Multilevel Governance and the Policy Process

Abstract

Scholars from different strands of literature agree that policymaking spans across different levels of government and includes a variety of public and private actors. Nevertheless, we still know very little about the distinctive elements and characteristics of the policy process in multilevel contexts (Stephenson 2013, Benz, Broschek, and Lederer 2021). This panel aims at improving our understanding of the policy process in multilevel governance and to provide insights about processual aspects of multilevel policy change. Therefore, we invite papers that help to understand elements that are distinctive to the policy process in multilevel contexts. For example, papers could pose research questions, such as the following: how are policy processes in multilevel contexts different from policy processes at one specific level of government? Which factors explain policy change in multilevel contexts? Which factors explain different dimensions of policy success in multilevel governance (Trein, Thomann, and Maggetti 2019)? How do different theories of the policy process contribute to explaining policy processes in multilevel governance (Bakir 2009)? Under which conditions can multilevel settings produce successful problem-solving (Thomann, Trein, and Maggetti 2019)? Which types of actors cooperate in multilevel policy processes? What are their motives and objectives regarding policy outputs and outcomes? In what way do specific structures, such as policy advisory systems and participatory institutions (Kaufmann and Sidney 2020), span multiple levels of governance? The insights from this panel will contribute to our understanding of the policy process regarding major policy challenges that touch upon different levels of governance, such as climate change (Kim, Marcouiller, and Woosnam 2021) and digitalization (Roy 2021). Bakir, Caner. 2009. "Policy Entrepreneurship and Institutional Change: Multilevel Governance of Central Banking Reform." Governance 22 (4):571-598. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0491.2009.01454.x. Benz, Arthur, Jörg Broschek, and Markus Lederer. 2021. A Research Agenda for Multilevel Governance. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Kaufmann, David, and Mara Sidney. 2020. "Toward an Urban Policy Analysis: Incorporating Participation, Multilevel Governance, and “Seeing Like a City”." PS: Political Science & Politics 53 (1):1-5. doi: 10.1017/S1049096519001380. Kim, Hyun, David W. Marcouiller, and Kyle Maurice Woosnam. 2021. "Multilevel Climate Governance, Anticipatory Adaptation, and the Vulnerability‐Readiness Nexus." Review of Policy Research 38 (2):222-242. doi: 10.1111/ropr.12417. Roy, Jeffrey. 2021. "Chapter 5: Digitalization and Multilevel Governance." In A Research Agenda for Multilevel Governance, edited by Arthur Benz, Jörg Broschek and Markus Lederer. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Stephenson, Paul. 2013. "Twenty Years of Multi-level Governance: ‘Where Does It Come From? What Is It? Where Is It Going?’." Journal of European Public Policy 20 (6):817-837. doi: 10.1080/13501763.2013.781818. Thomann, Eva, Philipp Trein, and Martino Maggetti. 2019. "What's the Problem? Multilevel Governance and Problem‐Solving." European Policy Analysis 5 (1):37-57. doi: 10.1002/epa2.1062. Trein, Philipp, Eva Thomann, and Martino Maggetti. 2019. "Integration, Functional Differentiation and Problem-solving in Multilevel Governance." Public Administration 97 (2):339-354. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12595.

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