than their Democratic counterparts. The allocation of policy responsibilities is left, increasingly, to state legislatures, which vary from state to state in terms of their size, makeup, and level of professionalization—all of which influence their capacity to deal with policy decisions. The professionalization of state legislatures accounts for the biggest discrepancy in policy decisions, as it impacts behaviour among lawmakers as well as the operation of and policy decisions made by legislatures. This latter aspect is particularly important, as legislatures with higher levels of professionalization are more apt to adopt complex regulatory policies and systems, including environmental programs, strict campaign financing laws, funding increases for education and pension programs, and other innovative policies. The organization and mechanisms of each legislature also vary greatly from state to state, further contributing to discrepancies. Variance in state legislatures accounts for the inconsistency in the quality of policy-making decisions in each U.S. state, Squire argues.
This book addresses the impact new regionalism and MLG on political systems and relations, both in the international sphere as well as within specific political systems. In particular, it examines relations of trust between various [28] political arenas, the configuration of institutions and the role and functions of political actors in compound and concurrent political and social arenas. Since MLG is here to stay, the time has come to identify better ways to organize the relationships between different political and social arenas. The analytical framework outlined in this book is meant to provide a good example for the organization of governance in political life.
[31] Chapter 1
An Assessment of Multilevel Governance as an Analytical Concept Applied to Federations and Decentralised Unitary Systems:
Germany Versus the United Kingdom
Michael Stein, University of Toronto
Lisa Turkewitsch, University of Toronto
Introduction1
In two earlier papers that we presented to the 2009 Santiago IPSA Congress and the 2010 Luxembourg IPSA Conference, we argued that there appear to be broad global trends leading to the emergence of patterns of multilevel governance (MLG) in the internal intergovernmental relations of most contemporary nation-states; these apply in particular to both mature and emergent parliamentary and presidential federations, although to different degrees. We viewed these trends as a product of both contemporary forces of increasing international economic globalisation and political institutional and bureaucratic decentralisation or devolution. But in those earlier papers we did not attempt to delimit what we considered to be the fundamental defining characteristics and underlying causal or conditioning factors driving these evolving MLG trends in constitutional, institutional, cultural/attitudinal and socio-economic terms. In this paper, we propose to begin this undertaking by adopting a broad multidimensional conceptual framework and UK-German intergovernmental relations comparison presented in brief schematic form in section II below. We will apply it loosely to a comparison of two formally distinct types of political systems, one that is unitary and currently decentralised (the UK), and one that is parliamentary federal and centralised (Germany). We will also attempt to encompass these two systems within a broader typology of multitiered governance that views MLG as an overarching concept for both unitary systems and federal systems of different degrees of territorial diversity. If the MLG framework appears to fit better and account more accurately for evolving political conditions in both these countries than a traditional federalism [32] approach that relies on a unitary-federal conceptual dichotomy, then we believe that there are good reasons for considering MLG to be a superior analytical framework for contemporary intergovernmental political analysis.
Case selection and similar systems comparison
We have chosen to compare the United Kingdom and Germany in terms of MLG because both are large and mature European polities of comparable population size, similar levels of industrialisation and urbanisation, and common parliamentary democratic political institutions. Both have recently (since the 1990s) adopted major constitutional and institutional reforms of their politicaladministrative systems to rebalance their internal territorial and political relations in the context of national/supranational (EU) power balances. Germany achieved peaceful reunification of its two formerly post-World War II components, Communist East Germany and democratic capitalist West Germany in 1992, although this event itself is generally considered by German scholars to have not constituted an important territorial constitutional or institutional political reform. In fact, later efforts to overcome some of the intergovernmental decisional weaknesses and political stagnation arising from its closely interlocked form of “joint federalism” are judged by most German political analysts to have been even more significant in their potential impact on federal power rebalancing than reunification. However, they only achieved, at best, minor political success. The United Kingdom, on the other hand, during the same period, did carry out a comprehensive constitutional and institutional territorial devolutionary reform involving Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland after decades of failed efforts to accomplish this. But the extent to which these UK reforms actually did lead to a significant change in the internal territorial and power balance remains a highly contentious one, even after a decade of evolution and adjustment in this respect. Moreover, the extent of the disagreement among UK scholars regarding the utility and applicability of MLG in evaluating the impact of these devolutionary changes is still substantial. (See section II below.)
Overview
We will begin in section I with a theoretical overview of the literature covering what “multilevel governance” (MLG) is understood to mean and what its [33] underlying causes are considered to be in general theoretical terms and in a broad international context. We will also review the literature evaluating the relative strengths and weaknesses of this concept in comparison to related concepts like “federalism” and “centralised unitarism” when applied to an analysis of internal intergovernmental relations. We will then examine some of the more important theoretical contributions and insights provided in recent years drawing in particular on Fritz Scharpf (2009), Simona Piattoni (2009-2010), and Theo A.J. Toonen (2010), a contributor to an edited volume by Edoardo Ongaro et al. (2010).
In section II we will compare in brief schematic form efforts at reform of internal intergovernmental relations and rebalancing of national-regional power relations in the United Kingdom and Germany since the early 1990s within the broad parameters of our summary in the preceding section of recent theoretical contributions to MLG theory. And in section III, our concluding section, we will redefine our evolving argument and position on multilevel governance theory in light of the schematic comparative empirical analysis of recent reforms in the UK and Germany conducted in the preceding section (section II) of this paper.
Pros and Cons of MLG versus other more traditional approaches to European Governance MLG versus neo-functionalism and neo-institutional intergovernmentalism: positive and negative contributions:
There has been much academic debate about the value of “multilevel governance” (MLG) as an analytical construct applied to internal intergovernmental relations, and its relative merits and shortcomings in comparison to earlier concepts and approaches to European integration such as “neo-functionalism” and “neo-institutional íntergovernmentalism.” The concept of “multilevel governance” was first applied descriptively in the early 1990s to the evolving political system of the European Union. Many specialists in European politics argued then that this concept and its related theoretical attributes constituted an important advance on two major earlier approaches that had been applied to European integration up to that point: neo-functionalism and neo-institutional or state intergovernmentalism. They also viewed it as a more accurate device for describing global trends
