It has become virtually routine to describe the European Union as “a system of multilevel governance” (MLG). While this may be apposite as a device for capturing the core of its sui generis nature, it has been less fortunate from an analytical perspective.[1]
One the one hand, it fails to specify the nature and number of “levels” that are involved. Most of those who use it seem to assume that these are only a few (27 at present) territorially-based political units, i.e. its national member-states, although some analysts may also recognize the participation and relevance of various sub-national regions, provinces or even a few cities and other localities.[2] As we shall see below, this represents a serious distortion since some of the most active units involved in the process of forming and taking EU policies are a wide variety of interest associations, social movements and think-tanks – not a few of which have memberships that transcend national borders.[3]
On the other hand, an even more egregious failing is the lack of an explicit and generally accepted definition of what is meant by “governance.” For many, the essential virtue of its use is simply that it avoids relying on the label “government” which sounds excessively coercive and hierarchical. How “governance” operates to make binding decisions and what makes them accepted as legitimate is left to the reader’s imagination.
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So, let us first experiment with a definition of ‘governance’ that accentuates its peculiarity as a means for making decisions, and then apply it to the prospects for an eventual Euro-polity.[4]
Governance is a method or mechanism for dealing with a broad range of problems/conflicts in which public and private actors regularly arrive at mutually satisfactory and binding decisions by negotiating with each other and cooperating in the subsequent implementation of these decisions.
Thus defined, the concept seems potentially applicable to a wide range of locations — provided that certain caveats be keep in mind:
(1) As usually presented, the concept of ‘governance’ is so capacious that it literally refers to the broadest imaginable notion of “getting things done by mobilizing collective resources” and, hence, tends to lose any specificity it might have. In the World Bank’s frequently cited definition, it is equivalent to “the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resources for development.”[5] Needless to say, it can be subsequently broken down into more discrete categories, i.e. not just development, but they overlap substantially on the one side with routine notions of “government” in which public officials use the legitimate authority of the state to command persons and groups to obey to prescribed rules and, on the other side, with various attributes of “market” in which private consumers and producers interact via competition and the price mechanism to allocate scarce resources.
(2) Admittedly, this capaciousness could well be deliberate since those using the concept may wish to engage in a wide range of regulatory and even distributive policies and still be able to pretend that all that they are doing — say, from supporting the independence of the judiciary to promoting the prosperity of small and medium-size enterprises to saving the value of the Euro — will contribute to providing ‘good governance.’ Moreover, as we have mentioned, it has the appealing linguistic characteristic of sidestepping more contentious expressions such as “the state” or “the regime” or “the rulers” or “the government” and hinting at the ideologically fashionable neo-liberal notion that the role of all four of these public agents of coercion should be downsized in favor of private and more voluntaristic ways of managing and distributing collective resources.
It also suggests that these agents – once they cannot be ignored or eliminated — should comply with the imperatives of economic rationality by submitting themselves to market competition. Governance, taken to the extreme, would then be nothing more than the interpenetration of public agencies and private markets with the objective of promoting a cost-efficient and minimally regulatory capitalist state. One might even conclude that it has no distinctive property of its own and that is precisely why its use is so appealing to organizations that might wish to change their policies without pre-committing themselves to any specific program or goal!
However, ‘governance’ used properly does seem to be an accurate descriptor of the EU. It has the virtue of stressing something we mentioned in the previous paper, namely, that an emerging Euro-polity should place “recognizing, respecting and protecting differences in identity and passion” by weighing intensities and not just rely on counting votes as a basis for its legitimacy. This may not be a guarantee for achieving such an outcome since its proceedings are usually secret and involve obscure technical matters not easily intelligible to the general public. Nevertheless, provided they generate real and self-evident benefits to that public, it should make a tangible contribution to “output legitimacy” and, if its deliberations were more publicized, it might even contribute something to “input legitimacy.”
There are several good reasons why the process of European integration should continue to rely on governance via comitology: (1) it may be an especially appropriate method in situations where the statutory foundations for exercising public authority are limited or vague; (2) where the policy mix is constantly changing; (3) where the policy innovating agent, i.e. the Commission, has very limited “own” resources for gathering necessary information; (4) finally, where virtually all of the implementation of its polices depends on the goodwill and effort of national and sub-national agencies. Including interest associations, social movements and think-tanks, along with civil servants from the member-states, in its deliberations may be almost mandatory under these conditions. Fortunately, for the EU (but not for other trans-national regional organizations), the civil societies of its member-states are unusually rich and comprehensive. Moreover, their alliances across national borders have been tolerated – even encouraged by the governments of member-states. Almost every conceivable interest, identity or passion seems to have found some expression at the regional level. Europe may not yet have a democracy, but it definitely already has a civil society.
Philippe Schmitter
Emeritus Professor
European University Institute
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[1] It has even become an official label. See Governance in the European Union (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2001).
[2] Which is why it would be more accurate to use the concept of “polycentric” governance to describe the EU and its potential successor.
[3] In Eurospeak, this is called “comitology.”
[4] The English word, governance, has been around for some time. The Oxford English Dictionary records its first appearance in 1380 when, coincidentally, it was applied to an NGO, i.e. the “Chirche.” The original use may well have been in French when “la gouvernance” was applied to a process diametrically opposed to its current use, namely, to the efforts of the monarchy in Paris to extend more directly its power to the provinces.
[5] World Bank.Governance and Development (Washington DC: World Bank, 1992).