrangement for making binding decisions—but the very structure of the EU itself. In this case, the legitimacy of the procedures through which binding decisions are made will depend, and impinge, upon the democratic content of the polity that issues those decisions. At a basic level, legal acts issued by non-democratic governments will be illegitimate, as will illegal

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acts issued by democratic governments: in order to have legitimacy, we need both legality and democracy (Beetham and Lord 1998). The same goes for the EU. When addressing the “why bother” question raised by Schmitter (2000), Lord (2004) provides two wholly convincing answers. First, “democracy remains a latent condition for the legitimation of the Union even in the absence of a manifest public clamour for the Union to proceed faster towards democratization.” Second, “the Union is required by its own stated objectives to be democratic” (Lord 2004: 17). But which model of democracy should we adopt for such an assessment? Normally scholars that debate the democratic deficit—or the democratic credentials—of the European Union start from one of two premises. The first is that inter-institutional relations in the EU do not reflect those normally observed in any of the conventional “forms of state,” whether parliamentary or presidential, unitary or federal. Because democracy is secured by a careful balance of powers, and because the EU does not replicate any of the existing and tested forms, EU democracy is found wanting. The second premise that often triggers scholars’ concern with EU democracy is that the EU does not correspond to any of the known and codified “models of democracy.” While the growing number and expanding reach of EU competences have induced a qualitative shift in its nature,1 the debate on how to achieve a functioning division of labor between the Union and the member-states has lagged behind.2 Hence, we do not really know which standards of democracy we should apply to the EU, and even whether we should engage in the exercise at all. Since the inter-institutional balance of powers and the quantity and quality of legislative competences are issues normally discussed within state-like polities, both premises imply dealing with the issue of the state-like character of the EU—a character which it is doubtful whether the EU possesses or would be able ever to acquire. What is apparently needed, from both points of view, is a process of constitutionalization that could enshrine and codify the respective competences of states and Union in a constitutional order and, consequently, establish the exact roles and relations among EU institutions and describe the modes of governance that can be democratically practiced within this new institutional order. We should be warned, though, that, in the EU more than in any national setting, facts normally overstep codifications and theorizations: we are always bound to be catching up with reality. This is particularly true of constitutional debates: constitutions codify established relations and formalize existing practices. The present reflection, then, starts from the assumption that the breadth and reach of EU competences are such that the EU has acquired a state-like character—although of what kind is unclear—and that, hence, its democratic temper 1

This “quantity-to-quality” transformation is normally situated in the decade bracketed by the Single European Act and the Treaty of Amsterdam (1986–96). See Weiler (1999b, ch. 2), Neunreither and Wiener (2000) for a discussion of this transformation. 2 The Nice Treaty exposed the limits of the existing “constitutional balance” that the Constitutional Convention and the Treaty proposals that ensued have not yet been able to resolve.

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must be assessed by looking at the ways in which these competences are exercised. In other words, by the ways in which it governs. This normative approach, thus, dovetails with the governance approach to EU studies (Jachtenfuchs 2001; Kohler-Koch and Rittberger 2006), of which the debate on MLG is part and parcel. Yet, it also reconnects back to the literature on European integration by recognizing that the slow accumulation of decisions, competences, procedures, and practices ends up transforming the very nature of the polity that produces them.

T H E Q U E S T I O N O F S TA N DA R D S We are used to contrasting majoritarian with consociational democracies (Lijphart 1999). To over simplify a huge debate, the former can afford, thanks to the fairly homogeneous complexion of the society over which they govern, to make clear-cut decisions by virtue of the numerical majority that governments normally enjoy in parliament; while the latter must carefully seek to build in parliament that consensus that is not naturally present in society, and must consequently make compromise decisions after securing oversized majorities. Scholars have long debated which type of democracy is more effective and legitimate. It is probably fair to summarize the debate’s conclusions by saying that both types have their strengths and weaknesses—majoritarian democracies are capable of taking rapid and incisive decisions, while consensual democracies must strive towards consensus without alienating any of their many constituents— but above all they are uniquely suited to the societies which they govern. In the case of consociational democracies, we expect legislative acts to be issued after significant prior debate in parliament and probably also in other institutional settings in which various representatives of society are involved. Decisions made through the sheer force of numbers will not do. Still, even in these democracies, debates must at some point come to an end and decisions be made: chronic incapacity to decide will also not do. Since majority voting remains the most democratic decision-making technique, once all arguments have been produced and all discussions have been exhausted, a certain injection of majoritarianism in consociational democracies is unavoidable and even welcome, as it signals the capacity of these democracies to bring discussion to a close and to decide. Similarly, in majoritarian democracies too, decisions must sometimes be based on a broad consensus. Majoritarianism and consociationalism, then, remain two ideal-typical modes of democratic decision-making which are never found in their pure form in any existing democracy. Clearly the European Union gravitates more towards the consociational end of the spectrum, even though some majoritarian traits can be found in it as well. In order to discuss whether MLG arrangements contribute to the EU’s democratic temper, we need to decide whether the EU is a state-like polity, which can therefore be reasonably assessed as a democracy, and, if so, which democratic

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standards should be employed. In what follows, I identify five sets of propositions that give different answers to the above questions.

(I) The EU is not a state; therefore, cannot be assessed as a democracy The most extreme position is probably held by Andrew Moravcsik (2001, 2002). The EU is an international organization, although endowed with particularly developed structures and far-reaching powers,3 so it cannot be subjected to democratic scrutiny. Standards of democracy can be applied only to the member-states that pursue their national interests through the EU. Moravcsik’s is a particular instance of a more general position that claims that, since international relations are anarchical in character, democratic standards cannot be applied to them, a position which appears too reductive (see Burgess 2006: 236; F
llesdal and Hix 2005). Several institutional features of the EU—the directly elected Parliament with ample co-decision powers, the increasing use of qualified majority voting (QMV) in Council’s decisions, the far-reaching and deep-probing powers of the ECJ, the capacity of the Commission to exclusively represent the member-states in international trade negotiations, the addition of the European Charter of Human Rights to the latest Treaty revisions, and so forth—call into question what appears to be a simplistic interpretation of the EU as a mere international organization. All of these features of the EU, we must remember, have been decided by the democratic representatives of the memberstates, and have not occurred “by stealth.” Because of the legitimation given by the member-states, these powers and competences must be considered as wholly legitimate. But do they constitute a political system that is also, in itself, democratic? According to Moravcsik, we should not even ask this question. Not too distant from Moravcsik’s position is Majone’s (1998). Though acknowledging the state-like character of the EU, Majone claims that the types of policies—regulatory policies—that the EU mostly produces do not require it to be a democracy. The EU is a “regulatory state”: a state whose job is to eliminate regulatory barriers to trade and to manage the single market. The types of decisions that the EU makes are Pareto-optimizing: since they improve everyone’s well-being, they are legitimate in themselves. The only type of legitimacy that the EU needs—and according to Majone (cf. Chapter 10) already has!—is output legitimacy. Consequently, governance arrangements are legitimate insofar as they facilitate arriving at Pareto-optimizing regulatory decisions. If anything is needed at all, it is an improvement in the ex ante and ex post legitimacy safeguards for the giant 3 Moravcsik defines the EU as “a particular sort of limited multi-level constitutional polity designed within a special social and historical context” (Moravcsik 2001: 186–7). He also states that “the EU constitutional order is not only barely a federal state; it is barely recognizable as a state at all” (Moravcsik 2001: 163–4).

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regulatory agency which is the Commission (Majone 1998: 13–15). Standards of democracy are irrelevant and inapplicable to a “regulatory state.” The problem with Majone’s view is that the EU is not just a “regulatory state,” and that many of its policies (even the regulatory ones) have important redistributive effects (F
llesdal and Hix 2005: 10–12).4

(II) The EU is a “state-like polity,” but cannot be assessed as a democracy A second set of propositions suggests that the EU is indeed a “state-like polity”— hence standards of democracy could in theory be applied to it—but some current and future features of the EU prevent us from doing that. Holding this position necessitates, however, specifying which model of democracy is deemed adequate for the EU. Most scholars who take this position implicitly assume representative liberal democracy to be the standard that we should apply to the EU: unfortunately, it is a standard that the EU cannot meet. The first and most famous proponent of this view is Joseph Weiler (1997, 1999). “Democracy” implies the existence of a “demos” in whose name decisions are made and to whom the decision-makers are ultimately accountable. Since a European demos does not exist, democratic criteria cannot be applied to the EU. Obviously, one could retort that the non-existence of a European demos does not imply that a EU demos could not exist.5 Yet this would be more the collation of separate national demoi (in the plural), lacking the internal cohesion that we would expect from a demos (in the singular). European citizens may well be the objects (takers) of EU decisions, but they would not yet be the subjects (makers) of such decisions because, not being a demos, they cannot be the sovereigns of the EU polity. Only a limited, segmented notion of democracy can thus apply to the EU. The individual national demoi can hold their governments to account for the decisions that they make at EU level, but they cannot hold EU institutions as such to account for those decisions. This is a “romantic” view of democracy that understands the demos as an entity that pre-dates the state by which it is governed. We know that, in the history of European states, this sequence has not always been followed: plenty of states were created before a nation—a demos in whose name the state would rule—existed. The fact that a nation, a demos, can be created after a state, and 4 F
llesdal and Hix (2005) compare Majone’s and Moravcsik’s views to those of early twentiethcentury elitists (Pareto, Michels, and Weber) and criticize them for missing two fundamental advantages of participatory and deliberative forms of democracy: that they are mechanisms for ensuring that the “benevolent, but non-accountable rulers” will always be trustworthy, and that they allow for changes in voters’ preferences through involvement (direct participation or indirect representation) in deliberative forums. 5 This is a point repeatedly made by Brendan Connelly in several oral presentations during our collaboration within the EU-CONSENT Network of Excellence. I am indebted to him for this nontrivial distinction.

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thanks to the activities of that state, should induce a more optimistic view of the EU. Indeed, I surmise that there are European states—Britain, Spain, and Italy would be obvious examples—whose “national” character is still widely questioned. After all, Weiler (1999: 3–9) himself draws a telling parallel between the EU and the peoples of Israel, who were made into one people by a covenant (with God), whose ultimate implication they came to understand only in the course of abiding by that covenant (“We will do and we will hearken”). Clearly, this position opens up the debate about what might constitute a demos, whether it can be understood only as a “nation” or also as a people recognizing the binding force of a covenant or a constitution (Habermas 2001a, 2001b). A modified version of this position, then, would still hold that criteria of democracy cannot be applied to the EU, but would take a more voluntaristic view of the demos and would accept the idea that it can be constructed, just as many European demoi were constructed well after the state had been created, often by relegating native nations and minority languages to the level of subcultures and dialects and by making the language and culture of the state-building elite into the “national” language and culture. According to this position, however, even if we could allow for the possibility of a European demos to evolve after the creation of a European state, this would still not happen because of the formidable linguistic and cultural barriers that exist among the current peoples of Europe. It would take an extraordinary amount of state-building effort to overcome the resistance that would likely be interposed by extremely well-rooted national and state identities such as the European ones, and that would not be worthwhile. One cannot simply turn back the clock (Pierson 2000, 2004). Twentieth-century Europe is not the Europe of the Middle Ages: centuries of European states’ history stand in the way and cannot be undone so easily. A third version of this same basic position holds that, in order to create an EU demos, EU institutions should be functioning in such a way as to allow for the slow development amongst the peoples of Europe of principled attachment to them (Habermas’s “constitutional patriotism”; Habermas 2001a, 2001b). Unfortunately, EU institutions do not function in such a propitious way and act, rather, as stumbling blocks on the path to the creation of an EU demos. How could “constitutional patriotism” towards institutions which do not conform to the basic model of parliamentary democracy develop among the peoples of Europe? If this type of attachment were ever to develop, EU institutions would first need to be reformed—which is precisely what appears to be exceedingly difficult given the resistance of EU citizens to accept treaty reforms that could bring the EU closer to that model. Ultimately, it is the very idea of applying to the EU the liberal representative democratic model (in either its parliamentary or presidential format) that appears to be hopelessly flawed. Against this position and in a much more optimistic vein stand the arguments of both F
llesdal and Hix (2005) and Schmitter (2007a, 2007b). F
llesdal and Hix emphasize the transformative effect on people’s preferences and identities of being involved in deliberative forums, either directly (through participation) or indirectly (through representation). Schmitter warns against rushing towards full

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democratization of the European Union, but certainly looks with favor upon sustained incremental experimentalism with new forms of democratization, lest the double bind of national “morbidity symptoms” and waning supranational “permissive consensus” trigger an overreaction on the part of European citizens.

(III) The EU could be assessed as a democracy if only its institutions were to conform to a democratic model and its institutional balance replace a constitutional order I now turn to a set of arguments that explore the practical difficulties of applying standards of democracy to the EU, while accepting that such standards could be applied in theory, hence, accepting the “state-like” character of the European Union. These positions are of a more technical character: they dwell on the peculiarities of EU institutions viewed in isolation, as well as on the peculiarities of their reciprocal relationship. They must, therefore, refer in their analysis to existing models of democracy and state explicitly the standards that they intend to apply. Moreover, they necessarily have to face the issue of constitutionalism. As Lord (2004: 23–9) argues, the only models of democracy that one could plausibly take as a point of reference when discussing EU democracy are of the consensustype—“modified consociationalism” and “concurrent consent” (see also Bogaards and Crepaz 2002).6 The first argument simply states that none of the EU institutions works “properly,” that is, as they would in a “proper” liberal representative democracy—which is to be expected, as Lord (2004: 5–6) warns, since no two liberal representative democracies work in exactly the same way. The list of deficiencies that prevent EU institutions being equated to those of any liberal representative democracy is long and well known (Weiler et al. 1995):


The Commission—part of the executive branch of the EU—is not “democratic,” because it does not properly reflect in its composition the balance among member-states (as it would in a consociational model) and because it

6 Lord (2004: 23–9) discusses three couplets of democratic types—direct/indirect, consensus/ majoritarian, bargaining/deliberative—and concludes that two versions of consensus democracy— modified consociationalism and concurrent consent—can reasonably be used as models of democracy to assess the European Union. On the one hand, a “consociational approach assumes that a democratic Union would be one in which EU institutions can be controlled by representatives of the national democracies of the Union often operating with formally equal decision and veto rights” (23). Modified consociationalism adds to the familiar traits of consociationalism the feature that “representatives of national democracies are themselves open to control by their publics or national parliaments in how they exercise the powers and rights of each national democracy within the EU’s institutional order” (26–7). “On the other hand, implicit in another approach to consensus democracy that I term ‘concurrent consent’ is the additional requirement that representatives of national democracies should not only reach a high level of consensus between themselves but also with those elected to express the purpose of representing the public in Union institutions. Its goal, in other words, is consensus within a divided system of government” (25; emphasis added).

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is not wholly independent of member-state influence (as it should be in the ideal-typical liberal representative model). Moreover, it cannot be held accountable for individual acts by the European Parliament, which has only limited powers of sanction and dismissal. The Council—in part, the executive and in part, the EU’s “Senate”—is “somewhat democratic” as it represents the individual national demoi (as in a federal or consociational model), but the creeping expansion of QMV weakens the protection afforded to each national demos. However, as in consociational democracies, consensual practices carry the day. QMV can be thought of more as a safeguard against stalemates that, if unanimity ruled, would allow just one member-state to hold in check all others, than as a way of extorting consent from recalcitrant members. The quest for consensus is as strong in the Council as it would be in any consociational assembly. Moreover, the national representatives in the Council are only weakly accountable to their national constituencies, represented in the national parliaments, because these latter have difficulty keeping abreast of EU issues and Council negotiations, and are normally busy with other matters.7 Although several arrangements have been made to allow national parliaments to perform their supervisory function more effectively, this control is still rather ineffective in most cases. However, in consociational democracies too, the elites representing the social “pillars” have considerable leeway in cutting deals, accommodating each other’s position in final decisions, and reporting back to their constituencies only what they deem appropriate to keep the consociation working. Indeed, a certain degree of separatedness among the various pillars is one of the fundamental ingredients of successful consociationalism. The European Parliament is also only “dimly democratic,” because, though directly elected, it suffers from a well-known list of shortcomings. It does not have the powers that parliaments normally wield in parliamentary democracies (limited co-legislation powers with the Council, limited powers to approve or reject the executive and the budget). The parties that are represented within it are odd collations of national parties; they do not run for EU elections on shared platforms, and have in practice limited means of sanctioning and keeping in line their MEPs. While European elections take place on the same days and with roughly the same electoral system, proportional representation (PR), electoral constituencies are still carved out of national constituencies and are far too large to allow for any significant voter-politician relationship that might even remotely resemble whatever relationship exists at the national level. Moreover, European elections take place at the end of separate electoral campaigns, run on national issues rather than with

7 As is well known, some national parliaments are more effective in this regard than others (Auel and Benz 2007). The Lisbon Treaty, should it be ratified, will expand the oversight and legislative proposal functions of the national parliaments.

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The Normative Challenge reference to EU issues. The press does not normally help to create a sense that European, rather than “second order national,” elections are being held, as newspapers and TV and radio channels report and comment mostly on the various national debates (if at all). The European Court of Justice does not need to be “democratic,” as no national constitutional court strictly is. The judges of the ECJ are nominated by the national executives, and hence “represent” the national judicial traditions and sensitivities. This is not too dissimilar from what happens in national constitutional courts, whose judges are selected by the executive, or nominated by the President, or appointed by the self-governing body of the magistrature, or a mix of the above. However, the ECJ is a fairly independent organ: as with most other constitutional courts, what really matters is the experience, independence, and, one might say, wisdom of individual judges rather than their national background or partisan affiliation. The European Central Bank is also not “democratic,” if only in the restrictive sense of having a federal structure, and hence, of representing the apexes of the national central banks. It is a highly independent institution: much more independent than expected in a majoritarian parliamentary model, but not significantly more independent than would be expected in a consociational parliamentary model.

The upshot of this position is that, as of today, the EU cannot be considered democratic, even on either the consensus or federal definition of democracy. However, there should be nothing to prevent it from eventually acquiring those characteristics. A slightly more radical and exacting version of the same position holds that the real problem with today’s EU institutions does not lie so much in the powers that they hold individually, but in the balance that they jointly strike. This is the constitutional problem—and more specifically the “institutional balance” problem—which concerns legal scholars in particular (e.g. Joerges and Dehousse 2002). They find that the balance of powers between Council, Commission, and Parliament (and the ECJ) is not that prescribed by the trias politica, Montesquieu’s “separation of powers” doctrine. Concern over the institutional balance of the EU stemmed from the qualitative changes brought about by the Single European Act (Neunreither and Wiener 2000) and the quantum leap in both quantity and quality of regulation that it unleashed. “The sheer amount of regulation and the way in which it takes place signal the end of the territorial, nation-state centred governance and nation state constitutionalism” (Joerges and Dehousse 2002: 15). At the extreme, “administration” becomes “constitution-making.” The concern of these scholars is that, through regulation and administration, the “once rigidly vertical relationships maintained between regulators and the public” would be fundamentally “reworked.” The “heavily network-oriented” committees and agencies that characterize EU governance constitute experimental structures that appear to spring out of “necessity” and expediency, but that may overlook and overturn the habitual institutional balance. So, even though

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legal scholars appear to accept the idea that the EU may lack a “proper” Constitution without being, for this reason, less of a state-like polity worthy of being assessed according to democratic standards, they do so for different reasons:









Weiler (1999) argues that a Constitution does exist and that it is given by the Treaties; Lenaerts and Verhoeven (2002) consider the existing “institutional balance” functionally equivalent to a constitutionally sanctioned division of powers, even though what is being balanced are the different “interests” or “constituencies” represented via the different institutions and not their “powers” as in conventional doctrine.8 What disturbs Lenaerts and Verhoeven (2002), rather, is the shifting nature of this balance, which is continuously redefined by practice and informal agreements; Dehousse (2002) also shares this latter view, thinking that having a shifting “institutional balance” is probably unavoidable, and admits that it is perhaps actually preferable to having a fixed Constitution; Others (like Azulay 2002; Scott and Vos 2002) believe that it is broader social concerns that are sacrificed in the current “institutional balance.” These concerns are often also sacrificed in the strict application of the “rule of law,” understood as solely the defense of officially recognized interests.

The overall impression is that the “institutional balance” doctrine—introduced by the ECJ in the Meroni case (Joerges 2002: 6 n. 8)—may work to balance specific and broad interests, technical and social concerns only insofar as the different EU institutions decide to voice the concerns of those actors that get regularly excluded from the heavily technocratic “agencies, committees and less formal public/private networks” that make up the EU regulatory administration. As Joerges (2002: 22–3) remarks, “The authority of expertise threatens the realm of practical reasoning, the claim to equal participation by all concerned in decision-making, and the accountability of elected representatives to their constituencies.” This is because: Laymen and experts might have comparable intelligence and virtue, but they boast different types of knowledge. The expert’s knowledge cannot simply be substituted or “overruled” by the problem perceptions and preferences of the layman. It can, and should, be exposed to crucial observation through a quest for counter-expertise. (Joerges 2002: 23)

Gerstenberg and Sabel (2002) cut through this “Gordian knot” by opting decisively for a constitutional order that must be practiced before it can be codified, which they term “directly deliberative polyarchy.” Their description (and prescription) of EU governance arrangements implies the widespread use of deliberative practices—arguing, giving reasons—which are also the essence of legal procedures. If 8 One could also say that different institutions uphold different types of representation: ideological representation, national representation, functional representation, legal representation. The idea that different institutions give voice to different constituencies is the essence of “compound democracy” (Fabbrini 2007).

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day-to-day policy-making employs judicial-style argumentation, then this kind of policy-making activity (properly filtered upwards) may indeed become rule-making and, by accumulation, constitution-making (more below).

(IV) The EU is a state-like polity, but which type of democracy is appropriate for the EU? A fourth set of (increasingly widespread) positions claim that liberal, representative territorial democracy is inadequate for tackling the problems of today’s societies. As it fails to work domestically, it will a fortiori fail to work at EU level. This is a radical position because it does away with the presumption that the existence of a sovereign (national) demos, however constructed, is a necessary condition for a representative assembly to express its will and rather disperses sovereignty among a plethora of self-forming and self-governing arrangements. This position prompts us to tackle more urgently than ever the question of which type of democracy is most appropriate for the EU. Should we adopt an existing model and apply it to the EU with all its implications? Or should we orient ourselves towards creating a hybrid model that somehow replicates the EU institutional mix of intergovernmental, consociational, federal, and supranational structures? Or should we rather attempt to create an altogether new model tailored to the peculiar nature of the EU? Andersen and Burns (1996) and Smismans (2004) hold fairly similar positions. They believe that the problems of current societies have become so complex and specialized that no generalist assembly, such as a territorially elected parliament, can competently legislate on them, regardless of how much technical knowledge and expertise it commands through parliamentary committee hearings and inquiries. Therefore, parliaments everywhere are forced to delegate policymaking activity to specialized bodies which, in turn, must involve selected elements of civil society—particularly technical experts—if they are to muster the relevant knowledge. The position that territorial parliamentary democracy is doomed at all levels—and hence, that there is no point in taking it as the standard against which to assess the democratic temper of the EU—seems, however, excessively pessimistic. In Andersen and Burns’s and Smismans’s argumentation, an unwarranted transition from the analytical to the normative occurs. Andersen and Burns claim that expert networks often form spontaneously around specific issues, apparently in a free and open manner that ensures that all concerned interests may contribute to the policy solution. At the same time, they also note that these networks are, in actual fact, mostly sponsored by the European Commission, and they go on to recommend that these networks should include all concerned interests. It remains, thus, unclear whether they are pointing to an existing state of affairs—a world of spontaneously emerging and self-governing expert networks—or whether they are in fact making a recommendation for a future desirable state of affairs. It is also unclear exactly what role, if any, they assign

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to existing territorially representative assemblies. At times, they seem ready to contemplate a democracy shorn of any territorially representative institution. At other times, they seem to think that territorially representative institutions are indeed necessary and should remain in place to perform indispensable functions, such as acting as “depositories” of governance practices and as ultimate controllers of their mutual compatibility. It would then appear that their position is not much different from that of most scholars who, while painfully aware of the problems that trouble territorially representative assemblies, still think that they perform a fundamental institutional task. In their promotion of “organic” (Andersen and Burns 1996) and “functional” governance (Smismans 2004), these authors come very close to arguing that, since direct participation of all concerned interests (particularly experts) in decision-making is desirable, it should therefore become the new standard. They seem to forget that representative democracy was created precisely to take care of the business of rule in settings larger and more complicated than the city-state and that direct participation may be at most a useful complement to it. A second, more articulate position is that put forward by Gerstenberg and Sabel (2002) (but see also Cohen and Sabel 1997; Dorf and Sabel 1998). They, too, believe that the essence of decision-making in current societies is such that no amount of debate, knowledge, or foresight may ever spell out all possible future occurrences and, hence, legislate comprehensively upon them. Laws, like contracts, are by their nature “incomplete”: details need to be fleshed out in the course of doing things and new developments need to be factored in as they unfold. This implies that laws must create flexible governance structures capable of fleshing out those details and of factoring in those developments as need dictates. These governance structures may even be entrusted with the task of legislating in the first place, provided that (1) decisions are reached through deliberation, that is, through argumentation that does not just take preferences at face value but that justifies them, and (2) the arguments and procedures for arriving at those decisions are reported and filtered upwards, incrementally building up a depository of viable practices. Gerstenberg and Sabel (2002), too, appear to assign the same division of labor to expert networks, on the one hand, and representative assemblies, on the other. They do so not because they believe that territorial representation has exhausted its historical mission, but because they hold that uncertainty is paramount at all levels of decision-making and the only way of coping with it is through continuous negotiation.

(V) What if the EU were not that sui generis after all? By way of conclusion, I would like to sketch out a fifth position which claims that the EU is not that novel a political construct after all and that the problems of harmonizing different governmental levels and different principles of representation have already been encountered. Federalism is the name of such an effort. As was recalled in Chapter 10, the principle of “federalism” must be kept distinct

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from any actual embodiment of that principle normally denoted as “federation” (Burgess 2006). Some of the authors that are happy to use the theoretical toolkit of federalism would claim that the EU continues to exhibit the characteristics of both a federation and a confederation (Schmitter 2000, 2001), while others go a step further by arguing that federations like the EU and the United States are based on the coming together of both states and their peoples and that they should therefore be denoted as “compound democracies” (Fabbrini 2007).9 Burgess belongs to the first camp, since for him “the EU has strong federal and confederal elements that coexist simultaneously with equally robust intergovernmental and supranational features” (2006: 245). Federalism, as we have come to understand it since the Philadelphia Convention and the Federalist Papers (Hamilton et al. 1961/1787–8), contains both confederal and national elements as well as a certain inherent “power drift” towards the centre.10 The term “federalism” was “truly the middle term” between confederal and national government because it modified and then combined the “best characteristics of the two other forms”. This combination was thought to create “a new and better thing to which is given the name federalism”. One irony evident in this explanation, then, is that in attributing the term “federal” to the system the framers regarded as possessing both federal and national features, “we now regard as a unique principle what they regarded as a mere compound”. (Burgess 2006: 65; quoting from Diamond 1964: 27)

Unfortunately, federalism does not enjoy good currency in today’s EU circles, amounting to little more than a swear-word. Clearly, this has nothing to do with the intellectual history of the principle, but rather with the political use that has been made of it (either way). Michael Burgess reconstructs the many strands of federalist thought, showing how one of its most vital roots extends deep into British soil (Burgess 2006, ch. 6). We should not forget the presence of a rather vibrant federalist movement in Britain just after the World War II and its many connections to the European Federalist Movement (Mayne and Pinder 1990). To begin with, the context in which the EU was created was one that Elazar described as “a paradigm shift from a world of states, modelled after the ideal of the nation-state developed at the beginning of the modern epoch in the seventeenth century, to a world of diminished state sovereignty and increased state linkages of a constitutional federal character” (Burgess 2006: 226, quoting Elazar 1995: 5). Burgess describes the construction of the European Union as “internalising what

‘[ . . . ] it was clear in retrospect that after the ratification of the Constitution of 1789 there had been a significant substantive change in the nature of the American Union. This represented an empirical shift away from confederation to a much more consolidated form of union—what was often referred to as a “compound republic”—in which the national characteristics were expected ultimately to predominate’ (Diamond 1964: 38–40, as quoted by Burgess 2006: 56). 10 According to Burgess (2006: 56), the major accomplishment of the Federalists was to appropriate the term “federalism” for their project, which was in fact much more center-driven than that of the Confederalists, and infuse it with a new (now currently accepted) meaning. 9

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were the externalities of the state” (2006: 299)—the domesticization of international politics and the internationalization of domestic politics.11 Changing the context of international relations in favour of the “common interest” between states ensured that their energies were diverted from the competitive power politics that led to war into new areas of unity and cooperation that transcended the state. In consequence, the EU has introduced the rule of law into relations between European countries . . . It has in practice domesticated the balance of power so that the power politics of the so-called realist school of international relations (IR) has been replaced by “aspirations that come nearer to the ‘rights’ and responsibilities which reign in domestic politics”. (Burgess 2006: 229, quoting from Duchene 1994: 405)

In Monnet’s vision, the EU would progressively federalize (“by stealth”) by sharing an ever increasing number of policy issues and solutions, rather than through a single historical constitutional moment. Spinelli was rather critical of this vision and thought that it lacked the momentum to sustain itself and that the moment would come when the lack of a proper constitution would choke the progress attained through the “cumulative effect of functional achievements” (Burgess 2006: 231). Today both visions appear to be correct: on the one hand, the slow accumulation of policy competences has induced a jump “from quantity to quality” (Burgess 2006: 232); on the other, the lack of a constitution appears to be holding back further progress. Consequently, “the evolving EU is a case of federalism without federation” (Burgess 2006: 236). More precisely: The EU is not a federation in the conventional sense that we have defined in this book. It is not a state. But it is nonetheless a political union with strong federal and confederal elements and conspicuous policy outputs that broadly equate with the domestic policies of national states. It is, in other words, a new kind of federal-confederal union that we can classify either as “a new confederation” or a “new federal model”. (Burgess 2006: 239)

B AC K TO M LG In the previous section, I reviewed the different positions adopted regarding the possibility of conducting a democratic assessment of the EU, namely (I) those who argue that such an exercise is redundant and inappropriate because the EU 11

The following quote from Riley (1973) is most enlightening: “It is essential to study the development of national and international federal ideas together because national federalism is essentially an internalization of a form of external relations (a union of ‘sovereign’ states) while international federalism is essentially an externalization (world ‘government’) of a political form characteristic of the internal structure of a single state. Put another way, the development of federal ideas is the history of efforts to turn national government into international relations, and international relations into government” (Riley 1973: 89, as quoted by Burgess 2006: 246; emphasis added by Burgess).

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does not have a “state-like” character, (II) those who do think it has such a character, but who think it still cannot be assessed as a democracy because it lacks a demos, (III) those who think a demos might well be created in the future, but that the EU’s current institutional architecture prevents it from developing (IV) those who accept in principle that the EU can be assessed as a democracy, but discuss various democratic models to conclude that liberal representative democracy is outdated both domestically and a fortiori at EU level, and finally, (V) those who believe that the problem of the coexistence of different levels of authority and different sources of legitimacy and modes of representation have already been explored, and that this exploration is called federalism. Before reaching a conclusion on EU democracy, let us see what contribution MLG can make. On the input side, MLG permits the participation and representation of interests that are not always authorized to be involved in policy-making in their national contexts or not always in the same manner: subnational, functional, and civil society interests.

Authorization Actors representing these interests are authorized first and foremost by the Union itself—their involvement is mandated in the Treaties—even though their selection is governed by domestic rules. The recognition of their role in EU policy-making, thus, creates a direct link between these actors and the Union, which bypasses memberstates. Such a link has enormous symbolic importance because, by accrediting these actors as carriers of specific and legitimate claims vis-a`-vis the European polity, the Union seeks in exchange their legitimation. This inevitably creates tensions between them and the central governments, both in member-states where these levels do not exist or are not involved in domestic policy-making and in member-states where they exist for different purposes or where they are involved in policy-making in a different way.

Representation Subnational authorities, social partners, and civil society organizations represent first and foremost their own constituencies—subnational electorates, functional interests, and public values—but they also represent the right of the European people to be consulted through channels that are closer to them than conventional national channels. In the words of the first President of the Committee of the Regions, Pasqual Maragall, the regions represent Europe’s “grass roots” (Scho¨bel 1997: 5). What is acknowledged and represented by MLG institutional and noninstitutional actors, then, is the interest of local territories—the “peripheries,” to use an old term that gains new significance in the construction of the European polity—in participating in the making of those decisions that shape their destinies. The type of representation that is afforded to subnational authorities, social partners, and civil society organizations, is, however, far from full or perfect.

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Only a subset of regional and local authorities gain representation, at any one time, in the Committee of the Regions and those that do are selected by national governments from a range of candidates normally proposed by national associations of regional and local authorities. All sorts of balances—between large and small, rich and poor, industrial and agrarian, central and peripheral, left and right, strong and weak regions and localities—are struck through this selection process. The resulting mix, which for a long time was interpreted as a source of institutional weakness, in reality serves to ensure that no one governmental tier gains supremacy over the others and ends up representing itself as such, which, as Scharpf warned, might lead to the “joint decision trap.” What is being represented by the CoR, then, is not individual regional or local governments but the right of regional and local governments to be consulted when decisions that influence their lives are taken. This is why the Committee, although defined by the Treaties as a consultative body, must be considered as a sui generis “representative chamber” (Piattoni 2008b). The regional and local representatives that meet therein are not “experts” to be consulted for their technical knowledge, as would happen in other committees, but rather those who are “experts” at sounding out and relaying the point of view of the peripheries of Europe. Social partners and civil society organizations are represented in the Economic and Social Committee (Smismans 2000), but they are much more active in directly lobbying the Commission and the Parliament and their national governments (Ruzza and Della Sala 2007; Della Sala and Ruzza 2007). This is, by the way, also true of the regional and local authorities who are not ashamed of using lobbying methods typical of functional and civil society organizations. The blurring of public and private, which I discussed in theoretical terms in the first part of the book (Chapter 3), is also revealed by the similarity of the methods employed by governmental and nongovernmental actors to press their case in the EU.

Participation All of these interests—subnational, functional, and civil—also contribute through direct participation in policy-making, the essence of MLG. This is the context in which they have the opportunity to be most incisive, but also where they still experience difficulties and do not always rise to the occasion. In the ascending phase of decision-making, when regulations and directives are decided, the opinions of subnational, functional, and civil society representatives are sounded out, but the extent of their influence on policy decisions is hard to measure. It is in the implementation phase, though, that they can be most effective. We have seen how environmental legislation would probably remain ineffective if environmental groups did not monitor the implementation of the directives, feed information on failed implementation to the Commission, and collaborate with regional and local level authorities in carrying out Community directives. By acting as watchdogs and getting directly involved in policy implementation, NGOs make policy alongside national and subnational authorities. European associations of university students and rectors have been extremely active in prodding reluctant member-

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states to implement the Bologna Process and, particularly, the Lisbon Strategy. By requiring increasing services from universities, which are everywhere being asked to govern themselves and to take greater responsibility for meeting the financial and the quality targets set by OMC education, these functional groups play the same role that environmental groups and subnational authorities play in environmental policy. It is thanks to the collaboration between functional and civil society groups and subnational authorities that many “territorial” policies are being implemented. The Monitoring Committees of the Structural Funds, which institutionalize partnership in cohesion policy, have surprisingly revealed great difficulties in institutionalizing MLG collaboration. This is perhaps because the scope of the problem to be tackled—social and economic cohesion—does not match the organizational structure and technical capacities of functional and civil society actors. Consequently, these are often left at the margins of the implementation and monitoring process, which is dominated by governmental (national and subnational) actors. Functional interests and civil society organizations manage to make a real contribution where the region or the locality is characterized by a particular cultural, social, or economic profile that matches the jurisdiction of the subnational government; in other words, where regions and localities are not mere territorial partitions (spaces), but are territorial communities (places). On the output side, MLG arrangements contribute to the creation and diffusion of information on policy outputs and thus allow the European people to assess the responsiveness of their governments to their policy preferences and to hold them accountable for their actions.

Transparency Thanks to the involvement of subnational authorities, social partners, and civil society organizations, MLG promotes the production and diffusion of information, particularly to publics that would otherwise be left uninformed as to what the EU does. Regional offices in Brussels keep abreast of the issues debated in Community quarters and relay this information to those back home, thus prodding subnational authorities to take action, through the many channels— the offices themselves, the Committee of the Regions, the interregional associations, the national governments—available to them. The same is true of civil society organizations. The generation and diffusion of information facilitates direct participation, but whether it actually contributes to making the activities of these actors more transparent to their respective constituencies and to the public at large—thus allowing for an assessment of their input—is more difficult to say. Transparency is still one of the most problematic aspects of EU democracy and one that MLG arrangements only minimally help to ameliorate. Surely transparency could be greatly enhanced if subnational governments (those endowed with legislative powers) asked for votes to be cast on the basis of what they do in Brussels and if civil society organizations kept their membership informed of their Brussels activities (Ruzza 2004).

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Responsiveness In order to try and influence EU policy-making in such a way as to respond to their constituencies’ preferences, subnational authorities, social partners, and civil society organizations must both diffuse information on the EU and on their own activities and invite the opinion of their constituencies on matters decided through MLG. It is unclear whether they do so and whether responsiveness would really contribute to EU democracy even if they did. Responsiveness is affected by several factors: (1) the degree to which constituencies’ preferences are known, which is directly related to representation and transparency; (2) the degree to which subnational authorities, social partners, and civil society organizations can really hope to influence policy-making, even if they know their constituencies’ preferences and have committed themselves to promoting them in MLG arrangements; (3) the degree to which it is even wise or desirable for subnational authorities, social partners, and civil society organizations to be really responsive, as this would stifle decision-making at the EU level and might thwart the pursuit of policy solutions that, although responding to the preferences of no particular constituency, might still constitute “better” legislation for all. The “loose coupling” that characterizes MLG arrangements should reduce the risk of falling into the “joint decision trap”—which would occur if MLG actors requested full recognition of their constituents’ preferences or pressed for an acknowledgment of their role in policy-making, above and beyond the substantial contribution that they can make. At the same time, it should contribute to better legislation, that is, to policies that are more responsive to the “general interest” because decided after real deliberation. Tight coupling, it is feared, would instead lead to ineffective legislation and frequent deadlocks. Clearly, responsiveness is a question of balance: to what extent should the preferences of specific peripheries or social groups be forsaken for the good of the Union as a whole? How can constituents assess whether their representatives’ choices were dictated by a sincere quest for the common good or not rather by inefficiency and carelessness? No hard and fast answers exist on this score. What would certainly help, though, would be for subnational authorities, social partners, and civil society organizations to articulate their position and explain their choices to their constituents, that is, for them to engage in those discursive activities that Schmidt (2006b) recommends for national governments.

Accountability Explaining and justifying are the essence of being held accountable: deficits in responsiveness could be more than compensated by surpluses in accountability—or even by sincere attempts to act accountably. Subnational authorities, social partners, and civil society organizations that give an account of their actions and subject themselves to eventual sanctions thereby reinforce the linkage to their constituencies that is at the basis of both representation and

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responsiveness. Accountablity in MLG arrangements can also be secured by other levels of government and by non-institutional actors. In other words, thanks to the flattening of hierarchies and the simultaneous involvement of institutional and non-institutional actors, each actor can be held accountable by all others. This bounty of forums to which actors must give account, though, may both contribute to and detract from actual accountability: many eyes see better than two, but “too many eyes” could end up conveying a confusing image. This discussion of MLG legitimacy has revealed several critical issues, but has also pointed to its potential contribution to EU democracy. In particular, it has highlighted the necessary, yet uneasy, alliance between territorial and functional interests and the creation of a constitutional order that allows territorial and functional interests to participate and contribute to policy-making, but without binding supranational institutions to suboptimal solutions caused by the incapacity of lower levels of government or societal interests to agree on shared solutions. MLG arrangements are best suited to those policy issues that have a clear territorial impact. A few issues immediately appear to have these characteristics: namely, policy issues that involve fixed infrastructural investment (e.g. cohesion, but also agriculture) and that have clear repercussions on the territory (e.g. environment, but also transportation). We saw, however, that many more policies may be handled locally even if they do not appear at first sight to have a clear territorial impact (e.g. higher education, but also welfare services). When policy decisions are likely to affect people living in fairly circumscribed territories in a differentiated way, then the involvement of lower levels of government is necessary.

C O N C LU S I O N There is no simple conclusion to the discussion of the contribution of MLG to EU democracy. MLG arrangements appear flexible enough to accommodate different national constitutional orders, institutional practices, and political cultures, but, at the same time, distant enough from all of them to create problems for each. MLG arrangements contribute to EU democracy in a number of ways: (1) they entrench the right of the “peripheries” to be involved in decisions that concern their material and cultural destiny (the “grass roots”); (2) they do so in such a way (“loose coupling”) as to avoid the deadlock that is normally associated even with cooperative federalist settings, in which each actor has veto power over the final decision; and (3) they foster the creation of more organic ties between subnational authorities and their local societies. This tends to produce locally responsive outputs, and yet also fosters the formation of broad alliances across peripheries and between institutional and non-institutional actors, and territorial and functional interests. There is no single, undisputed level of government whose scope is large enough or narrow enough to control all possible negative and positive externalities of

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policy decisions: for this reason, multiple levels of government and governmental and non-governmental actors should be involved in the search for legitimate policy solutions. The coexistence between these two sets of actors—territorial and functional interests—is always problematic. In member-states, it is sometimes resolved in favor of territorially representative institutions, sometimes in favor of functional interests (Klijn and Skelcher 2007; Benz and Zimmer 2008). In a multi-level Union, both must be retained for the sake of the unique interests and values that they represent, even though their modes of mobilization and involvement in policy-making may look increasingly indistinguishable and interdependent. I have suggested above that this political and constitutional order might be loosely termed “federalist.” Federalism is particularly apt as an approach to the role of MLG arrangements in EU democracy because it can accommodate the coexistence of not just the two or three levels of government that regular federations normally contain, but of four or five different levels. “Europe is well poised to develop a theory of federalism suitable to its confederal tendency and its greater number of ‘levels’ of governance than any prior federation” (Howse and Nicolaidis 2001: 11). Moreover, the issue of the state-like nature of the EU also receives satisfactory treatment within this approach: . . . we should not understand the promise of federalism through the lenses of the modern idea of state sovereignty, that is as a kind of truce between competing sovereignties, through the division of competence or the hierarchical ordering of authorities. . . . Since there is no ideal, stable division of sovereignty, or balance of centralization and decentralization, from the perspective of democratic legitimacy, the implication of this analysis is that we will have to search for stability elsewhere—in various norms, institutions, and mechanisms by which citizens bargain on an ongoing basis, and governments bargain on their behalf, for adjustment and re-adjustment of roles of concurrent policy fields. The legitimacy of multi level governance will depend on the legitimacy of these norms, institutions and mechanisms. (Howse and Nicolaidis 2001: 13–14)

Indeed, the European “obsession” with the Bodinian conception of the state (Elazar 2001: 39) stands in the way of reflection on the state-like qualities of the European Union that do not yet amount to a given state form or a given model of democracy. “Common to both the EU and the US is a set of challenges to governance, which in both polities are connected to the special nature of the problem of legitimacy in the context of multi-level governance, of federalism in the broadest sense of the term” (Howse and Nicolaidis 2001: 5). This is a fruitful comparison, as much can be learned by comparing and contrasting the two experiences (Elazar 1993; Sbragia 1997, 2007; Fabbrini 2007). “‘New Europe’ has already begun the experiment of emancipating the federal idea from statist categories of sovereignty and constitutional supremacy. . . . the nation-states in Europe are increasingly using their ‘Union’ to implement a principle of mutuality and horizontal ‘delegation’ of competences and authorities from which the ‘United’ States may have a lot to learn” (Howse and Nicolaidis 2001: 5–6).

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Conclusion Multi-level governance can be defined as an arrangement for making binding decisions that engages a multiplicity of politically independent but otherwise interdependent actors—private and public—at different levels of territorial aggregation in more-or-less continuous negotiation/deliberation/implementation, and that does not assign exclusive policy competence or assert a stable hierarchy of political authority to any of these levels. (Schmitter 2004: 49)

T H E T H E O R E T I C A L C H A L L E N G E : W E AV I N G TO G E T H E R T WO S E T S O F A NA LY T I C A L D I M E N S I O N S As I have tried to argue in this book, even a descriptive and exhaustive definition of multi-level governance (MLG), such as the one given above, does not really do justice to the complexity of the phenomena that are captured by this term. MLG draws attention to three developments of contemporary political life. Political mobilization occurs as much within national boundaries and through conventional procedures as across these boundaries and through non-conventional procedures. Policy-making no longer separates neatly policy-makers from policy-takers, nor does it distinguish between public and private actors, but rather enlists all types of actors in all types of roles throughout the policy process. The polity structures addressed by political mobilization and that produce policy decisions are not solely those of the nation-state, but those of other polities, which increasingly acquire state-like features, such as the EU. Changes, in other words, are taking place at all levels of analysis: politics, policy, and polity. Yet, if multi-level governance were just a catchy descriptor of independent transformations, it would not add much to what has been argued and studied by entire cohorts of scholars in the past fifty years. It would tell us nothing more than what each component—multi, level, and governance—independently conveys: governing at multiple levels. For multi-level governance to tell us more than that and to be worthy of analysis and exploration, it must contain, at least implicitly, general propositions concerning the interrelations among these three sets of changes. If multi-level governance adds any value at all to its component parts, it is by suggesting the following general propositions:

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Conclusion MLG indicates interrelated changes in political mobilization, policy-making, and polity restructuring; in particular, it indicates: (a) the participation of subnational authorities in policy-making at levels and through procedures that defy existing hierarchies and may further upset their stability; (b) the mobilization of societal actors at all territorial and governmental levels and their contribution to policy-making, implemention, and monitoring; (c) the creation and institutionalization of governance arrangements that see the simultaneous involvement of institutional and non-institutional actors and that, by accretion, reconfigure the supranational level as a fundamental level of government; this shift in political activity (in our specific context, from state to sub-state or supra-state levels) implies that a qualitative change occurs to the actors that are mobilized at these levels: private actors may acquire a public function, while public authorities may act as private groups, thus engendering a blurring of the public-private dichotomy so entrenched in the conceptual history of the European state; this blurring is of a different type than that already recorded in the 1970s and 1980s when the literature on neo-corporatism alerted us to the “changing boundaries of the political” (Maier 1987), as that blurring was still statechartered; what is taking place now is a blurring that escapes the control of the state. It is precisely by claiming their “public” nature that certain interests can mobilize at levels which are not contemplated within the existing institutional order and it is precisely by acting as “private” interests that certain authorities can mobilize at levels which are not contemplated within the existing institutional order; therefore, not just the private-public dichotomy, but also those of centerperiphery and domestic-international are challenged by the redefinition of the existing institutional order; new jurisdictions and constituencies are created through these interactions. These may not overlap with any of the existing territories, yet territories retain their relevance as policy decisions tend to have a localized impact and numerous “factors” cannot be easily relocated (infrastructure, environment, knowledge, people); these dynamics do not occur automatically, but are driven by the agency of actors that find in the redefinition and simultaneous activation of these levels a way to strengthen their own position and to pursue goals or defend positions that they consider important and legitimate; no new stable hierarchy is crystallizing yet, as all actors at all levels have an interest in keeping the games open and in being able to implement different strategies and alliances according to the specific situation and to the stakes of the moment; these dynamics will be strengthened if they mobilize legitimating values; therefore, new legitimacy discourses will be fashioned and new evidence will be mobilized in support of the newly crafted normative arguments;

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then, the distinction between positive and normative analysis also gets blurred, in the sense that being able to demonstrate that a given development is normatively desirable makes its repeated occurrence more likely, as actors will be encouraged and sustained by its normative desirability, and in the sense that being able to show that a given development is in effect taking place may make it more desirable, as actors may be encouraged to find normative desirability in developments that they cannot counter; consequently, the debate about these developments will have both an empirical and a normative character, some scholars preferring to engage with (produce, package) the empirical evidence, while others prefer to engage with (elaborate, spell out) the normative arguments. Yet both sets of scholars will eventually have to engage in both debates, neither set of arguments being able to boast greater “objectivity” than the other; engaging in normative debates is necessary also because human beings act for a motive (actions are intentional), and this presupposes an apprehension of the facts and an assessment of the appropriateness of different courses of action; the task of “normal science” is to test individual propositions generated by the new paradigm, but science also requires that the turning point, when accepted factual and normative assumptions are questioned and replaced by new assumptions, be traced with precision; in this sense, this book wanted to perform a “normal science” exercise (Kuhn 1970); prefiguring a specific end-result of these developments, just as looking back for similar past developments, will mostly produce disappointing results, as our capacity to foresee the future (even placing ourselves prospectively in the past) fails as a consequence of the shift in factual and normative assumptions; consequently, it is more advisable to chart with as much precision and as much detachment as possible what is getting undone than trying to anticipate what may eventually result.

As the phenomena detected by MLG are just incipient transformations, which are only partially reflected in formal reconfigurations and constitutional texts, we necessarily have to look at process manifestations, that is, at dynamics in the policy and politics dimensions. Primary evidence in support of MLG, therefore, came from developments that were described as outward movements from the origin of the autonomous, sovereign, and specific state into the space delimited by the three planes (see Figure 1.1): (1) as increasing subnational mobilization and involvement in policy-making, particularly at the EU level, sustained both by the Commission’s attempt to find institutional allies for its policy programs and by the desire of (some) subnational authorities to claim back command over their own destinies (X1 ! X2); (2) as increasing transnational social movement activism on “value” issues, welcomed by some EU institutional and individual actors as a way of promoting particularly cherished agendas (X2 ! X3); and (3) as increasing mobilization and involvement in policy-making of civil society organizations

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at the subnational level, in turn connected with the growing interest of local political classes in taking up the problems of their territory and of the new saliency of the subnational territorial level for policy-making (X1 ! X3). Some of these dynamics are not unique to MLG and are postulated also by other theories of governance that focus mainly on the involvement of non-state actors in EU policy-making (X2X3), or by theories that highlight trends in state restructuring, as encouraged by European integration (X1X2), or again by theories of regionalism that highlight the role of civil society mobilization in sustaining regional devolution (X1X3). But it is MLG that theorizes the simultaneous movements on all these planes, that is, an outward movement into the MLG space (X1X2X3). Indeed, MLG indicates that the mobilization of one set of actors at one or several levels will induce strategic counter-moves from other actors that will, in turn, generate pressure for movement on the other planes. The interrelations between these movements do not so much reflect functional imperatives, but are rather inspired by the actors’ attempts to find policy solutions, promote interests, sustain cherished values. Though it would be appealing to isolate one of these dynamics as clearly pre-eminent over the others, so as to be considered as MLG’s “prime mover,” this appears impossible. What characterizes MLG vis-a`-vis other governance and state transformation theories, then, is that it posits a connection between the blurring of the centerperiphery divide, the trespassing of the states-society boundaries, and the overcoming of the domestic-international distinction. Figuratively speaking, MLG is characterized by the correlation that it establishes between movements on the two “walls” and movements on the “floor” (Figure 1.1).

T H E EM PI R I C A L C H A L L E N G E : T H E O P E R AT I O NA L I Z AT I O N O F M LG The purpose of the second part of the book was to test the propositions derived above against the empirical evidence provided by three rather different policies: cohesion, environment, and higher education. The test was multi-dimensional, implying observations of mutually reinforcing changes along three axes of variation—center-periphery, domestic-international, and state-society—and on three different levels of analysis—politics, policy, and polity. For its complexity and because I believe we are on the brink of what, in the natural sciences, would be considered a “paradigmatic revolution” (Kuhn 1970), the correspondence between theory and evidence alone cannot determine the validity of the theoretical approach. Rather, the explanatory power of a theory will depend on whether its factual and normative assumptions are widely shared among the community of scholars and policy-makers. Whether or not the discussion of the policy cases in the light of MLG is found convincing, then, will depend on the extent to which other members of the community share the factual and normative assumptions

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subsumed by the analysis. In other words, I do not expect to convince a coherent intergovernmentalist of the accuracy of MLG policy-making, for he will think that some fundamental elements have been left out, distorted, or misinterpreted. Similarly, neo-institutionalists will balk at the pliability implicit in this approach, which sees actors and their strategies as the determinants not just of policymaking but of polity restructuring, as well. And other governance people will perhaps accept the descriptions of the policy cases, but will probably find the emphasis on subnational authorities and societies excessive. Finally, those policymakers who bother to read this text will extract from it what they find compatible with their visions and strategies and ignore what clashes with them. Obviously, genuine logical inconsistencies and factual mistakes may also be contained in the preceding pages. I chose to look at three policies—a distributive-redistributive policy (cohesion), a regulatory-distributive policy (environment), and a regulatory-constitutional policy (higher education)—in order to cover different policy types and, therefore, to subject MLG to a “most different cases” empirical test. I could have chosen other policies, as well, but I would still have selected policies that have clear implications for territory. With Lowi (1964, 1972), I expected different policy types to be correlated with specific patterns of mobilization, following the “policy makes politics” dictum. Moreover, applying James Q. Wilsons’s (1980) well-known typology, I also expected different patterns of mobilization (see below). Yet, if the slow accumulation of MLG arrangements indeed leads to slow structural change—the empowerment of certain actors and the alteration of established hierarchies—then I should have been able to detect a convergence in the patterns of mobilization and policy-making across policy types. Politics, policy, and polity should have recursively influenced one another. A distributive-redistributive policy like cohesion could be expected to elicit fairly extensive subnational participation because of the large financial stakes involved. It could also be expected to induce the mobilization of those parts of civil society—such as trade unions, employers’ organizations, small and mediumsized enterprises, craft guilds, and various functional and professional associations—that have a clear stake in the type of development that is pursued at regional level. Majone, for example, argues that, because in policies like cohesion both costs and benefits are concentrated, we should observe “the European analogue of interest-group politics,” that is “intergovernmental bargaining between two (or more) groups of countries” (1996: 77). This is not entirely true: in cohesion policy, bargaining occurs not only among groups of countries, but also between governmental levels within the same country, as well as among (national and subnational) governments of different countries; and what is being bargained about is not only the policy, but also the polity that is foreshadowed in the policymaking process. A regulatory-distributive policy like environmental policy could be expected to prompt the mobilization of the interests most affected by it, that is, powerful and often concentrated industrial concerns and, only insofar as they manage to get organized, the public at large and subnational authorities, particularly in areas

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where environmental problems are acute. This would typically be the case with regulatory policies. Yet, Demand for Community regulation also comes from public-interest organizations such as environmentalist and consumer-protection groups—particularly ones from countries with a low level of health and safety regulation. Such groups hope to get from Brussels the type of protective legislation which, because of their political weakness, they are unable to get from their own governments. (Majone 1996: 68)

Political mobilization, then, was expected to lead to the formation of multi-level alliances between governmental actors in the shape of regulatory leaders, publicinterest groups in regulatory laggards, and certain bureaucrats in the Commission who act as policy entrepreneurs. “By far the most important source of demand, however, are the member states themselves” (Majone 1996: 68). This is the case where countries with high regulatory standards (the leaders) try to upload their regulatory standards to the European level and thus minimize the costs of future adjustment. Empirical evidence, however, revealed that, without the spontaneous activation of environmental groups, often in alliance with subnational governments, certain environmental provisions would never be implemented. This type of cross-level and cross-dimensional mobilization resembles the mobilization pattern hypothesized for cohesion policy, where territorial and non-territorial, governmental and non-governmental actors mobilize across levels around the policy decision and implementation. Finally, a regulatory-constitutional policy like higher education could be expected to elicit mobilization only insofar as reform of national higher education systems imposes sacrifices on well-identified groups of workers—such as a country’s teachers and university professors—but is ignored insofar as positive effects tend to fall upon a largely unorganized crowd of fairly uninformed and uninterested students and families. Given the diffuse nature of both costs and benefits, according to Majone, this policy should be dealt with “at the national rather than at the supranational level” through majoritarian politics (Majone 1996: 76) and it should get onto the European agenda only thanks to the entrepreneurial skills of the European Commission. As we saw, higher education policy rather represents a case of spontaneous coordination, with the European Commission supplying only secretarial services. What is certain, though, is that we would not expect subnational mobilization, with the exception perhaps of federal political systems. However, the “Lisbonization of Bologna,” and its concomitant interpretation of higher education as an instrument of competitiveness, mobilized those stakeholders most interested in reaping the benefits of this new type of higher education—mainly rectors, students, and business—and those subnational authorities interested in investing in higher education to promote their own territories. MLG expects that this will set in motion a chain of dynamics, not just at the level of policy, but also of politics and polity, which other theories would not predict. But even admitting that the evidence presented in this book was convincing, we are still left with a few gnawing questions. How well does it capture governing

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in the European Union (how many policies)? Does it describe a contingent state of affairs or a fundamental dynamic of European integration that will necessarily be further reinforced in the future? Which stakeholders have their concerns taken into account and acted upon and which stakeholders are systematically ignored? Is this way of arriving at binding decisions fair, inclusive, effective? Should it be upheld as a desirable benchmark and transposed to other institutional contexts? Can it really be transposed to other institutional contexts or is it EU-specific? In this book, I limited myself to trying to answer the first three questions, while others attempt comparisons across multi-level political systems (see e.g. Ongaro et al. forthcoming). I have already argued that the policies that best lend themselves to being governed by MLG are those with an arguable link to territory. So, possible instances of MLG include not just cohesion, environment, and higher education, but also, for example, agriculture, transportation, and tourism. As far as the sustainability of these dynamics is concerned, strong support comes from one of the foremost proponents of neo-functionalism, Philippe Schmitter (2004), who, in a justly famous piece, places MLG at the theoretical core of all EU integration theories. Positioned at the intersection of all theories of European integration, within that large theoretical space occupied by the numerous “institutionalisms,” MLG is in Schmitter’s opinion the best single description and explanation of how the EU actually functions (“the most omnipresent and acceptable label one can stick on the contemporary EU”; Schmitter 2004: 49), covering both its transformative and its reproductive dynamics and accommodating both great events and gradual processes. Schmitter derives a whole list of hypotheses from his own definition of MLG (reported at the beginning of this chapter), showing how this concept can generate a set of empirically testable hypotheses on the evolution of the EU, thus elevating MLG to the status of a theory of EU integration— something I have myself been reluctant to do in this book. From the prevalence of intergovernmental bargains about the scope and shape of the Union, coupled with decision-making procedures based on unanimity or QMV, Schmitter derives the increasingly multi-level, poly-centric nature of the EU. Since it is simpler to add new layers and nodes to the already complex decision-making structures of the EU than to engage in a reorganization of the entire Community, the EU has today, and will increasingly acquire, a multi-layer, poly-centric character (hypothesis 1). Similar propositions are derived from other fairly uncontroversial assumptions about the EU, which however mobilize normative rather than institutional arguments. For example, the multi-level, poly-centric character of the EU will be boosted by the general distrust among member-state representatives (the principals of the EU) and their diverse identities and institutional cultures. These will induce them to multiply monitoring agencies and to delegate enforcing tasks to different institutions and will make them reluctant to equip the EU with taxing and defense powers—which alone, according to Schmitter, could make EU institutions capable of directly disciplining member-states (hypotheses 2 and 3). Subsequent waves of enlargement, adding member-states of different sizes and different capacities, will have a

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similar effect (hypothesis 5). Complexiy and distrust are therefore built into the life of the Union, making multi-level, poly-centric arrangements the only viable solutions for continued existence. According to Schmittec, second-order consequences flow from the multi-level, poly-centric character of the Union, which further strengthens these characteristics. For example, the tasks assigned to EU institutions are sufficiently interdependent that they cannot be performed alone without incurring increasing costs or diminishing returns, impressing a stop-and-go trend (contraction-expansion of tasks) on the institutional structure of the Union as a whole, which can be more easily accommodated by a multi-level structure of governance (hypothesis 4). A second-order consequence of the initial decision to push integration forward by involving privileged sets of actors in segmented interactions is the increasing need to extend participation to ever larger groups of “stakeholders” and therefore to further accentuate the multilevel, poly-centric character of EU governance (hypothesis 6).1 More generally, the Union deals with similar problems and experiments with similar solutions that are also felt and tried at individual member-state level (hypothesis 7). The above propositions taken together amount to hypothesizing that movements away from the origin along the X2 axis—EU deepening and widening—cause corresponding movements along the other axes, those of territorial devolution (X1) and of the growing involvement of civil society organizations in governance arrangements (X3). These empirical statements would need to be tested on their own terms. According to this book, these dynamics are not driven so much by lifeless mechanisms, but by the interests and visions of “flesh-and-blood” actors and by their assessment of what is feasible and desirable. Each axis is associated with a set of normative standards and poses stimulating questions that have an impact on the other axes as well. For example, although apparently a settled issue, federalism (X1) raises several normative questions that do not find easy answers either within nation-states or within the European Union (cf. Lord 2007: 73). Similarly, as we know since scholars began to reflect upon the justifiability of corporatist arrangements, the involvement of functional interests and other expressions of civil society (X3) is not devoid of normative problems (cf. Lehmbruch and Schmitter 1982; Smismans 2004). Finally, the role of norms in international relations (X2) is the topic of much recent scholarship (cf. for all, Checkel 2003). In this sense, I believe that, in addition to testing empirically the capacity of MLG (and the other competing concepts) to capture real-life developments and to describe existing structures of governance, we should engage head-on the debate on the legitimacy of MLG arrangements. This exercise will probably lead us to discuss whether MLG has the same empirical meaning and normative implications in continental European member-states as in Anglo-Saxon or Nordic member-states (for a cautionary note on the plausibility of this operation,

1 Proving a remarkable predictive capacity, Schmitter’s elaboration accommodates also the emergence of forms of enhanced cooperation among member-states as well as the failure of the Constitutional Treaty to replace the current multi-level, poly-centric structure with a more defined quasi-federalist structure.

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see Lord 2007) and whether it captures equally well governance structures which involve different types of subnational authorities as well as different types of nongovernmental organizations (the exact meaning of “level”). We should, ultimately, not overlook the possibility that MLG may also have a rhetorical function: the construction of the EU as an MLG system may create an area of discursive consensus which may keep the process of European integration going while leaving its exact shape and competences unspecified (Piattoni 2008a).

T H E N O R M AT I V E C H A L L E N G E : T H E S T R E N G T H O F S TAT E T R A D I T I O N S In this book, I have offered an interpretation of MLG as a terrain over which a number of political battles are being waged, the consequences of which imply moving forward or backward along a number of analytical dimensions. The main actors in this battle theatre are supranational institutions, member-state governments, their subnational authorities, and a great variety of societal actors (firms, trade unions, employers’ associations, interest groups, cultural associations, churches, social movements, pressure groups, consumers’ associations, public interests, etc.). These actors mobilize politically at different levels and form shifting alliances with each other, never quite settling for stable alignments. The result of these interactions and strategies is the continuing reconfiguration of their powers and competences and the gradual institutionalization of new practices and procedures. In these encounters, different types of ammunitions are used, among them the activation of formal competences, the provision of knowledge and ideas, and the articulation of consensus and values. Temporary equilibriums can be reached, but the balance keeps shifting, as new battlefronts are opened. Among the many concepts that could be mobilized to describe this political and institutional tug-of-war—network governance, committee governance, organic governance, functional governance, new forms of governance (see Chapters 5 and 10 for a summary discussion of these alternative approaches)—MLG draws particular attention to the mobilization of the competences, knowledge, and values that are associated with specific territorial jurisdictions. While many aterritorial jurisdictions may get formed as a result of the attempt to effectively tackle given policy problems and may develop their memberships, allegiances, and values, MLG stubbornly reminds us that the consequences of these a-territorial jurisdictional activities will ultimately be felt in given territories by the individuals that inhabit them. Responsibility for tying the many policy knots into a coherent whole must be taken by some territorial authority, and the arguments made to justify policy solutions must ultimately make reference to territorial constituencies, their right to steer their collective destiny, and the relationships among territorial constituencies.

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How exactly this coexistence can be achieved varies enormously, depending on the specific powers of the territorial jurisdictions, the strength of the aterritorial jurisdictions, and the normative values mobilized by them. As we have seen, in the different member-states, the various governmental levels not only are equipped with different institutional powers, but also are endowed with specific legitimating values that derive from deep-seated understandings about how society should rule itself and what relationship it should have with the state (Dyson 1980; Skinner and Stra˚th 2003). And contrary to what the literature assumes (Schmidt 2006a; but see also Bo¨rzel 2002b), compound polities like Germany do not necessarily have an easier time adjusting to MLG than do simple polities like the UK (cf. Bache 2008). Policy and institutional empowerment (see Chapter 6) are not currencies that can be exchanged on a par everywhere in the EU. In Germany, the idea that governmental levels should negotiate policy agreements solidified into a practice (Politikverflechtung) at the end of the 1960s, thus consolidating the tradition of cooperative federalism. Extremely complex negotiations ensued and, due to the existence of cross-vetoes, often resulted in decisional stalemate (the “joint decision trap”: Scharpf 1988). Once the EU level was factored in and joint-decision making was in danger of becoming ever more complex, the decision-making process was somehow simplified by the fact that important decisions were made in Brussels by national governments. German La¨nder, while very active in their own right on the EU scene, resisted being marginalized institutionally at EU level. For them, institutional powers were not just that—powers—but also mobilized normative values that had, and continue to have, a real hold on both legislators and the people. In the UK, in almost a mirror image, only Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland enjoy legislative powers at home, yet they are not granted any special rights of participation at the EU level. While the English regions and municipalities also appear entirely capable of participating very constructively and skillfully in EU negotiations and policy-making, they have a much harder time cashing in these skills domestically by acquiring greater institutional powers. Indeed, it is not clear that they even want to. In the North-East of England, the 2004 referendum on regional devolution (which would have granted this region the right to elect its own legislative assembly and therefore acquire “legislative status” within the EU) was defeated by the population. From a naı¨ve “Europe of the Regions” perspective, one might be tempted to attribute this “disappointing” result to the lack of a “we-feeling” among the people of the North-East. And yet that region, more than any other, has displayed in the past a distinct sense of identity and cohesiveness. What was perhaps underestimated was the deep hold that values such as local self-government still have upon the population (Skinner 2003). English local government is grounded in civil society and has ample room for choice on how to achieve goals set by the central government: in that sense, the compatibility of this tradition with much of EU MLG is striking. Their legitimacy lies in getting things done, not in vying for more institutional powers. The population itself, steeped in these same values, was indeed reluctant to add

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an “unnecessary layer of government” to the existing structures—the Regional Government Offices (Bache 2008)—that the UK government had created in the late 1990s in order to attract Structural Funds. Other stories—different in detail, but similar in their broad conclusions— could be told about the difficulties experienced by other member-states in adjusting to EU MLG. Each story tells us of a different, temporary balance that gets struck between territorial and a-territorial jurisdictions, between policy and institutional powers in the different member-states, as mediated by value-infused state traditions. Theory-building tries to purge these stories of particular persons and places and to build propositions with general validity (Przeworksi and Teune 1970). We can thus codify the various (partial, temporary) equilibriums and create typologies to organize the evidence. Klijn and Skelcher (2007) have made such an effort at “conjecturing” the possible relationships—incompatibility, complementarity, transitionality, and instrumentality—between representative democracy (typical of territorial jurisdictions) and governance networks (typical of non-territorial jusridictions). There are several ways of handling policy problems which imply the creation of non-territorial jurisdictions, each capable of developing its own normative discourse vis-a`-vis its own constituency to justify the policy solutions that it generates (Skelcher 2005). Yet none is self-sufficient and each jurisdiction must coexist with territorial ones, at least for the time being. What for me has been the most significant conclusion of many years of studying MLG arrangements and of the reflections contained in this book, and which is captured by movements on the X1X3 plane, is that subnational governmental mobilization is most effective and significant when it is coupled with the mobilization of subnational civil society. Subnational governmental authorities are all the more successful at claiming greater powers from their national governments the more they can plausibly demonstrate that they represent their local civil society and that they have forged organic links with it. As shown by Bukowski, Piattoni, and Smyrl (2003) and by Keating, Loughlin, and Deschouwer (2003), many regionalist movements started out as civil society mobilizations and successively sustained the participation of regional authorities in EU policymaking. In their struggle for greater formal powers, subnational authorities are greatly advantaged by being able to claim that they represent subnational societies. This is because only in this case can they successfully tap into the legitimating powers that derive from both the territorial state tradition and the civil society functional tradition. But perhaps the strongest claim captured by movements in the X1X2X3 space— and probably the single most important contribution of MLG to the study of governance, European integration, and the transformation of the nation-state—is that by mobilizing transnationally and by participating in EU policy-making, in association with or in opposition to national states, subnational authorities and civil societies end up sharing some of each other’s defining traits. Subnational authorities end up promoting their territorially defined interests through lobbying activities, as if they were no longer general interest authorities but just particular interests. Social movements and non-governmental organizations, in turn, end up sharing some of

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the responsibilities of the territorial authorities and acquiring a public function, as if they were not just particular interests but public interests. If it should be proven that this dual convergence takes place whenever states relinquish part of their sovereignty to supranational organizations such as the EU, then we would have a major proposition that no other governance or state transformation theory has so far made. Is this dual transformation genuinely novel? Students of the American continent may observe that this is precisely what happened when the independent but united “States of America,” in the plural, transformed themselves from a union of states into a union of states and peoples, becoming the “United States,” in the singular. According to Fabbrini (2007), the European Union is also becoming a “compound democracy”—a union of states and their peoples—as a result of the impact of historical contingencies, functional imperatives, and political choices (yet see Sbragia 2007 for a skeptical view of the possibility for convergence between the EU and the United States). The solution to the problematic accommodation of territorial and functional interests that compound democracy offers is, from a constitutional point of view, not dissimilar to a “loosely coupled” system of multi-level governance among governmental institutions, civil society organizations, and the “interests” represented by them.

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Index accountability 12, 25, 27, 73, 191, 195, 210, 219, 224–226, 237, 245–246 accreditation 159, 160, 164, 167 actor-centeredness 20, 23 (administrative) agencies 6, 10, 12, 30, 110–111, 126, 138, 147, 154, 157, 158–161, 167, 172, 194, 198, 211–212, 216, 232, 236, 237, 255 advocacy coalition 29, 61–62, 69, 71–73, 75, 79, 93, 102 agency cost 193–4 human 36, 38–39, 49, 52, 57–59, 63, 250 agent (see also principal, principal-agent model) 21, 30, 39f, 75–76, 86, 105, 182, 187, 192, 195–196, 201, 210–211 analytical axes 27, 141, 177, 252 center-periphery (X1) 27, 28–30, 32–50, 102, 128, 152, 177, 256 domestic-international (X2) 28–30, 51–64, 141, 177, 256 state-society (X3) 28–30, 65–80, 170, 177, 256 anarchy 57 feudal 67 ancien re´gime 63 authorization 12, 113, 191, 192, 196, 197, 200–202, 214, 222, 242 autonomy administrative 197 civil society 68 regional 19, 28, 32, 35, 44, 50, 60, 91, 99, 123, 139, 208 state 2, 52, 58, 66, 107, 177, 180, 183, 184, 187, 209 axis first / X1 27–30, 32–50, 53, 60, 68–69, 85, 91, 102–103, 125, 128, 141, 152–153, 177, 251–252, 256 second / X2 27–29, 37, 51–64, 68–69, 85, 91, 103, 141, 153, 162, 170, 177, 251, 256 third / X3 27–30, 37, 53, 58, 61–62, 65–80, 85, 91, 103, 141, 148, 153, 170, 177, 251–252, 256 Celtic fringe / periphery 6–7, 34 center v. periphery / center-periphery 32–50, 85, 87, 98 dimension 59, 68, 108 gate 18–19, 23, 27, 105, 177

relations 30, 98, 100, 108, 110, 123, 132, 148, 163, 177 chaebol 34 church(es) 66, 98, 182, 187, 257 Catholic 40, 65, 66, 198 dissident / reformed 40 Protestant 40, 65 civil society 10, 11, 30, 61–63, 68–73, 78, 84, 85, 91, 97–99, 106, 121–125, 143–4, 149, 162, 164, 169–171, 177, 194–206, 219, 223, 225–227, 238, 242, 252–253, 256, 258, 259–260 civil society organizations (CSOs) 12, 13, 28–29, 30, 70, 114, 115, 117, 121–125, 128f, 130, 140, 143, 179, 210, 242–245, 251, 256 cleavage / divide 40–42 agricultural-industrial 41 center-periphery 11, 40, 41 employers-employed / owners-workers 41 state-church 40, 41, 66, 98 cohesion policy (see also, European regional development policy (ERDP)) 8, 11, 18, 19, 24, 92–98, 101, 102–132, 136, 140, 143, 149, 150, 178–179, 193, 203, 223, 244, 246, 252–254 Committee of the Regions 60–61, 80, 93, 123, 130, 145, 193, 197, 203, 212, 220, 226, 242–244 Common Market / Single (European) Market (SEM) 20, 26, 60, 61, 77, 88f, 95, 96, 104–106, 112, 113, 128, 131, 133–137, 140, 142, 145, 152, 155, 157, 159, 169, 171, 193, 216, 231 communitarianism 48, 186 community academic / scientific 151, 155, 161, 169, 170, 173 epistemic 158, 161, 169 Community method 89, 134, 135, 142, 156 compact (see also, contract, covenant) 48, 185, 206 comparative politics (CP) 44, 53f, 56, 143 conceptual analysis 2–3, 10, 11–12, 17–31, 35, 38, 83–84 space 23, 26, 27 confederation 207f, 209, 240–241, 247 connotation 2, 30 consociationalism 41, 199, 213, 230, 234–236, 238

294

Index

constitutional patriotism 233 constitutionalization 181, 185f, 188, 190, 193, 200, 206–209, 229, 231f, 233–238, 241, 246–247, 256, 260 contention 19, 65, 72–77, 149 contract (see also, compact, covenant) 48, 239 corporatism 21, 67, 69, 115, 118, 167, 169, 250, 256 Council of Europe 8, 93, 110, 118, 161 Council of Ministers 128–129, 134, 136–138, 147, 156, 160, 169, 172, 192, 216, 231 Council of the European Union 21, 130, 154, 157, 159, 161, 178, 197, 219, 235–236 covenant (see also, compact, contract) 185f, 199, 206f, 233 decentralization / devolution 7, 8, 27, 35, 170, 177, 184, 198, 247 delegation 30 democracy 4, 6, 8, 184, 189–191, 192–199, 204, 206, 213, 220, 228–247 compound 237f, 240, 260 consensus / consociational 213, 215, 219, 230, 235 deliberative 215, 220–221, 228, 232–234, 237 EU 12, 13, 88, 190, 191, 194, 200, 229, 234, 242 liberal 213, 232–234 majortitarian 188, 213, 215, 230 models of, 22, 229, 232, 234, 238, 242, 244–247 parliamentary 116, 188, 194–196, 210, 221, 233, 235, 238 participatory 232 representative 195–198, 233–239, 242, 259 territorial 237, 238 (EU) democratic deficit / temper / credentials / standards 12, 73, 79, 189–191, 197, 216, 225, 228–229, 230–238, 240 democratic experimentalism 22 democratization 199, 229, 234 demos 197, 232, 233, 238, 242 denotation 2, 26 directly deliberative polyarchy 22, 237 domestic v. international / domestic-foreign 9, 11, 18, 19, 23, 27, 28, 30, 32, 51–64, 67, 68, 85, 87, 100, 105, 133, 177, 250, 252 domestication / domesticization 69, 75–76, 241 Economic and Social Committee (ESC) 78, 243 effectiveness / efficiency 3, 4, 13, 25, 26, 31, 33, 34, 37–45, 59, 60, 62, 68–69, 74, 99, 103, 105, 124, 128, 131, 142, 145, 149–150, 161, 177, 181, 184, 188,

190–191, 194–196, 201, 210–218, 221, 225–227, 230, 243, 245, 255 argument 33–35, 37, 50 administrative 37, 45–46 economic 37, 38, 46–47 institutional 38, 47 social 37, 47–49 empirical analysis 83–101, 178, 181 challenge 10, 11, 81–173, 252–257 concept 2, 11 development 20, 251 discourse 35 evidence 102, 109, 113, 171, 172, 251, 252, 254 implication 9, 27 investigation 3 issue 91 literature 189 meaning 256 proposition 27 question 27, 31 referent 2, 24, 31 refutation 183 relevance 12, 83, 86, 90, 92, 94, 139, 141 research 30 statement 256 test 2, 9, 84, 87, 91, 140, 253, 255, 256 validity 31 empowerment 98, 100, 102, 108f, 110–111, 115–116, 120, 125–129, 141, 143, 148, 181, 183, 191, 193, 253, 258 administrative 126, 128–129 institutional 115–116, 126, 128–129, 258 policy 115–117, 126, 128–129, 258 Environment Action Programme (EAP) 134, 144, 145 environmental policy 12, 18, 55, 93, 95–97, 99, 122f, 123–124, 133–150, 178, 180, 196, 203, 218, 222, 223, 226, 243–244, 246, 252, 253–255 epistemology / epistemological analysis / epistemological aspects 2, 9, 35, 86 equality 4, 106 political 190–192 (ethno-)regionalist parties / (ethno-)regionalist movements 32–33, 64, 123, 259 Europe and the Regions 20, 28 Europe of the Regions 12, 19, 27, 28, 45, 109, 110, 111, 114, 117, 120, 125, 131, 132, 258 Europe with the Regions 28, 109, 125 Europeanization / Europeanize 28, 73, 99–101, 171, 182 European Central Bank 236 (European) Commission 8, 21, 29, 53, 60–61, 70, 78–80, 86, 88–89, 93–95, 97–99, 103,

Index 104–105, 107–108, 111–114, 117–118, 122, 130, 133–137, 139, 142, 144, 146–149, 151, 154–161, 172, 178, 179, 193, 194, 197–199, 201, 203f, 210, 219, 226, 231–232, 234, 236, 238, 243, 251, 254 European Community 5, 8, 17, 29, 30, 52, 92, 93, 97, 104, 107–110, 112, 114, 131, 133, 135, 137, 142, 145, 148, 150, 152, 154–160, 192, 211–212, 255, 257, 259 European Court of Justice (ECJ) 95, 137, 146, 156, 200, 236 European integration 1, 3, 8, 9, 10, 17, 18, 20, 27, 29, 31, 32, 36–38, 52, 53, 58, 61–63, 65, 72, 73, 85, 91, 93, 102, 105, 107, 107f, 108–109, 113, 116–117, 154, 171–172, 230, 252, 255 European Parliament (EP) 78, 79, 93, 95, 113, 124, 130, 134–136, 156, 160, 194, 197, 200, 219, 235 European Regional Development Policy (ERDP) (see also, Cohesion policy) 8, 18, 104, 109, 114, 140, 221 European Union 1, 2, 8, 13, 17–20, 23, 25, 26, 28, 30, 31, 40, 45, 52, 53–54, 62,72, 74, 78, 79, 83, 87, 89, 91, 100, 101, 104, 108, 115, 121, 129, 140, 142, 147, 152, 161, 173, 178, 187, 189, 197, 209, 212, 216, 218, 221, 224, 228–230, 234, 240, 247, 255–256, 260 Euro-region 93, 110, 120 externalities 13, 33, 35, 45, 177, 185, 196, 211–212, 216, 241, 246 negative 13, 26, 143 positive 13, 26 federacy 209 federality 207, 209 federalization 3, 45, 127, 184, 192, 198, 209, 241 federalism / federal agenda / federal principle / federal vision 35, 41, 129, 142, 199, 200, 204, 205, 206–209, 239–242, 247, 256, 258 cooperative 92, 115, 208 Federalist(s) 207, 240 federal government / state / structure / system 10, 12, 13, 24, 27, 29, 32, 50, 108, 117, 119, 123, 127–128, 137, 143, 165, 168–169, 184, 188, 199, 204–205, 208–209, 231, 235–236, 254 federated states / units 27, 32, 206 federation 1, 184, 201, 200, 206–209, 240–241, 247 functionalism 28, 39, 52, 58, 60–61, 63, 76, 87, 91, 104f, 171

295

gate center-periphery 18, 23 domestic-foreign 18, 23 state-society 18, 23 gate-keeping / gate-keepers 11, 18, 19–20, 27–28, 71, 76, 91, 105, 109, 110, 112, 115, 140, 172 (the) general will 196–197 globalization / global development / global dynamics / global trends 10, 28, 32, 36, 51–52, 58–60, 88f, 92, 96, 101, 168, 177, 182–185, 196 governance 2–3, 9–10, 12–13, 19–20, 23–25, 29–31, 57–58, 62, 71–74, 102, 125, 134, 143–146, 150, 152–153, 169, 187–188, 190, 194, 197, 199, 201, 210–219, 222, 225, 228, 230, 236–237, 247, 252, 257, 259, 260 co- 11 committee 20–22, 30, 86, 88–89, 169, 236, 257 democratic 189 experimentalist 22 external 53, 61 functional 24, 194, 198, 201–202, 204–205, 210–211, 239, 257 good 199–200 horizontal 83, 116–117, 126, 128f, 224, 257 meta- 196 multi-level 1, 2, 10, 17–19, 22, 26, 30, 58, 66, 71–73, 83, 102, 127–128, 136, 139–140, 146, 148, 153, 158, 177, 183–184, 192, 210, 247, 249, 252, 260 network 2, 20, 22, 30, 73, 194, 210, 212, 257 new forms / modes of 10, 11, 20, 22, 30, 147, 150, 161, 195–196, 215, 229, 257 organic 194–196, 201–202, 204–205, 210–211, 239 polycentric 24 post-parliamentary 196 territorial 118, 206 subnational 11 supranational 151 vertical 83, 115–116, 126, 128f without government 56 governance turn 12, 20, 72 government 2, 18, 19, 62, 66–67, 70–72, 83, 89, 111, 182, 213, 215–216, 228–230, 241f, 254 by the people 191 central / national 7, 10, 18–19, 20, 28, 45, 46, 49, 55, 6–60, 72, 75, 77, 79, 84, 86, 92, 94, 97–99, 102, 105–107, 112, 114, 116–117, 119–121, 125–126, 128, 130, 137, 140–141, 146, 149, 162, 164, 167,

296

Index

government (cont.) 169, 171, 173, 184, 192, 209, 216, 223, 225–226, 241f, 242–243, 245, 253, 258–259 levels / tiers of 7, 9–10, 13, 19, 20, 24, 26, 32, 48, 50, 74, 75, 83–84, 90, 94, 105, 126, 128, 132, 142, 153, 166, 167, 172, 178–180, 194, 199–201, 206, 209, 212, 221, 246–247, 250, 258 local / municipal 10, 46–48, 83, 85–86, 97, 106, 130, 141–142, 145, 192, 205, 223, 225, 243, 258 federal 128, 205, 208, 212f forms of 2 for the people 191 of the people 191 optimal scale / size 26, 49–50 parliamentary / representative / territorial 196, 202, 205 regional 48, 77, 84, 106, 128–129, 170, 192, 208, 225, 243 self- 33, 115, 191, 196, 202, 206 sub- 187, 195, 211, 212–3, 258 subnational 11, 13, 19, 32, 36, 46, 80, 90, 95, 97, 114, 120, 122–123, 140, 143, 162, 184, 187, 205, 212, 220, 244, 253–254, 259 supranational 119 territorial 30 with the people 191 Habsburg Empire 4 hegemony 57, 98 higher education policy 12, 93, 95, 99, 151–173, 178–180, 203, 223, 226, 246, 252–255 Holy Roman Empire 4, 38 implementation 3, 8, 12, 21, 28–30, 32, 48, 70, 84, 87, 89, 93, 97–98, 105–109, 112, 113, 122–125, 127, 135–141, 144–146, 148–150, 154, 156–157, 162, 164–165, 167, 169, 170, 173, 178, 180, 187, 190–191, 210–212, 221, 223–224, 226–227, 243–244, 249, 254 inclusion 62, 123–124, 238 institutions 1, 21, 25, 34, 43, 51, 56–57, 61–63, 66–67, 74–75, 80, 87, 89, 90, 94, 97, 100, 101, 103, 166, 171–172, 178, 185–188, 192–193, 195, 199–200, 202–203, 212, 215–218, 234, 247 Community / European / EU 9, 17, 65, 73–78, 80, 85, 87, 100, 102, 108–109, 110, 113, 118, 121, 127, 147, 171, 220, 229, 232–237, 251, 255–256 higher education / learning / research 97, 123, 152, 161–164, 172–173, 179–180, 226 national 63, 100, 109, 205, 223

political / public 34, 47, 123–124, 197–199 representative 239, 247 subnational 91, 107, 140 supranational 60, 73, 79–80, 84, 86, 99, 103, 106, 112–114, 119, 179, 183, 194, 225, 246, 257 institutional actor 11, 130, 223, 242, 250 autonomy 12, 162, 164–168, 173, 180 balance / equilibrium 120, 200, 207–208, 229, 234, 236–237 capacity 96, 147 framework / order / setting / structure 4, 61, 94, 112, 123, 229, 230, 250, 256 innovation 4, 91 power 11, 59, 64, 91, 111, 120, 125–129, 222, 258–259 role 203 (neo)institutionalism 1, 56, 92, 117, 253 integration 17, 23, 25, 43, 52, 59, 60, 73, 100, 177, 211 European 1, 3, 8, 10, 17, 18f, 20, 27–29, 31–32, 36–38, 52–53, 58, 61–63, 65, 72–73, 85, 91, 93, 97, 102, 105, 107–109, 113, 115, 117, 130, 154, 171–172, 182, 252, 255–257, 259 regional 52, 53f, 58–59, 85, 182 interdepedence/ies 5, 26, 33, 35, 45, 51–53, 58–59, 61, 83–84, 87, 109–110, 115, 185, 187, 216, 247 (liberal) intergovernmentalism 17–19, 28, 55, 72, 76, 85, 102–103, 105–106, 109, 111, 142, 171, 253 intergovernmental cooperation / coordination / relations 84, 98, 142, 154, 156–158, 160, 169, 172, 184, 193, 221, 253, 255 intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) 153, 184 International Relations (IR) 1, 28, 51–56, 84, 182, 185, 231, 241, 256 interest aggregation / articulation / intermediation 63, 67, 168 constituency 213, 221 economic 5, 86, 109–110, 121, 137–138 functional 11, 79, 114, 117, 124, 211, 242–244, 246–247, 256 general 66–69, 71, 123, 185–186, 245, 259, group 63, 71–73, 117, 128f, 136, 170, 172, 186, 253, 257 local 45, 68, 112 national 17, 18, 54–55, 59, 66, 71–72, 136, 186, 231 particular 59, 66, 69–71, 115, 117, 124, 185–186, 259–260 private 21, 66, 69–71, 115, 117, 128f, 172, 185, 250

Index public 29, 69, 71–73, 76, 78, 115, 185–186, 205, 254, 257, 260 representation 70–71, 87, 205, 242 sectional 186, 202, 260 self- 171, 213 societal 115, 120, 124, 138, 149, 162, 187, 201–202, 242, 246 subnational 11, 84, 114, 130, 205, 243 territorial 205, 246, 260 interregional associations 93, 117, 123, 130, 244 joint decision making / system / trap 13, 212–213, 217, 221–222, 243, 245, 258 jurisdiction 24, 25, 27, 30, 79, 95, 177, 188, 212, 214, 227, 244, 250 a-territorial 25, 257–259 functional 13, 30, 35, 207 territorial 10, 11, 28, 30, 89, 184, 188, 207, 212, 257, 258 Type I 24, 25, 206, 209 Type II 24, 25, 207, 209 jurisdictional boundary 25, 30, 74, 112, 180 keiretsu 34 language 7, 21, 39–41, 48, 96, 98, 125, 151, 172, 233 minority 6–8, 70, 118, 184, 233 legitimacy 1, 3, 12, 25, 27, 31, 33–35, 66, 71, 79, 94, 121, 131, 180–183, 186–187, 210–227, 192–210, 228–231, 242, 246–247, 250, 256, 258 input 12, 190–191, 213, 192–210 output 12–13, 190–191, 210–227 legitimation 62, 63, 75–6, 79, 132, 215, 229, 231, 242 level playing field 181, 186 liberalism 21, 43, 48, 58, 186, 198 Lisbon Treaty 60, 61, 108, 130, 235 litigation 70, 76, 198 loose coupling / loosely coupled structures / loosely linked system 13, 74, 173, 180, 200, 222, 226–227, 245–246, 260 meso-level (see also, third level) 7, 109 mobilization 4, 28, 29, 53, 63, 67–68, 70, 74, 76, 84–85, 87, 102, 110, 114, 116–117, 120–123, 126, 177–179, 223, 247, 250, 252–254 political 1, 9–10, 13, 18–19, 21–23, 26, 32, 42, 63, 70, 74, 85–86, 90–91, 102, 108, 126, 154, 177, 249–250, 254, 257 regional 28, 53, 92–94, 102, 118, 120–121, 125–126 societal / civil society 12, 53, 69, 70, 72–73, 85, 141, 169, 179–181, 252, 259

297

subnational / substate 11, 36, 69, 90–92, 94, 100, 109, 111, 117, 120, 139–140, 150, 170, 177–178, 251, 254, 259 supranational 90 transnational 53, 74, 79, 117, 120, 148, 260 monitoring 21, 28, 29, 105, 180, 194, 196, 200, 243, 244, 250 Monitoring Committees 93, 97, 103, 122, 124–125, 244 Monnet method 211 most likely / unlikely cases 11, 12, 111 most similar / dissimilar cases 11, 110 movement nationalist 6 political 36 regionalist 8, 259 single-issue 187 (new) social 6, 12, 19, 28, 57, 61–64, 68, 70, 72–75, 79, 123–124, 135, 223, 251, 257, 260 nationalism 44, 49 minority 7, 39, 113, 206 regional 32 sub-state 7–9, 19 neo-classical economics 33 neo-corporatism 3, 67, 69, 78, 203, 250 neo-functionalism 9, 17, 29, 58–60, 72, 85–86, 91, 102–103, 109, 114, 172, 255 neo-liberalism 6, 42, 200 neo-neofunctionalism 58 neo-realism 49, 52–55, 57–58, 171 new economic geography 33 new (political economy of) regionalism 36, 42, 44, 48 New Public Management 142 non-delegation doctrine 194 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 11–12, 18–19, 28, 55–57, 62, 69f, 70–71, 73, 83–85, 90, 93–94, 98, 134–135, 145, 153, 162, 172, 178–180, 182, 186, 195, 205, 212, 220, 243, 247, 254, 257–258 non-institutional actors 11, 84, 117, 223, 246 normative analysis 1–3, 9, 12, 177, 181, 188, 190, 224f assumptions 11, 182, 185–188, 198 challenge 10, 12, 177 concept 142 concerns 133 criteria 187 divide 11 discourses 35 expectations 182–183 force 183 implications 27 legitimacy 195

298

Index

normative (cont.) principles 66 question 27, 31 reorientation 187 turn 12, 187 vision 91 ontological analysis 2, 20, 23, 86 post- 20 Open Method of Coordination (OMC) 22, 89, 95, 147, 154, 160 ownership 191, 204 paradigm 18, 54, 83, 149, 168, 188 paradigmatic revolution / shift 182, 240, 252 para-diplomacy 28 parliamentary model 196–198, 204, 229, 233, 236 participation 6–7, 12, 51, 65, 68, 71–72, 84, 92, 94, 99–100, 108, 115, 118, 121–122, 124–127, 129, 134–135, 143, 162, 168, 177, 181, 186, 190–192, 194, 196, 200–202, 204–205, 210–211, 219, 228, 232–233, 237, 239, 242–244 partnership 70, 78, 85, 97–98, 105, 107, 113, 115–116, 122–125, 128–129, 179, 244 periphery 7, 9–10, 76, 112, 183, 242–243, 245–246 place 33–34, 43–44 plane 28–30, 52, 59, 85, 114, 251–252 analytical 2, 9, 22, 26 normative 25 X1X2 30, 36, 63, 85, 91, 102, 141 X2X3 30, 58, 63, 68–69, 85, 91, 102, 141, 152, 170 X1X3 30, 36, 68–69, 85, 91, 102, 141, 152, 170, 259 political opportunity structure (POS) 28, 50, 64, 68, 74–75, 77, 79, 91, 179 policy 9–11, 18, 23, 26, 32, 36, 86–87, 90, 100, 111, 125, 228, 249, 251–253 constitutional 173, 253, 254 distributive 95, 97, 99, 173, 253 network 103, 115–116 redistributive 97, 99, 253 regulatory 95, 97, 99, 134, 150, 173, 193, 231, 253, 254 vision 102, 105, 113–114 policy-making 1, 3–4, 9–10, 12, 17–18, 20–22, 26, 29–30, 32, 36, 68–72, 77, 83–87, 89–94, 108–109, 111, 113–114, 122, 128, 135–136, 138–139, 141, 143, 149, 152, 154, 156, 169, 172–173, 177, 181, 187, 189–190, 192–194, 196, 200, 202–204, 210, 216, 218–219, 223, 228, 238, 242–243, 245–247, 249–253, 259

politics 9–10, 18–19, 22–23, 26, 32, 36, 38, 47, 66, 73, 79, 84–87, 90, 100, 103, 108–109, 111, 116, 125, 129, 140–141, 205, 222, 241, 249, 251–254 Politikverflechtung 213, 258 polity 9–10, 18–20, 23, 26, 32, 36, 43, 58, 67, 73, 84–87, 90, 100, 102, 105–106, 108–109, 111–112, 126, 141, 153, 177, 180–181, 194, 197, 199, 206, 209, 214, 228–230, 231f, 249, 252–254 composite 1, 74, 78–79, 208 compound 1, 13, 101, 137, 143, 199, 237f, 240, 258, 260 democratic 189 EU / European 22, 25, 153, 154, 180, 200, 214, 215, 232, 242 fused 1 multi-level 23, 79, 101, 126, 127 post-constitutional 188 post-majoritarian 188 post-national 188 post-parliamentary 188 simple 137, 258 state-like 229–230, 232, 234, 237–238, 242, 247, 249 structuring 13, 22, 26, 37–38, 85, 91, 141, 181, 253 supranational 9, 13, 153 post-positivism 31 post-secondary studies 163, 167–168 power 53–56, 103, 105, 108f, 115–117, 119, 123, 129–130, 133, 148, 152, 164–165, 169–170, 189, 192–193, 197, 201, 206, 208–209, 216, 231, 234–237, 240–241, 257–259 administrative 212 balance of 229, 236–237, 241 constitutional 111 decision-making / policy-making 9, 140, 193 drift 240 formal / institutional / legal 11, 59, 63, 64, 91, 110–111, 120, 122, 125–129, 200, 222, 224, 255, 258–259 implied 148 legislative 212, 225, 244, 246, 258 meta- 57 politics 54, 103 relational / relations 57 resources 54–55, 57 structural 56 three faces of 56–57 prefects 45 preferences 23, 54, 59, 87, 88f, 98, 103, 144, 190, 215, 220–225, 237, 239, 244–245 individual 26, 48, 232–233 constituency 245 governmental 86 local 142, 200, 203

Index loose 221 societal 58 state 55, 58 principal 105, 119, 192–194, 210, 224, 255 (see also, agent, policy-agent model) principal-agent model 193, 224–226 (see also, agent, principal) qualified majority voting (QMV) 134, 154, 206, 231 quality assurance / control 12, 152–154, 157–161, 164–166, 169–170, 172–173, 226 regime 1, 28–30, 49, 53–54, 56–58, 67, 153, 157, 180–181, 185, 209, 214–215, 217 regulatory 137, 211–212, 218 international 28, 55–56 region 7, 11, 19, 27, 38, 40, 44, 48–49, 61, 85, 92, 95–96, 98–99, 102–132, 170, 194, 226, 242–243, 258 administrative 10 historical 8, 38, 39, 206 legislative 8 regional (and local) authorities 8, 11, 28–30, 57, 60, 64, 80, 94, 114–115, 118, 120–126, 170, 172–173, 179, 184, 194, 225, 243, 259 economies 42, 47, 111 government 48, 79, 83, 85, 106, 128–129, 170, 192, 208, 225, 243 identities 44, 109, 111 integration 52–53, 58–59, 182 level 48, 59, 97, 107, 122, 125, 130, 162–163, 166, 173, 179, 253 mobilization 28, 32, 53, 59, 92–94, 108, 118, 120, 125–126 nationalism 32 representatives 61, 118, 129, 203, 206, 243 societies 48, 92, 109, 117–118, 120, 203 tier 48, 98, 107, 109, 110, 128 Regional (Information) Offices (RIOs) 28, 85, 118, 120–121, 130, 179, 244, 258 regionalism 7, 9, 27, 33, 41, 42, 44, 48, 53, 102, 131, 252 regionalization 3, 7, 9, 33, 184, 209 regionalized state 50, 108, 123, 184 regulation 20, 25, 28, 47–48, 56, 62, 70, 96, 136–138, 141–145, 147, 150–151, 156, 173, 193–196, 231–232, 236, 243 EU 70, 238 school 62 representation 12, 42, 121–122, 129–130, 190–192, 195, 199–200, 202–205, 207–208, 222, 232f, 233, 237f, 239, 242–243, 245 functional 79, 195–200, 207, 237f

299

parliamentary 77 proportional 42 territorial 77, 79, 119, 129–130, 196, 198–200, 207 virtual 78–79 representativeness 73 responsiveness 6, 12, 13, 46, 75, 165, 191, 213, 219–225, 227, 244–246 revolution behavioural 56 Copernican 20 French 4, 45, 184 Industrial 41 microelectronic 58 National 40–41 Socialist 42 right bill of 208 citizenship 5, 6, 38 constitutional 192 divine 199 minority 207 property 51 state 208 to be consulted 190, 212 to participation 6, 122, 258 to roots 6, 184 to self-government 35, 257 to vote 122, 258 separation of powers / trias politica 207, 236, 237 shadow of hierarchy 22, 89, 212, 218 Single European Act (SEA) 8, 104, 134, 229f, 236 Single (European) Market (SEM) / Common Market 20, 26, 60, 77, 88f, 95–96, 104, 106, 112–113, 128, 145–146, 157, 159, 231 social actors / groups 13, 29, 58, 63, 75–77, 87, 89, 140–141, 179, 186, 220, 245 social capital 46, 76, 88, 96, 199 social partners 13, 70, 78, 89, 98, 106, 112–115, 122–125, 179, 201, 204–205, 223, 225, 242–245 soft law 22 sovereignty 3, 49, 51–52, 57–59, 62, 67, 102–107, 112, 114–117, 128, 132, 141, 150, 162, 171, 182–185, 192, 198, 206, 260 space 29, 35, 38, 42, 44, 118, 126 analytical / conceptual / theoretical 23, 24, 26–28, 30, 255 X1X2X3 30, 90, 252 spillover 28, 72, 86, 158 stakeholders 21, 30, 122, 152, 158, 161, 167, 170, 210–211, 254–256

300

Index

state 1, 4, 5, 9, 10–12, 17–19, 22–24, 32, 33, 35, 36, 42, 43, 45, 49, 50–69, 72, 80, 86, 87, 89, 91, 103, 109, 115–117, 123, 132, 142, 166, 182–186, 198, 200, 204–209, 230, 231–234, 240, 241, 250, 251, 258, 260 absolutist 66 autonomy 2, 28, 51–52, 58, 60 borders 33 building / creation / formation 4, 5, 22, 24, 35, 37–39, 42, 65–66, 78, 98, 151, 171, 182, 233 boundaries 9, 67, 87 capacity 20, 52 central 3, 9, 12, 18–19, 48, 184 centralized 4–5, 7–8, 10 city- 65, 239 composite 78–79 decentralized 3 European 1, 4, 10, 13, 20, 26, 32, 37–39, 42, 49, 52, 65, 72, 102, 133, 232–233, 250 executives 58–60 federal 10, 13, 32, 50, 108, 117, 119, 123, 184, 188, 204, 208–209, 221, 231f forms of 2, 22, 229, 247 liberal 58 member- 9, 17, 19, 21, 23–24, 30, 60–61, 70, 73, 78, 86–87, 89, 92, 94, 97–102, 104–110, 112, 114, 118–119, 122–123, 128, 130–131, 134–144, 146–148, 150– 152, 155, 157–158, 160–162, 170–172, 180, 187, 189, 190, 192–193, 197, 201– 203, 205–206, 212, 214, 218, 229, 231, 234–235, 242, 244, 247, 254–259 nation- / national 2–4, 6–9, 23–24, 26, 29, 32, 36, 38, 42–44, 59–60, 62–66, 71, 79, 85–86, 90, 92, 96, 98, 102, 106–108, 110, 123, 131, 151, 155, 177, 179, 182–184, 188, 193, 213, 223, 236, 240, 247, 249, 256, 259 post-Napoleonic 111 post-national 1 regionalized 10, 50, 184 regulatory 1, 103, 231–232 restructuring 23, 90, 252 sovereign 4, 5, 10, 11, 27–28, 36, 38, 40, 42, 49, 55, 58, 60, 64, 133, 188, 192, 241f structures 5, 18, 22, 45, 50 supra- 33, 35–36 tradition 13, 257 unitary 3, 4, 10–11, 27, 50, 112, 117, 145, 148, 184, 209 welfare 6, 9, 10, 37, 41 state-centrism 29, 53, 86, 91, 109, 111, 114 state-church cleavage 40, 41, 66 state-society / state v. society 10, 11, 18, 27, 28, 30, 59, 65–80, 148, 163, 177, 185, 252 relations 7, 21, 22, 23, 87

subgroupism 32, 51 subnational actors / groups 19, 60, 64, 75, 90, 98, 99, 109, 110, 112, 115, 139, 140, 144, 244 authorities (SNAs) 12–13, 18–19, 46, 49–50, 52, 59–60, 63–64, 68, 73, 80, 85–87, 90–91, 94, 97–98, 104, 107–108, 112, 114, 116–117, 121–122, 124, 126, 130–133, 140–141, 143, 145, 149, 152, 170, 173, 178–179, 183, 187, 190, 192–193, 201–202, 205, 219, 225, 242–246, 250–254, 257 government 13, 19, 80, 84, 90, 97, 120, 140, 143, 162, 184, 212, 220, 244, 253–254, 259 levels / tiers 13, 23, 32, 36, 45, 50, 84–85, 96, 98, 104–105, 109–110, 114, 120, 127, 132, 177, 193, 200, 206, 223, 252 substate dynamics / effervescence / mobilization 36 substate nationalism / nations 7–9, 19, 32–33, 35–36, 38 subsidiarity 7, 12, 61, 107–108, 123, 128, 130, 140–141, 180, 197–199, 204 territory 4, 5, 7, 24, 27, 33–35, 38–40, 42–44, 49, 57, 61, 66, 76, 94, 96, 99, 132, 177, 182, 184, 246, 252–253, 255 theoretical analysis 181 approach 109, 172, 252 argument 50 aspect 2 assumption 54 challenge 10, 17–80, 183, 249–252 claim 93 concept 31 content 192 contours 83 core 255 debate 53f discussion 11, 84, 243 elaboration 90 expectation 88 explanation 32 framework 200 implications 9, 11, 100 innovation 187 investigation 3 justification 33, 46 level 105 paradigm 188 pattern 188 pole 17 point of view 228 problem 23 promise 102

Index proposition 187 question 27 significance 84, 85, 90, 93 space 24, 255 straw-man 92 tool-kit 240 tradition 186 third level (see also, meso-level) 19, 28, 109, 130 trans-national actors 54 authorities 51 bias 146 cooperation networks 118, 120 civil society 68, 117 communities 30 groups 28, 58, 63, 80, 148, 183 mobilization 53, 57, 63, 74, 77–78, 90, 109, 120, 259 social movement 68, 72–73, 135, 251 trans-regional associations 93, 102, 117, 120 transparency 12–13, 73, 191, 219–220, 224, 227

301

Treaty of Amsterdam 134, 229 Treaty establishing the European Community 107, 108f Treaty of Maastricht/Treaty on the European Union (TEU) 22, 104, 108f, 129, 130, 134 Treaty of Rome 130, 133 trias politica, (see also, separation of powers) 207, 236, 237 Type I governance / jurisdiction / multilevel governance 24–25, 27, 29–30, 126–128, 143, 152–153, 173, 207, 209 Type II governance / jurisdiction / multi-level governance 24–25, 27, 29–30, 126–127, 143, 152–153, 173, 207, 209 values 13, 20, 25, 28, 37, 40, 42–44, 56–57, 71, 87–88, 121, 124, 131–132, 135, 151, 155, 179, 181, 184–185, 188–189, 191–192, 202–203, 214, 242, 247, 250, 252, 257–258 zaibatsu 34