The EU civil protection mechanism in the 2024 Spanish floods: Europeanisation and multi-level governance in practice

The fishery sector has a unique position within the European Union regulatory system. Being in the joint competence of supranational and national authorities, it has a complex transnational nature, characterized by an active participation of non-governmental organizations and associations, as well as a number of coordinating international authorities. Additionally, the fishery is of particular importance for nation states since it is linked to issues of sovereignty and social stability. The paper examines possible applications of the multi-level governance (MLG) theory to the study of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), its history, current state and prospects for development. The first section outlines the key provisions of the MLG theory and describes its general applicability to the study of the EU institutions. In order to provide a better understanding of strengths and weaknesses of the MLG theory, the author compares it to a number of related approaches traditionally used in integration studies in general and the European integration studies in particular. The author concludes that the multi-level governance framework is particularly suitable to the study of complex regulatory processes that involve different actors, like in the case of the EU CFP. Such an approach allows the author to identify certain specifics of the EU political practices in this area of regulation. For example, the author highlights a clear desire of the supranational bodies to acquire additional competences and to bring about redistribution of power in their favor through mobilizing the support of sub-national actors and think-tanks and at the expense of national actors. However, the author concludes that in order to provide a truly comprehensive understanding of the EU CFP, the traditional focus of the MLG approach should be expanded to encompass yet another level of analysis — the global one.

The saying that prevention is better than cure is also true of environmental pollution. In addition, how pollution can be prevented is becoming an important challenge in the contemporary globalized world. Policymakers and practitioners increasingly more often see pollution prevention as a crucial global health issue. There is substantial agreement as to the need to prevent pollution in cooperation with manufacturing firms. However, today, there is a lack of understanding of what governance practices are the most effective and should be implemented to achieve the zero-pollution target. Multilevel governance framework has been proposed to facilitate pollution prevention planning. To deal with pollution prevention challenges, practitioners must shift towards a more multilevel governance approach that can build a with coalition of different organizational units. In the current study, we review relevant literature to identify the most optimal taxonomies that highlight understudied areas in pollution prevention and use them as a basis for developing a multilevel governance (MLG) framework. MLG framework is essential as it not only offers help to practitioners to participate but also takes a systematic approach. The successful transition from blue to the green world requires focusing on multilevel governance aimed to achieve zero-pollution targets. This work contributes to the emerging debate on what is the most effective pollution prevention planning framework for manufacturing firms to achieve zero-pollution.

The case of intra-European movement raises significant debate about multi-level governance (MLG). In analytical terms, it asks how multi-level governance of intra-European movement actually is, what actors are involved and how? In normative terms, it considers whether intra-European movement can be seen as ‘successful’ multi-level governance. Intra-European movement is an area that faces both issue complexity and institutional complexity (Stephenson 2013, pp. 817) and as such, the governance arrangements are often correspondingly complex. This chapter will attempt to locate the case of intra-European movement within the broader literature on multi-level governance and try to draw out lessons for understanding MLG as a practical, analytical and normative concept. This is relevant to both the understanding of intra-European movement and the understanding of MLG. On the one hand, additional cases help to support or refute the robustness of our conceptualisation of multi-level governance; on the other hand, MLG as a concept can help us to understand the entanglement of a complex issue that cuts across political and policy bounds. The chapter will first develop a framework of multi-level governance that can be applied to intra-European movement. Then, the structural, relational and policy factors that affect MLG will be explored in the context of this specific case. The final section will try to craft some answers about what intra-European movement policy can tell us about multi-level governance, and vice versa.

European cities have built cooperative relations through transnational municipal networks (TMNs). Most of the dedicated literature has relied on the multi-level governance (MLG) framework, claiming that the establishment of TMNs has been favoured by the multi-tier and multi-actor system of governance developed within the European Union. While MLG can help to illustrate the characteristics and functions of TMNs, it does not enable to explain the engagement of European cities in these organisations. This article therefore identifies and discusses the analytical and operational limitations of the MLG approach. It is claimed that the MLG framework does not provide a suitable analytical approach to shed light on the economic, political and institutional drivers of the participation of European cities in TMNs. By way of contrast, an urban approach hinging on the urban level may address the MLG’s analytical and empirical shortcomings.

This body of work contributes towards the understanding and explanation of how macro-level climate change adaptation and agri-environmental stewardship policy results emerge in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) from the micro-level behaviour of actors within the context of Multi-level Governance (MLG). There is a huge gap in the literature within SIDS with reference to MLG and its relationship with climate change adaptation and agri-environmental stewardship policy development and implementation. To contribute to addressing this gap a mixed methods approach is applied, utilizing both a multi-case and single case study. This approach draws from cases in African, Caribbean and Pacific SIDS with particular emphasis on Barbados for more in-depth case analysis and modelling. Contextual Interaction Theory (CIT), Choice Experiments and the MLG Framework are the main tools being utilized to determine and simulate the drivers of behavioral change. This is achieved through: the identification of how MLG presents itself, its impact on the policy formulation and implementation process; the utilization of CIT to explain how the adequacy of implementation of climate change adaptation and environmental stewardship policy can be improved; the determination of the specific agri-environmental stewardship policy attributes and associated willingness-to-accept (WTA) that drive farm environmental stewardship and climate change adaptation behaviour; and the degree to which farmers’ WTA driven by the AES policy can be supported by Taxpayers’ WTP and how does this relate to MLG. The qualitative and quantitative results from the different components of this study are used to determine the impact of MLG on climate change adaptation and agri-environmental stewardship policy within SIDS. The findings emphasize the contextual nature of policy within a MLG framework and makes it clear that each SIDS that intents to develop and implement adaptation and environmental stewardship policy within the agricultural sector should undertake an appropriate behavioral analysis. Such an analysis will ensure that: the policy attributes included within the policy developed maximize motivation and voluntary participation from key actors, cognition gaps are addressed, accountability mechanisms are in place and the appropriate resources are available to support climate change adaptation and behavioural changes towards environmental stewardship within the specific geographic space.

Mainstreaming climate adaptation and mitigation policy: Towards multi-level climate governance in Melaka, Malaysia

Over the last years, Multi-Level Governance (MLG) has become a buzzword, and not only for environmental policy. Informed by previous research on federalism, this new form of political steering (Hooghe and Marks 2001; Heinelt et al. 2002; Bache and Flinders 2004) became paradigmatic for the European integration process and decision making in that supranational entity. If EU environmental policy represents a “unique system of multilevel environmental governance” (Jordan 2005: 2), it is questionable whether the EU model is transferable to other regions. Moreover, in research about environmental governance, in the EU and beyond, the term “level” denotes existing institutional systems or procedural processes at specific spatial dimensions such as international or supranational institutions (Multilateral Environmental Agreements, European Commission, etc.), national authorities or democratic institutions (e.g. national parliaments), or local decision making processes. The different levels are simply taken as given! The production of these spatial levels, i.e. the production of social space on a specific spatial scale-e.g. the production of Europe in a historical process-and its meaning for the relationships between the different levels, is regularly excluded in MLG approaches. Analyses therefore underestimate or often simply neglect the processes of up-scaling and down-scaling of decision making through the strengthening or weakening of existing levels and/or the construction of new levels. MLG approaches therefore often miss the associated impacts on policy making. It is exactly this question-how the scalar dimensions of social and political processes are produced-that is emphasized by approaches from critical geography dealing with the politics of scale (e.g. Smith 1995; Swyngedouw 1997; 2004; Brenner 2001; 2004; Brenner et al. 2003; Heeg et al. 2007). The question of scale has also become prominent in a variety of issues regarding environmental problems. For environmental governance, in particular, the question of how to connect socio-economic, political and ecological scales is critical (Cash and Moser 2000; Meadowcroft 2002; Bulkeley 2005). The emergence of “beyond-the-border-problems,” environmental problems, where the causes and consequences are splitbetween different countries and political authorities, pose vexing challenges. In these cases, the gains and losses related to environmental threats, as much as the costs of political responses, are often distributed among different regions or spatial scales. To address these distributional effects, the power relations of the different actors involved at these different scales have to be taken into account. Transboundary environmental problems therefore raise questions of how to connect the scale, the interplay and the fit of environmental regimes and institutions (Young 2002). Furthermore, as analyzed in the politics of scale, power relations connected to the relationships between different levels of decision making are important. The central question of the “politics of scale” approaches used in critical geography-the production of spatial scale and the relevance of the production processes for environmental governance, however, is seldom mentioned in the literature on environmental governance (Brown and Purcell 2005; Bulkeley 2005). Recent discussions about environmental governance will be analyzedbelow in order to demonstrate that the production of scale is often neglected and that this disregard has profound impacts on the way the notion of MLG is used. The concept of scale will be introduced to address this shortcoming and to deal with the complex transformations which give rise to notions of multi-level governance. Moreover, a better understanding of the scale issues in Multi-Level Environmental Governance can improve our understanding of the rescaling of politics in general. It will be argued that scale-related thinking has some advantages to explain the complex transformation connected with multi-level politics. In particular, the analysis of how distributional conflicts within and between different levels are resolved-or regulated without really being resolved-could benefit from the politics of scale approach. Above all, this approach uses the notion of power and domination to explain how the power relations connected with distributional conflicts are inscribed in political institutions. The integration of the notions of power and domination into governanceapproaches, however, is a challenge. Governance approaches are marked by a problem-solving bias which tends to exclude questions of domination (Mayntz 2005), too easily assuming that actors or institutions are actually interested in solving problems. This problem-solving bias is an important gap in recent governance approaches. When we examine distributional conflicts within and between different levels we have to address the question whether actors are genuinely interested in solving problems-or whether they are more interested, considering possible losses, in merely handling the consequences of the problems (in material as much as in political terms) without actually trying to solve the problem effectively. To do this, we have to take into account the power relations between the actors’ diverging interests, and how the interests are inscribed in institutional measures-that is: how much they were able to influence the measures adopted-and thus the structural selectivities inscribed in the institutional responses on different scales. This argument will be supported by referring to a very important exampleof environmental assessments and environmental policy making: the MillenniumEcosystem Assessment. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), published its main results in 2005 (see MA 2003; 2005a; 2005b; 2005c) and provides an excellent overview of a broad range of empirical issues connected with the question of scale in environmental sciences and policy. Moreover, it offers important methodological tools to move forward towards an integration of social and ecological scales, using multi-scale assessments and focusing on cross-scale interactions. A much closer look at the results of the assessment as well as at theapproaches applied, however, makes it obvious that some questions remain unresolved and that several new challenges have emerged. This article has made use of a valuable study at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ which analyzes the relevance of the MA for Germany (see Beck et al. 2006). In this study, we became aware of the methodological gains connected with the MA approach as well as of the impulses this approach gives to multi-level environmental governance. Nevertheless, in their present form, the policy options discussed within theMA do not acknowledge that the societal externalization or “misplacement” of environmental effects is a specific “beyond-the-border” or “trans-local” environmental problem of particular importance to industrialized countries. The term “misplacement” addresses the impacts on ecosystem services in other parts of the world while providing human well-being for a particular society in a specific region or nation-state. Thus, the term emphasizes the relevance of cross-scale interactions and the power relations involved for governance strategies at the regional and/or local level. To fully grasp these cross-scale interactions, it is necessary to analyze how socio-spatial dimensions are produced by social processes, rather than dealing with them simply as givens. In the conclusion, we will discuss the degree to which the misplacement of environmental threats is due to power relations within and between different social scales and its impact on the local level.

Education policies are increasingly characterized as complex and dynamic, involving a multitude of actors and policy networks. As a result, there is a growing demand in education for research approaches that can help make sense of this complexity. This paper examines the applicability of multi-level governance (MLG) framework as a tool of education research from Canada’s decentralized federalist perspective. By conducting a comprehensive literature review of 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, we determine the applicability of MLG framework, the conditions necessary for its use, and its overall relevance to education policy, which is increasingly characterized by the involvement of a variety of stakeholder groups across government levels and policy sectors. The key findings are presented following Bowe et al.’s (1992) policy cycle framework. We conclude that MLG approach is a strong tool for education research to analyze policy making in federal decentralized educational systems, as it allows a more nuanced perspective for understanding the multilayered policy dynamics often unfolding in the context of federalism.

Samorząd gminny w Niemczech, wykonując zadania publiczne w ramach multilevel governance, pełni najważniejszą rolę w układzie sieciowym. Jako organ państwa inicjuje i zmienia formy koordynacji działań zbiorowych. Głównym problemem, jaki legł u podstaw artykułu jest używanie siatki pojęciowej, występującej w zdekoncentrowanej strukturze administracji publicznej w krajach anglosaskich, do opisu multi-level governance w zdecentralizowanych formach administracji publicznej. Celem głównym artykułu jest zaprezentowanie w jaki sposób koncepcja multi-level governance została dostosowana do specyfiki niemieckiego samorządu gminnego oraz na czym polega jej istota. Celowi głównemu podporządkowano następujące pytania badawcze: Jaka jest różnica w genezie governance w Niemczech w porównaniu do tradycji państw anglosaskich? W jaki sposób są realizowane zadania publiczne w ramach multi-level governance w Niemczech? Jakie są formy organizacyjno-prawne wykonywania zadań publicznych? Artykuł został przygotowany według założeń nowego instytucjonalizmu. W celu zaprezentowania sposobów wykonywania zadań publicznych w koncepcji multi-level governance zastosowano metodę funkcjonalną, która umożliwiła wyłonienie tych zadań, które mogą być realizowano zarówno przez jednostki samorządu terytorialnego, jak i instytucje samorządu gospodarczego. Uzupełniając rozważania zastosowano również metodę instytucjonalną pokazującą specyfikę współpracy samorządu gminnego z innymi podmiotami publicznoprawnymi i prywatnoprawnymi. Z badań nad multi-level governance w Niemczech autorka wyciągnęła trzy wnioski, wokół których powstał artykuł. Po pierwsze, powstanie multi-level governance w Niemczech oparte jest na działaniach odgórnych i następuje od kraju związkowego do gmin (top-down). Tworzenie układu sieciowego wynika wówczas z przekonania władz państwowych o efektywniejszej realizacji zadań publicznych opartej na współpracy z podmiotami prywatnymi, których działania moderowane są przez podmioty władcze. Po drugie, wprowadzenie multi-level governance na poziomie lokalnym poprzedzone jest regional governance na szczeblu krajów związkowych stanowiącą dostosowanie koncepcji governance do specyfiki państwa federalnego. Po trzecie, multi-level governance zostało wprowadzone w strukturę samorządu gminnego za pośrednictwem specjalnego typu zadań publicznych (Gemeinschaftsaufgaben).

This contribution recalls the existing interdependencies across levels of government and elaborates on the multi-level governance gaps framework to identify coordination and capacity reinforcement tools to improve public policy outcomes in decentralised contexts. It details how the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has adopted this approach. This paper then focuses on one of the tools used by countries and regions – Contracts. Contracts across levels of government, though not exempt of drawbacks, can favour information-sharing and mutual understanding as to how to address common policy priorities, while reducing the transaction costs of policy implementation; and generate trust between public actors for their future endeavours. The last section underlines some more general observations and questions like the use of multi-level governance approach to preserve the ‘biodiversity’ of regions. The note concludes with the need to re-insert relationships with people and not only among public authorities in a ‘new generation’ multi-level governance framework.

A community-based integrated care system established through broad cooperation among municipalities in a rural setting, focusing specifically on Uwajima area, Ehime Prefecture, is investigated. The study adopts the perspective of multilevel governance and finds that the organization of community care conferences and consultative bodies is tailored according to each municipality's distinct features. Uwajima City, having a larger population, implements a three-tiered structure, whereas smaller towns in Uwajima area adopt a simpler, single-tiered model. Long-term care insurance services and rights protection facilities are initiated through extensive intermunicipal collaboration. Thus, the community-based integrated care system in the Uwajima area is established using a multilevel governance approach, involving both horizontal and vertical networks. Within each municipality's vertical network, the overarching governance of the local comprehensive community support center facilitates the scaling of local issues into policy. In contrast, in horizontal networks among municipalities, Uwajima City stands at the core, wielding significant influence. At present, no vertical network between community care conferences and consultative bodies facilitates broad cooperation. However, when vertical networks arise, a new multilevel governance framework is needed. The multilevel governance facet, as described above, is commonly observed in rural areas, where limited local resources available for community-based integrated care systems necessitate intermunicipal cooperation.

Introduction Spain provides a good case for assessing the EU’s climate policy’s strengths and weaknesses. EU membership has produced considerable pressures at the national level for adapting climate and other related policies to the ambitious European goals (see Chapter 1). This relationship initially followed a mostly top-down dynamic, where Spain was a more passive taker of European goals and policies (Costa 2011: 182-183), but then turned into a two-way interaction in which reducing the level of ambition of EU policies and targets has been a constant task for Spanish negotiators over the last years. In this regard, Europeanization is key – although not the only variable for understanding the contradictions of climate policy in Spain, which is reflected in the growing social preferences for climate change abatement that have not been fully materialized in the policymaking (Hanemann et al. 2010: 2). The fact that Spain is a decentralized state with powerful sub-national authorities has accentuated the complexities around climate policy. Therefore, Spanish climate policy is characterized by multi-level governance that inevitably needs cooperation and coordination between different levels of government in order to reach its goals. Last but not least, it is important to take into consideration that Spain has faced during the last years a situation of economic crisis that affected the national performance in this field. On top of that, austerity policies led to an outcry of Spanish society for change that has completely shaken up the political landscape. The sum of these factors helps to explain how Spain became one of the EU member states with the poorest results in the 2016 Climate Performance Index (Germanwatch 2016), but at the same time has a society engaged against climate change. This chapter deals with Spanish climate policy in a changing political landscape. It argues that contrasts in Spain’s climate change policy come precisely from this multi-causal background. The EU empowered domestic actors to promote change, but they have come up against structural resistance to it. The case that best exemplifies this is renewable energy, but it is not the only one. Within the framework of multi-level climate governance in Spain, the role of the Autonomous Communities is also crucial for understanding the implementationof climate policies. To complete the picture, the economic and political turmoil that Spain experienced since 2008 has given rise to green shoots of transformational leadership in Spanish society and new political forces that are increasingly challenging the status quo in climate affairs and beyond.

Lion C., Martini P. and Volpi S. (2004) The evaluation of European Social Fund programmes in a new framework of multilevel governance: the Italian experience, Reg. Studies 38, 207–212. The aim of the paper is to outline the Italian experience in the evaluation of programmes co-financed by the European Social Fund (ESF) over the 2000–2006 period. The key focus is to see if, and how, evaluation procedures in Italy have changed in the context of the recently created multilevel governance scenario. The analysis suggests that approaches to evaluation have been influenced by multilevel governance in three areas: the general approach to ESF evaluation; the organization of monitoring systems; and the launch of evaluation activities.

This research project’s central proposition argues the nature of governance within the Torres Strait region has undergone major change since the introduction of the Torres Strait Treaty. As a result, the region now exhibits a dynamic set of governance structures that rest beyond the normal tenets of federalism and require multi-level governance (MLG) of a form not yet identified elsewhere within Australia. Moreover, the explanatory powers of existing theories of inter-state relations employed within Australia now prove inadequate for examining the numerous complexities and tensions that continue to emerge from within the various multi-level and multi-jurisdictional political-administrative structures and relationships currently presenting in the Torres Strait area. By contrast, despite Australia’s specific set of underlying constitutional circumstances, the particular analytical framework being facilitated under an actor-centered institutional MLG approach gives purchase to far greater explanatory powers and insights into the dynamism driving this emerging MLG phenomenon, both within Australia and elsewhere. Hence, the concept now merits serious consideration by the political science discipline within this country. To sustain this argument, while bring understanding and a comparative element to the analysis, two central tasks of the project are to examine the provenance of its theoretical underpinnings and to historically progress the development of previous governance arrangements within the Torres Strait region. The chronology of events surrounding the so-called Torres Strait ‘border dispute’ detailed in Chapter Four also helps to overcome a major gap in historical writings on the region. In addition to theoretical and historical enquiry, this work also conducts interaction-oriented policy research within the logic of empirical institutional analysis utilising an actor-centered institutional MLG framework to perform a critical analysis of the contemporary management of the common maritime boundary region between Australia and Papua New Guinea. In particular, it seeks to discover what form governance structures in the Torres Strait region have metamorphosed into under the guiding influence of the Torres Strait Treaty. Using the overarching governance regime as its basic unit of analysis, the project first breaks down all factual policy formulation and implementation processes involved in border management practices in the region into three broad embedded subunits of analysis: the border protection, fisheries and environmental management regimes. It then exploits a mix of primary and secondary data, along with the dispersal of authority as its dependable variable, to determine the extent to which authority (power or competencies) is being dispersed across the multiple jurisdictions and levels of governance now presenting within the Torres Strait region. It is found that a new phenomenon in governance in Australia may now be identified within the Torres Strait region. This new and emergent form of cooperative multi-level governance pragmatically incorporates the dynamics of MLG and federal logic. It also exhibits highly coordinated and consultative modes of interactions, and to a lesser degree, elements of both hierarchical and competitive linkage structures. It is largely being facilitated by the overarching administrative framework provided under the Torres Strait Treaty and can be found wherever the bi-lateral agreement’s terms and provisions are being observed. This latter phenomenon generally tends to occur wherever the Treaty’s requirements are enacted in enabling domestic legislation. This research project also makes two original contributions to knowledge. It provides the first comprehensive analysis of the set of contemporary overarching governance structures found within the wider Torres Strait region. It further represents the first application of an actor-centered institutional MLG approach to solid empirical research within an Australian context. Another significant outcome of exploiting the work to test the validity of an actor-centered institutional MLG framework has been to highlight the critical need for political analysts to distinguish between two distinct sets of processes, structures and outcomes. The first involves exploiting the MLG concept as a system-wide management arrangement for organising and explaining differing types of complex political-administrative organization and systems. The second involves utilising the notion of MLG as part of an overarching analytical framework designed specifically for organising complex diagnostic enquiry and providing compelling descriptions of what actually happens to decisions taken once they depart the domain of intergovernmental bargaining processes and central government policy control and enter into the real-world, day-to-day, post-decisional policy implementation phase at an operational level. The insights provided in ‘On Community’ in Chapter Six also offer a glimpse inside the internal workings of Australian frontier governance architecture within the Torres Strait region.

This study examined how multi-level governance (MLG) administrative support systems influenced the integration of sustainable development in community-based tourism (CBT) in Basilan Province, Philippines. Grounded in the multi-level governance framework, the research analyzed coordination across barangay, municipal, provincial, regional, and national institutions in four CBT destinations: Marang-Marang Floating Cottage, Kud Pasangen School of Living Tradition, Lampinigan Island, and the Bajau Cultural Heritage Center of Tampalan. Using a descriptive qualitative design with methodological triangulation, data were collected through key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and structured surveys involving government officials, community leaders, tourism operators, and regional agency representatives. Comparative findings revealed differentiated governance capacities across sites. Marang-Marang and Kud Pasangen demonstrated stronger vertical integration, reflected in documented monitoring systems, broader provincial technical coverage, sustained NGO funding support, and expanding association membership. In contrast, Lampinigan and Tampalan operated primarily through localized coordination mechanisms, with limited provincial engagement, less formalized reporting structures, and reduced access to external capacity-building resources. Structural asymmetries were evident in variations in administrative oversight, monitoring sophistication, funding access, and institutional continuity. Sites with stronger intergovernmental linkages exhibited more institutionalized environmental stewardship, cultural preservation programming, and financial accountability practices. The findings suggested that the effectiveness of sustainable CBT in decentralized contexts depended on the depth and consistency of administrative engagement across governance tiers. By providing comparative empirical evidence from Basilan, the study refined the operational application of multi-level governance theory in tourism and offered policy-relevant insights for strengthening CBT governance in similarly resource-variable and institutionally complex settings.