Multilevel governance or multilevel government?
| Author | Tanja A Börzel |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148120939872 |
| Subject Matter | Breakthrough Political Science Symposium on Multi-Level Governance |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120939872
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2020, Vol. 22(4) 776 –783
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148120939872
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Multilevel governance or
multilevel government?
Tanja A Börzel
Abstract
The commentary returns to the beginning of the career of multilevel governance as a distinct
perspective on the European Union and European integration. At the time, multilevel
governance allowed a generation of students to overcome the stylised debates between Liberal
Intergovernmentalism and Neofunctionalism on how to best capture the ‘nature of the beast’. At
the same time, multilevel governance still privileged the role of public authorities over economic
and societal actors. While subsequent studies broadened the focus to include the social partners
or public interest groups, Hooghe and Marks have retained their public authority bias. The
commentary argues that the focus on multilevel government rather than multilevel governance has
increased the scope or applicability of Hooghe and Marks’ approach, both within the European
Union and beyond. At the same time, the government bias has prevented the multilevel governance
approach from unlocking its full explanatory potential.
Keywords
comparative regionalism, European integration, European Union, multilevel governance
Multilevel governance (MLG) emerged as a critique of state-centred perspectives on the
European Union (EU), most prominently Liberal Intergovernmentalism (LIG). LIG had
opened the black box of the state. While acknowledging the role of non-state actors, LIG
insisted that domestic actors could not directly access EU decision-making. Member state
governments act as the main gate-keepers for domestic interests to enter the European arena
(Moravcsik, 1991, 1998). As such, MLG seemed an extension of Neofunctionalism (NF),
and its variant, Supranationalism, which considers transnational alliances of domestic inter-
est groups with supranational actors (particularly the European Commission and the
European Court of Justice) as the main driver of European integration (Haas, 1958;
Sandholtz and Sweet, 1998). However, MLG emphasised the role of subnational authorities
(SNA) rather than transnationally organised interest groups. This is no coincidence since
the concept of MLG was first developed in the field of EU structural and cohesion policy to
Otto Suhr Institute for Political Science, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Corresponding author:
Tanja A Börzel, Otto Suhr Institute for Political Science, Freie Universität Berlin, Ihnestr. 22, 14195 Berlin,
Germany.
Email: tanja.boerzel@fu-berlin.de
939872BPI0010.1177/1369148120939872The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsBörzel
research-article2020
Breakthrough Article
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