Multilevel Governance and the Political Geography of Europe

Abstract

The EU’s system of multilevel governance is a well-established part of how the EU does business. Central governments have had to adjust to the involvement of multiple actors in domestic EU policy making while at the same time playing an important role in determining national preferences by coordinating at the level of the core executive. The move in EU policy making from regulatory issues to core state powers, that are more politically salient, challenges domestic management of EU business and may lad to a reform of traditional bureaucratic processes. The emergence of sub-state governments (SSG) as full-fledged actors in certain domains of public policies has become routinized through the processes of institutionalization and fell into the ongoing process of political normalization. The multiplicity of actors within the state who are expressing international ambitions might be considered another challenge to the pre-eminence of the core executive and central government. Budgets have always played a central role in multilevel governance. The European Union’s budget operates as a redistributive mechanism that counteracts the cross-national and cross-regional inequalities created by the single market. Despite the limits on cross-national redistribution imposed by a centrifugal system of representation, the net fiscal position of member states - what they pay to the EU budget minus what they receive from it - is very diverse, and has changed quite remarkably over the last decades.

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