Multi Level Governance

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scholars

conclude that the participation of European funding aimed to provide local actors with more

opportunities rather than create this ‘region-building’. In the case of Germany, this European

MLG has created a more significant role for the subnational government which resulted in a

Federal State. P. Stephenson adds an important information on this matter which shows again

a weakness of the MLG. He takes the example of the UK reviewed by the author Bache which

saw an ‘obvious bridge’ between the MLG (governance) and the Europeanization

(participation). In fact, he supports the idea that there is some ambiguity between governance

and participation, so how can be measured the degree of participation in decision-making of

each power if their relations between them is ill-defined? (p. 822)

The MLG as a new form of governance creates new institutions. A. Smith defines it as ‘a range

of state and societal rules that shape how political actors define their interests and structure

their relations of power to others group. He distinguishes two level of institutions – at the

policy-specific level that represents laws and norms which structure the norm of an

administration - and at the regime level which focuses on the mechanisms that connect one part

to another one, as an illustration he exposes the French case. In the other article, the author

distinguishes six types of institutions based on Schmitter’s scheme (rational, historical,

epistemic, legal, political and sociological). P. Stephenson mentions an important fact that put

in evidence another weakness of the MLG when he asked why some levels are empowered to

another one. To understand how these inequalities took place he advocates that scholars should

more study domestic institutional relationship rather than focus on supranational institutions.

A. Smith pretends that institutions don’t provide enough criteria to study the MLG whereas P.

Stephenson through different scholar’ studies, distinguish three different way to analyse it. The

rational choice institutionalism which refers to the polycentric governance that made choice

who benefit for the national leader; the historical institutionalist perspective which is the

‘sticky’ arrangements of governance and the sociological institutionalist perspective which

refers to the reinforcement of social actors.

To be efficient, all the institutions must have a legitimacy regarding its citizens whatever the

level of governance or the domain. The legitimacy means obviously democracy because an

institution or a policy cannot be accepted as politically correct and rightful if it doesn’t have

the agreement of the population concerned. Adam Smith, gives a relative definition of

legitimacy which can change depending on the population. P. Stephenson refers in his paper to

the White Paper on European Governance from the Commission which must contain some

resolutions to enhance the legitimacy of institutions. Nevertheless based on Peters and Pierre

theory ‘Faustian Bargain’, the author put in doubt the democratic way of the institutions.

Moreover, he adds Harlow and Rawlings theory (2006) which describe an ‘accountability

deficit’ in the societal administration. This suggests that the multiplicity of policies created by

these different levels of governance have created a confusion for the citizens and that the

different institutions can more easily transmit and order what it suits them. A. Smith argues an

important aspect of the legitimation: ‘the dramatization’. He said that institutions cannot only

manage policies and applied them but they have also to create a relationship and a constant

communication with the population. Thus, even if there is a multiplicity of institutions and

more actors involved, the link between the government and the governed is still primordial.

As a conclusion, it can say that these two articles give a complete landscape of what represent

the main characteristics of the MLG today. This new form of governance gives rise to a

strengthen of the local power, a more complex hierarchical power but also the creation of a

heterarchical power. This has led to news institutions but their efficiency and democracy are

still put in doubt because of this complexity of policies. Moreover, the MLG still meet

difficulties specially to enhance democratic proceeds as cited above. To illustrate his idea A.

Smith takes concretes examples and based his research mostly on two countries: America and

France. This way of proceeding can be very handy to visualize a theory or to understand how

a political change happened. P. Smith takes a more literary approach. In fact, he focused his

research mainly with notable scholars because he wants to show how the scholar’s opinion are

different and how they evolved through the years. Thus, this two reading are complementary

because what his mentioned in one text can be interpreted differently in