Governing Crisis in Multi-Level Systems

Abstract

Multi-level systems are living through critical times that are putting to test their legitimacy. The integrity of multi-national regional and federal systems such as Belgium, Spain and the UK have been threatened by assertive separatist parties, prompting governments to undertake decentralist reforms. The advent of a global financial and economic crisis has brought into question the ability of governments to effectively steer their economies toward recovery as well as the capacity of the European Union and its member-states to coordinate their economies within a monetary union. Beyond Europe, the federal states that democratised during the 1990s, such as Brazil and South Africa, underwent significant crises of representation prior to and during their transition to democracy. In all these instances, the territorial structures of the ‘state’ were both influenced and conditioned by the crises of representation and government. This panel proposes to explore the relationship between crisis and multi-level systems of government by focusing on three broad and inter-related questions: 1. In what ways have the territorial structures of multilevel systems adjusted and evolved in response to crisis? We posit that crisis, generally defined as a political, economic or social turbulence, triggers distinct patterns of authority migration in the inter-governmental balance of power that will vary by policy area and country. However, it may be possible to find some patterns regarding decentralizing and (re)centralising dynamics. 2. How does the multi-level structure of government intervene to condition the preferences and interaction between political actors (e.g. regional and federal executives, federal parliaments, bureaucracies, political parties, interest organisations, etc.)? 3. What is the utility of the different approaches to research the evolution of multilevel systems in times of crisis?

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