‘Breakthrough’ political science: Multi-level governance – Reconceptualising Europe’s modernised polity
| Author | John Peterson,Charlie Jeffery |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148120959588 |
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Breakthrough Political Science Symposium on Multi-Level Governance |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120959588
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2020, Vol. 22(4) 753 –766
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148120959588
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‘Breakthrough’ political
science: Multi-level governance
– Reconceptualising Europe’s
modernised polity
Charlie Jeffery1 and John Peterson2
Abstract
Multi-level governance has provoked debates over the last quarter century as the thinking of
Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks has progressed. That thinking has been both innovative and
eclectic, forming a number of intellectual ‘story arcs’ that part ways, develop and mature, then
recombine with renewed force. We take Hooghe and Marks’ Multi-Level Governance and European
Integration as a pivotal moment in the development of that thinking. We then trace the ‘story arcs’
of multi-level governance by pinpointing three questions. Does multi-level governance ‘travel’ as
a viable analytical framework much beyond cohesion policy? Does multi-level governance give
analytical purchase beyond the European Union? And is multi-level governance merely a descriptive
framework or does it embed or give rise to theory? We conclude by shortly summarising the
contributions to this Breakthrough Political Science Symposium.
Keywords
European Union, international organisations, multi-level governance, postfunctionalism, regional
governance
Introduction
Sometimes in the study of politics – if rarely – a new framework is unveiled with an
apparently modest analytical purpose that catches imaginations because it offers a truly
novel way to make sense of political change. Multi-level governance (MLG) no doubt
qualifies as one such case. Its debut coincided with a moment of transformational change
in the institutions, rules and purpose of what was then the European Community
following two rounds of change to its founding Treaties. An important element of the
transformation was a large increase in cohesion or ‘structural funding’, in Euro-speak:
public investment in poorer countries and regions vulnerable to competitive market
1University Executive Board, University of York, York, UK
2Institute of Governance, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Corresponding author:
Charlie Jeffery, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK.
Email: charlie.jeffery@york.ac.uk
959588BPI0010.1177/1369148120959588The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsJeery and Peterson
research-article2020
Breakthrough Introduction
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