Multi-Level Governance and European Integration - by Liesbet Hooghe & Gary Marks (Paperback)

About the Book

European politics has been reshaped in recent decades by a dual process of centralization and decentralization. At the same time that authority in many policy areas has shifted to the supranational level of the European Union, so national governments have given subnational reg...

Book Synopsis

European politics has been reshaped in recent decades by a dual process of centralization and decentralization. At the same time that authority in many policy areas has shifted to the supranational level of the European Union, so national governments have given subnational regions within countries more say over the lives of their citizens. At the forefront of scholars who characterize this dual process as 'multi-level governance, ' Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks argue that its emergence in the second half of the twentieth century is a watershed in the political development of Europe. Hooghe and Marks explain why multi-level governance has taken place and how it shapes conflict in national and European political arenas.

Review Quotes

This is the book for which many have waited. Over the last decade, the authors, singly and jointly, have published a series of fascinating articles that challenged the conventional dichotomy of "intergovernmental" and "supranational" interpretations of European Union politics. The present volume synthesizes and extends these analyses, demonstrating not only the superior plausibility and internal consistency of the multi-level perspective, but also the wide range of research questions to which it can be usefully applied. Among the highlights are not only definitive accounts of the rise and decline of multi-level cohesion policies, but also sophisticated analyses of multiple identifications at the level of constituencies and of divergent orientations toward European integration among Commission officials and among national political parties. Altogether, this volume combines a wealth of empirical information with incisive analyses that are integrated in a convincing theoretical framework. A must for every student of European Union politics.

For those who still cannot believe that the once-familiar sovereign European national-state is a thing of the past, the authors of this work clearly, forcefully, and inexorably demonstrate that such indeed is the case. They develop, illustrate, and document the practice in Europe of multi-level governance: decisionmaking that combines the efforts of supranational, national, and subnational (regional) institutions and politicians in such a way that no single level succeeds in dominating the other two. More important, they show incontrovertibly that multi-level governance is an unplanned adaptation to contemporary conditions. Politicians may welcome it as an inescapable second-best rational solution to problems on their agendas. The work combines restrained argumentation with encyclopedic knowledge of facts, theories and specialized literature.

Hooghe and Marks have ingeniously expanded multilevel governance as a frame for understanding the dynamic politics of the European Union. This volume, building on their previous work, brings together an assessment of the changing spatial politics of the EU with the analysis of competing fornms of capitalism. In so doing they provoke us to rethink the roles of political institutions in western Europe.

The value of this volume is that it demonstrates how political analysis can be employed to understand development of European governance and policy in the context of sub-national forces.

This is a contribution to the de-mystification of the European Union. Rather than emphasizing the sui generis aspect of the EU, Hooghe and Marks argue that politics in the Union can be understood in terms of the ordinary tools of comparative politics. The book is an invitation for area specialists and generalists to join hands in understanding the most exciting current political experiment in the world.

This is a welcome and timely addition to debates on European integration.

About the Author

Liesbet Hooghe is associate professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Gary Marks is professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and director of the UNC Center for European Studies.