An examination of trends towards increasing state-society partnerships and intergovernmental collaboration in the face of global economic restructuring.

Important policy problems rarely fit neatly within existing territorial boundaries. More difficult still, individual governments or government departments rarely enjoy the power, resources and governance structures required to respond effectively to policy challenges under their responsibility. These dilemmas impose the requirement to work with others from the public, private, non-governmental organisation (NGO) or community spheres, and across a range of administrative levels and sectors. But how? This book investigates the challenges—both conceptual and practical—of multi-level governance processes. It draws on a range of cases from Australian public policy, with comparisons to multi-level governance systems abroad, to understand factors behind the effective coordination and management of multi-level governance processes in different policy areas over the short and longer term. Issues such as accountability, politics and cultures of governance are investigated through policy areas including social, environmental and spatial planning policy. The authors of the volume are a range of academics and past public servants from different jurisdictions, which allows previously hidden stories and processes of multi-level governance in Australia across different periods of government to be revealed and analysed for the first time.

The past two decades have witnessed dramatic shifts in public policy, with increasing complexity not only in the relationships between the state, society, and the private sector, but also in the interactions among various orders of government in places such as Canada, the United States, and the European Union. In Policy Governance in Multi-level Systems, Charles Conteh examines how these seismic structural changes have impacted the work of public organizations and how these organizations are responding to modifications in their operating environments. With an emphasis on Canada's controversial but resilient regional economic policy, Conteh focuses his study on four agencies - the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Western Economic Diversification Canada, FedNor, and FedDev - and their evolving policy portfolios and modes of operation in New Brunswick, Manitoba, northern Ontario, and southern Ontario. Drawing upon literature in public administration, urban and regional governance, as well as multi-level governance, Conteh offers a cutting-edge analysis of contemporary and emerging understandings of multi-level governance and regional development while acknowledging the historical context of policy and intellectual traditions. Combining a solid theoretical background with empirical depth and practical lessons from the field, Policy Governance in Multi-level Systems is an invaluable resource for policy analysts, policy makers, and practitioners in many tiers of government, business, and community leadership.

`The editors have produced an authoritative and comprehensive guide to multi-level governance. The book ranges across the domestic context, supraregionalism and global governance - all filtered through a sophisticated analytical framework and attention to policy detail. There is no better place to go than this book for a guide to the topic. An outstanding accomplishment.'---David Held, London School of Economics, UK Scholarship of multi-level governance has developed into one of the most innovative themes of research in political science and public policy. This accessible Handbook presents a thorough review of the wide-ranging literature, encompassing various theoretical and conceptual approaches to multi-level governance and their application to policy-making in domestic, regional and global contexts. The importance of multi-level governance in specific policy areas is highlighted, and the contributors - an international group of highly renowned scholars - report on the ways in which their field of specialization is or may be affected by multi-level governance and how developments could affect its conceptualization. European integration is considered from its unique standpoint as the key catalyst in the development of multi-level approaches, and the use of multi-level governance in other parts of the world, at both domestic and regional levels, is also considered in detail before focus is shifted towards global governance. The Handbook concludes with a presentation of six policy fields and instruments affected by multi-level governance, including: social policy, environmental policy, economic policy, international taxation, standard-setting and policing. This comprehensive Handbook takes stock of the vast array of multi-level governance theory and research developed in subfields of political science and public policy, and as such will provide an invaluable reference tool for scholars, researchers and students with a special interest in public policy, regulation and governance.

The power and future role of nation states are a topic of increasing importance. The dispersion of authority both vertically to supranational and subnational institutions and horizontally to non-state actors has challenged the structure and capacity of national governments. Multi-level governance has emerged as an important concept for understanding the dynamic relationships between state and non-state actors within territorially overarching networks. Multi-level Governance explores definitions and applications of the concept by drawing on contributions from scholars with different concerns within the broad discipline of Political Studies. It contends that new analytical frameworks that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries and epistemological positions are essential for comprehending the changing nature of governance. In this context, this volume undertakes a critical assessment of both the potentialities and the limitations of multi-level governance.

This book explores the theoretical issues, empirical evidence, and normative debates elicited by the concept of multi-level governance (MLG). The concept is a useful descriptor of decision-making processes that involve the simultaneous mobilization of public authorities at different jurisdictional levels as well as that of non-governmental organizations and social movements. It has become increasingly relevant with the weakening of territorial state power and effectiveness and the increase in international interdependencies which serve to undermine conventional governmental processes. This book moves towards the construction of a theory of multi-level governance by defining the analytical contours of this concept, identifying the processes that can uniquely be denoted by it, and discussing the normative issues that are raised by its diffusion, particularly in the European Union. It is divided into three parts, each meeting a specific challenge - theoretical, empirical, normative. It focuses on three analytical dimensions: multi-level governance as political mobilization (politics), as authoritative decision-making (policy), and as state restructuring (polity). Three policy areas are investigated in vindicating the usefulness of MLG as a theoretical and empirical concept - cohesion, environment, higher education - with particular reference to two member-states: the UK and Germany. Finally, both the input and output legitimacy of multi-level governance decisions and arrangements and its contribution to EU democracy are discussed. As a loosely-coupled policy-making arrangement, MLG is sufficiently structured to secure coordination among public and private actors at different jurisdictional levels, yet sufficiently flexible to avoid "joint decision traps". This balance is obtained at the cost of increasingly blurred boundaries between public and private actors and a change in the established hierarchies between territorial jurisdictions.

Local governments serve their communities in many diversified ways as they increasingly engage in multiple connections: international, regional, regional-local, with nongovernmental organizations and through external nongovernmental services county actors. The book discusses how the shift in emphasis from government to governance has raised many management challenges, along with shifting expectations and demands.