European Integration

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Multi‐level Governance: a Historical and

Conceptual Analysis

Simona Piattoni

To cite this article: Simona Piattoni (2009) Multi‐level Governance: a Historical and Conceptual
Analysis, European Integration, 31:2, 163-180, DOI: 10.1080/07036330802642755

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European Integration
Vol. 31, No. 2, 163–180, March 2009

ARTICLE

Multi-level Governance: a Historical

and Conceptual Analysis

SIMONA PIATTONI
Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
SimonaPiattoni
Taylor
202009
31
Simona.piattoni@unitn.it
00000May
Journal&
10.1080/07036330802642755
GEUI_A_364445.sgm
0703-6337
Original
and Francis
2009 Ltd
ofArticle
European
(print)/1477-2280
Francis Integration
(online)

ABSTRACT In this paper I perform a historical and conceptual analysis of multi-level

governance (MLG) in order to tease out its characterizing traits and allow for its utili-
zation for both empirical and normative purposes. MLG is a dynamic three-dimensional
concept that blurs and problematizes three analytical distinctions that have been central
to the conventional reflection on the European modern state: (1) that between centre
and periphery, (2) that between state and society and (3) that between the domestic and
the international. Each dimension or axis involves, in its turn, changes that occur at
three analytical levels: political mobilization, policy-making and polity restructuring.
Through the combination of these dimensions I generate a three-dimensional concep-
tual space within which the empirical scope and reach of MLG can be gauged and its
desirability in normative terms assessed.

KEY WORDS: Multi-level governance, conceptual analysis, regionalism, cohesion policy

Multi-level Governance: Theoretical, Empirical and Normative Challenges

Multi-level governance (MLG) is a rather popular term, widely used by both
scholars of European integration and students of international relations. Like
other popular concepts, it 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). I see three
main challenges connected with the use of MLG, of a theoretical, an empir-
ical and a normative nature (Piattoni 2005).
From a theoretical point of view, it is unclear whether MLG refers to
processes or to situations, to strategies or to structures. We clearly need to
reflect on MLG’s ontology and assess its theoretical relevance. From an empir-
ical point of view, we must consider which phenomena MLG can uniquely

Correspondence Address: Simona Piattoni, Faculty of Sociology, University of Trento, via

Verdi 26, 38100 Trento, Italy. E-mail: simona.piattoni@unitn.it

ISSN 0703–6337 Print/ISSN 1477–2280 Online/09/020163-18 © 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/07036330802642755
164 Simona Piattoni

encompass and decide whether it marks a significant distinction vis-à-vis

other concepts, such as governance, for example.1 We must reflect on the
epistemology of the concept and assess its empirical significance. To deal with
both the ontological and the epistemological issues, we must decide where
MLG stands on the ‘ladder of abstraction’ (Sartori 1984), which departs from
the rather general concept of ‘steering’ (Kooiman 1993, 2003) to branch off
towards both private (corporate) and public (state) governance (cf. Kjær
2004; Van Kersbergen and Van Waarden 2004). This, in turn, implies having
a solid definition of what we mean by ‘level’: does it denote a concrete level
of government or just any ‘jurisdiction’ (Frey and Eichenberger 1999) or
‘sphere of authority’ (Skelcher 2005) regardless of whether it binds people on
a territorial, functional or purely voluntary basis? Because MLG’s
connotation is inherently dynamic, pointing to the continuous trespassing of
established assumptions about the fundamental characteristic of authoritative
decision-making, we must look for the empirical referents — processes and
arrangements — that capture these dynamics, thus defining its denotation
(Sartori 1984).
From a normative point of view, finally, we need to ask ourselves whether
decisions made through MLG are as or more legitimate than decisions made
through other processes (for an optimistic view, see Scharpf 1994, 1997,
2000). There is a large debate on the legitimacy of the European Union,
whether it can be solely grounded in ‘output legitimacy’ (effectiveness,
responsiveness) or it must also be grounded in ‘input legitimacy’ (participa-
tion, representation) (Andersen and Eliassen 1996; Beetham and Lord 1998;
Banchoff and Smith 1999; Smismans 2004, 2006; Kohler-Koch and
Rittberger 2007). How does MLG respond to this challenge? Does MLG
ensure wider and fuller participation in decision-making (input legitimacy)
and, for this reason, produce better policies (output legitimacy) than other
modes of governance?
MLG often relies on the creation of ad hoc networks, which may include,
in a rather haphazard way, legitimately constituted deliberative assemblies
together with other public and private, individual and collective actors.
MLG, in other words, moves beyond a purely representative democracy
and, as such, can hardly be gauged on the basis of criteria developed with
reference to representative democracies (Jachtenfuchs 1997). One of the
most striking features of MLG, therefore, is that it also implies the effective
equalization of general purpose jurisdictions, such as sub-national govern-
ments, with special purpose jurisdictions, such as voluntary associations,
civil society organizations, expert committees, etc. That such an odd mix of
actors should ‘rule’ may be normatively problematic for some Europeans:
different public philosophies may, in fact, be clashing in the EU under the
apparently amalgamating surface of MLG. The question, therefore, remains
open whether the involvement of lower-level spatial jurisdictions, such as
sub-national authorities (SNAs) and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), will ease the problem of the composition of the increasingly diverse
interests present within EU decision-making processes or will rather make
them all the more acute.
 MLG: a Historical and Conceptual Analysis 165

Historical Analysis
The reflection on MLG spans at least fifteen years, since the seminal article
by Gary Marks (1992), where it was first proposed as a useful concept to
understand some of the decision-making dynamics within the European
Union. Until then, the field of EU studies had been dominated by the theories
of neo-functionalism and inter-governmentalism, which purported to
explain not only how the EU had come about, but also how it functioned. It
was generally assumed that the same forces that explained the creation and
evolution of the EU would also explain its functioning: whether the funda-
mental unit of analysis was states defending and promoting their national
interests in an inter-governmental arena or was market forces, which inevi-
tably attracted individuals, groups and firms towards the supranational level,
the drivers of integration also explained the functioning of the integrated
entity. Marks (1993) 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 theo-
ries to ‘flesh-and-blood’ actors — whether because the actors were trapped
in their institutional roles and therefore always making the interest of the
institutions they represented (as for inter-governmentalism), or because they
were moved by powerful economic and social forces of the market (as for
neo-functionalism) — he called attention to phenomena that could not be
accommodated easily by either theorization. Marks (1996) rather introduced
the visions, passions and interests of real life individuals and asserted the
autonomous explanatory force of a third paradigm, that of MLG, which
quickly became a catch-all phrase to indicate 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).
In reality, the ‘destructive part’ (pars destruens) of the original argument
by Marks 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-centredness’, was not as useful in
erecting the MLG construction (i.e. to say what MLG was), although stimu-
lating and suggestive of other types of investigation that could depart from
this premise.2 Indeed, MLG theory building proved to be a much harder task,
to which other scholars also contributed, and which is not yet completed.

MLG as Political Mobilization and Policy-Making

To begin with, Marks himself audaciously sought to use the concept to
describe not just a peculiar type of decision-making arrangement (policy), but
processes that were transforming societal mobilization more generally (poli-
tics) (Marks et al. 1996). In a direct confrontation with inter-governmental
state-centrism, even in its liberal version (Moravcsik 1994, 1998), MLG
challenged the contention that non-state interests could aspire to make their
impression on EU policy-making only by operating through state representa-
tives, that is, that they could not successfully challenge the ‘gate-keeping’
166 Simona Piattoni

capacity of the central state. There were three main contentions of liberal
inter-governmentalism: (1) that governments could effectively keep the
centre–periphery gates, thus deciding which sub-national formations could
be given the right to represent themselves in the EU political process as carri-
ers of legitimately distinct interests; (2) that they could keep the state–society
gates, thus retaining the power to select which social groups could be char-
tered as legitimate carriers of private or collective interests; 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,
Hooghe and Blank (1996) drew attention to the role that non-central state
authorities and non-governmental organizations made to the daily politics of
the EU and, therefore, to their capacity to cross the gates to the non-domestic
(European and international) arena without the keepers’ permission.
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 mobili-
zation dynamics were most apparent (Hooghe 1995, 1996; Hooghe and
Marks 1996; Keating and Hooghe 1996; Marks et al. 1996; Jeffery 2000;
Börzel 2002, 2003; Le Galès and Lequesne 2002). Other applications were
attempted later in different EU policy realms, such as environmental policy
(Jordan 1998, 1999; Fairbrass and Jordan 2004) and even agricultural policy
(Bozzini 2008). Since then, the concept has caught on and the number of
scholars using it has veritably exploded.
The debate, in the field of regional or cohesion policy, boiled down to decid-
ing whether sub-national 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 gave them an extra argument in their struggle with their central govern-
ments for larger devolutionary powers (Sharpe 1979, 1993) and thus fanned
regionalist aspirations for autonomy (Keating and Jones 1985; Jones and
Keating 1995; M. Rhodes 1995; Jeffery 1997a, 1997b; Bourne 2003; Piattoni
2003). Involvement of the regional level in structural policy also had poten-
tially significant polity implications: if regions were deemed essential for the
success of structural policy, then also those states that lacked a ‘third’ level
were expected to create it. Hopes were raised for an upcoming ‘Europe of the
regions’ (R. Rhodes 1974; Loughlin 1996), even though scepticism soon
ensued (Anderson 1991; Christiansen 1996; Jeffery 1997a, 1997b). Far from
functioning as vigilant keepers of the territorial gates, national governments
were apparently unaware that the fences were being torn down.
At a minimum, Marks, Hooghe and Blank (1996) had drawn attention to
the capacity of non-central state authorities both to move (even remove) the
centre–periphery gate and to cross without laissez-passer the domestic–
foreign gate (this is the ‘multi-level’ part of MLG). MLG was thus meant to
draw attention precisely to the fact that the relevant levels of mobilization
were not only the national and the supranational (as in the famous two-level
theorization so eagerly utilized by LI (liberal intergovernmentalism) propo-
nents), but there were other levels (e.g. the sub-national) which mattered as
well.
 MLG: a Historical and Conceptual Analysis 167

The point of departure for this multi-level governance (MLG)

approach 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).

Moreover, they had also drawn (or refreshed) people’s attention to the forays
that non-governmental organizations made to the daily politics of the EU,
thus marauding past the state–society gate (this is the ‘governance’ part of
MLG).
In an attempt to flesh out the potential of MLG theory, Marks’ 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, 1996), thus tapping into the abundant resources
of a different type of literature, that on sub-state nationalism (Keating 1988,
1998; 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).
Even though much of the empirically orientated ‘Europe of the regions’
literature often concluded that the regions that best promoted their interests
still did so by working through their national governments (hence, the more
apt phrase ‘Europe with the regions’, cf. Hooghe and Marks 1996; Keating
and Hooghe 1996), the essence of the MLG reflection necessarily pointed in
the direction of a confusion (con-fusion) of established processes and hierar-
chies and the emergence of new configurations of powers and competencies.
The ‘actor-centredness’ of MLG emphasized how the different levels were
travelled and linked by institutional and non-institutional actors moving
rather freely across traditional levels and spheres of authority, for the
moment at least formally still in place. 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, Hooghe and Blank (1996) were implicitly also calling atten-
tion to the changing nature of the state in Europe, hence inviting a reflection
on the polity dimension.
Taking their theoretical cues from Moravcsik and their empirical
evidence from either high-level decision-making or the UK experience, both
Pollack (1995) and Bache (1998, 1999) acknowledged the role played by
the Commission (the former) and sub-national authorities (the latter) and
their increasingly tight cooperation on structural policy matters, only to
argue that such role was confined and dictated by conditions set by national
168 Simona Piattoni

governments. Admittedly, a multitude of actors populated the EU decision-

making scene, but they argued that national governments still called the
shots both in Brussels and at home. They thus concluded that, although
many actors were indeed involved in policy-making, only some of them
truly shaped the policy. However damaging their critique — something to
be assessed on the basis of empirical research — the suggested reduction of
MLG to neo-functionalism must be rejected as it fails to capture the innova-
tive attention devoted by MLG to the capacity of real-life (institutional and
non-institutional) actors to travel across levels that still formally remain in
place, thus linking otherwise disconnected governmental levels but also
challenging formally existing hierarchies.
Despite the efforts of the Commission to impose uniformity on partnership
arrangements throughout the EU, the newly created relations between public
and private actors located at different governmental levels understandably
took different forms in different national contexts. This inevitably induced
some authors (Bomberg and Peterson 1998; Conzelmann 1995; Peterson
2004) to argue that what was common to all these different arrangements was
their network configuration. Although Kohler-Koch and Eising (1999)
sought to develop the agenda further by reflecting on which types of networks
prevailed in the EU and whether they corresponded to the conventional
models theorized by the literature on state–society relations (statism, liberal-
ism, neo-corporatism), the term ‘network’ became as much a passe-partout
as a dead-end (Börzel 1997). Unless the concept of network is employed to
chart with precision which nodes are linked in what ways and to measure the
density, intensity and strength of these ties (see, e.g. Marcussen and Torfing
2007), then its usefulness is merely metaphorical, telling us no more than that
the relations among institutional and non-institutional actors defy formal
institutional patterns. In many ways, networks appear to be the fixtures of
current governmental structures as much as groups appeared to be the essence
of government to interest-group liberals in the 1950s and 1960s (for a
classical formulation, see Truman 1951). In either case, both concepts are so
broadly defined as to be overstretched beyond usefulness (Sartori 1970).
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
‘post-ontological’ phase in EU studies (Caporaso 1996; Jachtenfuchs 2001;
Wiener and Diez 2004). Having momentarily shelved the existential 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 functioned and produced authoritative
decisions. Scholars were also reacting to objective developments in the EU.
The perfection of the Single Market and the creation of the Economic and
Monetary Union signalled the completion of economic integration. The
Union was by now a powerful machine producing regulation, disbursing
funds, promoting competition. Whether it was to be considered ‘less than a
state, but more than an international organization’ (Sbragia 1992), ‘a regu-
latory state’ (Majone 1996), a ‘post-modern state’ (Caporaso 1996), a ‘fused
 MLG: a Historical and Conceptual Analysis 169

polity’ (Wessels 1997), a ‘composite polity’ (Imig and Tarrow 2001), a

‘compound polity’ (Fabbrini 2007) or an ‘interpenetrated system of interest
intermediation’ (Kohler-Koch 1999b), the EU was producing impressive
amounts of legislation and otherwise affecting most aspects of the life of
European citizens. Thrown out of the window, ontological issues re-entered
through the back door. How were these authoritative decisions made? Who
actually participated in the decision-making process? How effective, respon-
sive, accountable, democratic was this sui generis polity?

MLG as Polity Restructuring

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 institutional structures of centre–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 subnational 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 mobili-
zation across levels, they provide no systematic set of expectations
about which actors should mobilize and why (Marks et al. 1996, 167).

The third strand in MLG studies, then, increasingly concentrated on precisely

the process of constructing a multi-level polity and on its expected features.
In many ways, this marked a return to the original ontological agenda of inte-
gration studies, somehow closing the analytical circle. Scholars were by now
wondering whether MLG indicated processes that, incrementally through the
slow accumulation of policy decisions and political mobilization, were trans-
forming the political structure of the European Union, the structures of the
individual European member states and, perhaps through similar dynamics
elsewhere, those of the state tout court (cf. Kohler-Koch 1999a). This line of
enquiry has its roots in the attempts of scholars who, while studying changes
in the public administration and in the territorial articulation of national
states, sought to explain structural developments. To make just two notable
examples, on the one hand, R. A. W. Rhodes (1988, 1996, 1997) analysed
the disaggregation of British governmental and territorial structure while, on
the other, Fritz Scharpf (1988, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2000) investigated the
aggregation and coordination of diverse policy preferences in Europe. In both
cases, though taking concrete territorial entities as their point of departure,
MLG was elaborated as a quintessentially theoretical problem. MLG studies
thus acquired an increasingly more abstract and authentically theoretical
overtone and produced attempts at general theorizations, such as those of
Hooghe and Marks (2001, 2002), Marks and Hooghe (2003, 2004), Jessop
170 Simona Piattoni

(2004), not to mention Cohen and Sabel (1997), Dorf and Sabel (1998) and
Gerstenberg and Sabel (2002).
Connecting with similar reflections made by economists (Frey and
Eichenberger 1999), in numerous contributions Marks and Hooghe elabo-
rated Type I and Type II MLG in an attempt to define the theoretical space
within which the empirical instances of inter-governmental relations, that
were emerging for example in cohesion policy, could be inscribed (cf. Bache
2008). Their goal was to theorize the ‘unravelling of the state’ (Marks and
Hooghe 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, into one another, and that were
now challenging or bypassing these established relations without, however,
completely superseding them. Type I and Type II represent polar
(ideal)types, yet they do not directly help us settle the epistemological ques-
tion as ideal-types are not observable in reality.
Type I resembles more conventional federal systems, which establish a
stable division of labour between a limited number of levels of government
with general jurisdiction over a given territory or a given set of issues and
mutually exclusive membership. Type II, for the moment still lacking a well-
identified ‘real-life’ referent, looked like an anarchical, fluctuating superim-
position of single purpose jurisdictions with overlapping memberships. In an
attempt to derive typical modes of action from these different governance
systems, Marks and Hooghe stated that different types of mobilization could
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, respectively, actors trapped in fairly
stable and ordered systems of governance and actors free to move easily
across numerous and unconnected systems of governance.
Chris Skelcher (2005) moved this line of thinking further by elaborating
a general theory of how systems of governance develop ‘jurisdictional
integrity’.3 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
onto surrounding territories by asserting the exclusive jurisdiction of
national centres on to competing would-be national centres and creating a
‘hierarchically ordered system of multi-purpose governments’ (Skelcher
2005, 94). Type II MLG has a different, interstitial origin:

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 main-
stream governmental organizations are unable to respond flexibly to
policy issues that intersect their jurisdictions (Skelcher 2005, 94).
 MLG: a Historical and Conceptual Analysis 171

Type II governance normally co-exists with Type I governance in the same

overarching polity: ‘is generally embedded in Type I governance’ (Marks and
Hooghe 2003, 238). Typically, in contemporary societies, Type II jurisdic-
tions get superimposed in a disorderly fashion on to one another and to Type
I jurisdictions. We often observe overlaps between the one and the other
jurisdictional type among which, in case of conflict, it may be difficult to
adjudicate. In this case, according to Skelcher’s terminology, we have ‘poly-
centric governance’ (also Schmitter 2004). Challenges to jurisdictional integ-
rity (hence confusion and overlap) may come from above or below, when
super- or sub-ordinate jurisdictions step forward to manage more effectively
given policy issues (thus fanning integrative or devolutionary processes), or
from the side, when same-level jurisdictions trespass jurisdictional bound-
aries (thus triggering aggregative processes). Interestingly, and in accordance
with an actor-centred approach to MLG, Skelcher (2005, 96) observed how
‘The boundary spanning behaviour of individuals operating at the margins
of their jurisdictions embodies a deeper motivation to challenge and recast
the existing patterns of governmental authority’.
Moreover, relational integrity is more complicated for Type II than Type
I governance. Type I governance, in practice, is nothing less than the conven-
tional 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 infrastruc-
ture 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 adjudi-
cation (structures) for the latter than for the former. According to Pierre and
Peters (2002), these two types of governance co-exist 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 still dominated
by existing institutions.
The contrast and inherent tension between Types I and II of governance
has been reformulated by Scharpf (1988, 239) in terms of the search for the
‘optimal scale of government’, that is that level of government which is
effective in securing solutions to collective problems, because it operates at a
sufficiently large scale to obtain technically superior solutions, and demo-
cratic, because it remains at a sufficiently small scale not to impose any
significant sacrifice on individual preferences. Like Bartolini (1998) and
Skelcher (2005), Scharpf too believes that the balance between governmen-
tal levels accomplished by the national state in the eighteenth century has
172 Simona Piattoni

been progressively called into question by their incapacity to prevent exter-

nal threats (negative externalities) that set the one against the other (read:
wars) and by their incapacity 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 EU). 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 favour of another level of government. The new order presup-
poses the weakening and the overcoming of the old order, and yet govern-
mental institutions live well past the reasons for their coming into being also
because they manage to mobilize a wealth of expectations, myths and loyal-
ties that, by shaping individual behaviour, tend to grant them staying power
(cf. Jachtenfuchs 1995).

Conceptual Analysis
Let us recall the main points made in the course of the historical recon-
struction of the MLG field of studies leading up to a conceptual analysis of
the term. The term multi-level governance denotes a diverse set of arrange-
ments, 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 the interrelations (Sabel and Zeitlin 2007).
The levels connected by MLG must be understood primarily as territorial
levels (supranational, national, sub-national), each commanding a certain
degree of authority over the corresponding territory and the individuals
residing in it, but also more generally as jurisdictional levels, identified
with regard to specific functions and to the constituents who are interested
in the performance of those functions (cf. Conzelmann 2008). The chal-
lenges that these levels face are of an objective nature (asserting jurisdic-
tional 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 clarifying the concept, testing
empirical propositions derived from it, and assessing the legitimacy of the
structures and decisions described by it. It is also itself a ‘multi-level concept’,
because it moves across and connects different analytical planes and raises
different normative questions. MLG is at the same time a theory of political
mobilization, of policy-making and of polity structuring, hence any theoriza-
tion about MLG may be couched alternatively or simultaneously in politics,
policy or polity terms.
The point of departure of this analysis is the (ideal-typical) sovereign state,
as it has been theorized since the seventeenth century: a system endowed with
 MLG: a Historical and Conceptual Analysis 173

high boundary and relational integrity (Bartolini 2005) that authoritatively

allocates competences between the central and the peripheral tiers of govern-
ment, enlists selected interests and social groups in the decision-making
process, and successfully guards the gates of international mobilization of
both sub-national authorities and civil society organizations.
Challenges to the sovereign state are consequently of three types. Along the
first dimension, the unitary state may be forced to devolve powers to sub-
national units to the point of acquiring federal or confederal configurations
(centre vs periphery). What makes the sub-national units strong vis-à-vis the
centre are both formal attributes (legislative and fiscal competences, for exam-
ple) as well as less formal, but nevertheless crucial, characteristics (such as
cultural distinctiveness, administrative capacities, proactive political classes,
etc.; cf. Bukowski, Piattoni, and Smyrl 2003). Along the second dimension,
the state may be induced to join increasingly structured arrangements of inter-
national coordination and regulation and cease to be sovereign as theorized
by realism and intergovernmentalism (anarchy vs regime). International
regimes subject sovereign states to their disciplining rule, thus limiting and
constraining their autonomy. International relations thus increasingly shed
their character of pure anarchy and acquire the traits of regulated regimes
(Kratochwil 1989; Rosenau and Czempiel 1992). Along the third dimension,
the state is induced to cede increasing shares of public power to various
expressions of civil society, thus blurring the distinction between the public
and the private (state vs society). Increasingly public interest groups are
involved in authoritative decision-making, policy implementation, monitor-
ing and evaluation (Ruzza 2004). These three dimensions are often intercon-
nected, signalling the existence of interdependencies between developments
occurring in each of these spheres.
The literature on regionalism has particularly emphasized the intercon-
nections between devolutionary and federalizing processes, on the one hand,
and the process of regional integration, on the other. Comparative studies
on devolutionary trends in Europe or on the emergence of a ‘third level’ in
Europe typically connect centre–periphery relations with the stimuli (various
push and pull factors) coming from the international context (because of the
heightened competition bred by globalization, because of the regulatory
osmosis encouraged by Europeanization, or simply because of cross-regional
emulation). Similarly, the ‘Europe of the regions’ literature postulated a
causal correlation between growing Europeanization and the strengthening
of regional identities, while the literature on ‘Europe with the regions’
reduced the causal claim to a mere correlation, with the EU acting as an
additional structure of political opportunities that only some regions were
willing and able to exploit effectively. This literature has also produced anal-
yses of the ingenious ways in which regional authorities used their manifold
(particularly social, economic and cultural) resources and their linkages with
their local societies to conduct their own brand of foreign diplomacy (para-
diplomacy) establishing regional offices in Brussels, opening up to cultural
exchanges, entering cross-border cooperation agreements, engaging in twin-
ning exercises, lending assistance to their co-regionals living abroad, and so
174 Simona Piattoni

on (Keating and Aldecoa 1999). The varied literature on regional mobiliza-

tion belongs, in other words, to this line of reflection.
Works exploring various governance arrangements that increasingly
feature NGOs — 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 clearly connect concerns about the blurring
of the boundary between state and society with domestic devolutionary
processes. The problematique best explored along this plane is one that
postulates (necessary or causal) correlations between growing devolution
and growing civil society involvement in governance arrangements
(Bukowski, Piattoni, and Smyrl 2003), suggesting that sub-national govern-
ments may claim for greater powers only by demonstrating that they are the
authentic expressions of distinct sub-national societies and that greater
devolved powers induce the involvement of sub-national societies in the
decision-making processes concerning the territory (Jeffery 2007). The White
Paper on European Governance (CEC 2001) stated with force this reading of
the complementarity between regional and local authorities, on the one
hand, and civil society organizations, on the other, in the formulation, imple-
mentation, monitoring and evaluation of Community policies. Whether the
correlation is seen as a (desirable) empirical development or as a causally
necessary phenomenon would be worth exploring.
A vast literature charts the mobilization of new global actors, such as
international social movements and advocacy coalitions, by setting them in
correlation with the process of globalization and regional integration. The
EU and the other international organizations provide novel structures of
political opportunity for the mobilization of groups once confined within
national or local borders (Marks and McAdam 1996; Imig and Tarrow
2001; Tarrow 2005; Della Porta and Diani 2006). Without explicitly chal-
lenging 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 international society, which
cannot be effectively channelled by other political formations (such as
political parties) or by the national states themselves, these movements
claim to represent public interests and perform public functions (Ruzza
2004; Balme and Chabanet 2008). We must not forget, in addition, that
precisely these types of interactions were at the core of transactionalist and
neo-functionalist theories of European integration (Rosamond 2000),
which predicated the process of European integration on the spontaneous
mobilization of social groups across national borders and the activation of
functional and political spill-overs.
Finally, the simultaneous activation of all three developments — centre–
periphery, domestic–foreign and state–society dynamics — is at the core of
multi-level governance theorization. In light of the conceptual analysis
performed above, it is clear that in its original formulation MLG entailed a
fairly straightforward identification of levels with territorial jurisdictions
 MLG: a Historical and Conceptual Analysis 175

rather than with both territorial and functional levels. By connecting territo-
rial levels above and beyond their traditional hierarchical or nested
relations, it was argued, the Community pushed for a transformation of
centre–periphery relations and for a redefinition of the boundaries of terri-
tories and jurisdictions within member states. The subsequent theorization
of Type I and Type II MLG, then, pointed to the possibility that the Union
might not just upset traditional territorial hierarchies, but also foster the
creation of mixed territorial and functional MLG arrangements, thus
connecting centre–periphery processes with state–society dynamics. Because
they involve not only territorial jurisdictions and their lawful authorities but
also the corresponding expressions of civil societies, MLG arrangements
also challenge the boundaries between the public and the private spheres of
authority and between state and civil society. Moreover, since the EU gives
regional and local authorities and societies ample opportunities for involve-
ment across national borders, the boundary between the domestic and the
international spheres is also trespassed. The analytical space of MLG is
rightfully described by the activation of all three dynamics.
Turning to the empirical testing of the propositions implicit in the
concept of MLG, it would be interesting to assess whether the increasing
involvement of regional and local authorities (whether they hold a demo-
cratic electoral mandate or are simply appointed by the national govern-
ment) in the policy-making process next to various expressions of civil
society determines a confusion between the public nature of the former
(clearly Type I governance structures, albeit of a lower rung) and the private
nature of the latter (clearly Type II governance bodies) — a ‘privatization’
of regional and local authorities as well as a ‘publicization’ of civil society
organizations. This latter hypothesis is indeed plausible and the trend may
even be validated and reinforced by the existence of Type II governance
formations, such as international associations of regional and local authori-
ties that lobby for Type I governance institutions as if they were private
interests. Indeed, it could even be hypothesized that any 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. It would be
further interesting to speculate whether this transformation can be accom-
modated within existing notions of legitimate rule or it rather imposes a
fairly radical revision of the existing criteria.4

Conclusions
We have seen that the reflection on MLG implies the exploration of three
analytical planes: political mobilization, policy-making, and state restructur-
ing. Trying to confine the analysis of MLG to only one of them would
deprive this 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
176 Simona Piattoni

Rhodes 2007) to study multi-level governance! — and because it points to

inherently dynamic arrangements. The step from the description of policy-
making processes and patterns of political mobilization to the theorization
of how individual member states and the EU polity are being restructured is
the most difficult one. It means engaging 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.
This is the kind of exercise in which, however, we should be engaged:
move MLG from being a mere descriptor to becoming a fully fledged theo-
retical concept subjectable to (at least partial) empirical falsification. To this
end, we should aim at testing empirically the capacity of MLG to capture
real-life developments and to describe existing structures of governance as
we should engage head-on in the debate on the legitimacy of MLG arrange-
ments. 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, see Lord 2007) and
whether it captures equally well governance structures that involve different
types of sub-national authorities as well as different types of NGOs (the
exact meaning of level). We should, ultimately, not forgo the possibility that
MLG may also serve rhetorical functions: 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 2008).

Notes
1. Sartori (1984, 28) distinguishes between two semantic activities: 1) addressing the term-to-meaning
relationship and achieving one-to-one correspondence between term and meaning so as to dispel any
ambiguity (conceptual clarification) and 2) addressing the meaning-to-referent relationship so as to
specify the empirical boundaries of the concept (conceptual precision).
2. See, for example, the effort at exploring the personalistic, informal component of many governance
arrangements pursued by Christiansen and Piattoni (2003) or the constructivist attempts at under-
standing how actors come to establish their preferences and which preference ordering commands
greater social acceptance (Christiansen, Jørgensen, and Wiener 2001).
3. Jurisdictional integrity consists of two elements, jurisdiction and integrity. The first delimits the
spatial domain within which the body has authority to act in relation to a policy domain or ‘compe-
tence’. The second element concerns ‘integrity’. The term is used in two distinct ways. Boundary (or
external) integrity is a measure of the autonomy of the spatial and policy domain. Complete bound-
ary autonomy would mean that the jurisdiction was not subject to intrusion by other agencies of
government, whether of higher or equivalent spatial scales and therefore that its authority can be
exercised autonomously. Relational (or internal) integrity is a measure of the democratic relationship
between the governmental body and the citizenry it serves. Intrinsic elements of relational integrity
are legitimacy, consent and accountability (Skelcher 2005, 92–3).
4. A fuller exploration of the empirical and normative challenges raised by MLG is carried out in
Piattoni (forthcoming).

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