Multilevel governance in the European Union: how to explain decision-making beyond the “rules of the game”?

By the early 2000s, political scientists studying the European Union had turned their attention to the system of interaction between supranational, national and regional actors, both horizontally and vertically. As a result of describing this system, the theory of multi-level governance emerged. The key idea of this concept is the distribution of powers between different entities, which often do not coincide with traditional state institutions. Conflicts related to the division of powers and other issues, according to the the theory, should have been resolved through ongoing negotiations between actors at different levels. However, we can observe cases where supranational actors interfere in the areas of competence of national governments. Such cases are difficult to interpret as a negotiation process, since they are accompanied by coercive intervention aimed at strengthening control over decision-making. Since such situations differ from the classical negotiation process within the framework of the theory of multi-level governance, it is important to understand how they occur. To this end, we will turn to the main theories explaining the functioning of the European Union: intergovernmentalism, supranationalism and multi-level governance, as well as lower- level theories describing the mechanisms of interaction between different actors of the European Union. Based on the results of our analysis, we can note that no theory can provide a full, exhaustive answer to our question. However, each of them allows us to understand part of this answer: intergovernmentalism focuses on the position of national governments, supranationalism – on the actions of supranational institutions, and the theory of multi-level governance – on the institutional structure of interaction between different levels of government. At the same time, more narrowly specialized theories, such as the “integration model” of Henschel and Jachtenfuchs, as well as the concept of differentiated integration, allow a more detailed analysis of internal political processes within the European Union.

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