Policy Layering as a Relational Process in Multi-Level Governance

Explaining how and why policies change gradually over time remains a central concern in public policy research. While punctuated equilibrium theory highlights moments of abrupt change driven by shocks or critical junctures (Baumgartner&Jones, 1993), a substantial body of scholarship shows that policy change more often unfolds incrementally, through processes that modify existing arrangements rather than replace them outright (Hall, 1993; Thelen, 2000). Understanding these gradual dynamics is particularly important in multi-level governance systems, where authority and responsibility are dispersed across levels of government and where policy change frequently accumulates through successive adjustments over time (Bandelow et al., 2025; Cairney&Heikkila, 2023). Within this literature, policy layering has become a key concept for analysing incremental change, capturing how new policy elements are added onto existing policy arrangements without formally displacing them (Mahoney&Thelen, 2010; van der Heijden, 2011; Capano&Howlett, 2020). Despite its growing prominence, existing studies tend to analyse policy layering either within a single governance level or by focusing on isolated dimensions such as policy instruments, actors, or ideas (Lieberman, 2002; Capano, 2019). As a result, limited attention has been paid to how policy layers accumulate and interact across levels of government, and how such interactions reshape intergovernmental relations over time (Feindt&Flynn, 2009). This constrains our understanding of the structural and relational consequences of layering in multi-level governance settings. This paper addresses these gaps by examining policy layering as a relational process embedded in multi-level governance. Rather than treating layering as a purely horizontal or sector-specific phenomenon, the study analyses how successive policy layers introduced at different governance levels interact over time and reconfigure intergovernmental relations. The paper is guided by the following central research question: How do policy layering processes unfold and interact across multiple levels of governance, and with what implications for intergovernmental relations? The contribution of this paper to the literature on policy change is threefold. First, it advances a relational understanding of policy layering by showing how layered policy change gradually reconfigures intergovernmental relations in multi-level governance systems. Second, it highlights how different dimensions of layering (policy instruments, actor configurations, and policy ideas) interact across governance levels rather than operating in isolation. Third, by analysing asylum reception policy over an extended period, the paper provides empirical insights into how layered policy change occurs within crisis-prone policy domains. Empirically, the paper examines the evolution of the Belgian asylum reception system between 2000 and 2025. Belgium constitutes a particularly suitable case, as asylum reception combines strong federal authority with extensive reliance on local governments, non-governmental organisations, and private actors for implementation. Over time, successive reforms and crisis-driven measures have added new policy layers, such as specialised federal agencies, temporary local reception arrangements, and outsourcing mechanisms, without removing earlier ones. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative, case-centric research design and employs historical process tracing to reconstruct key reform episodes and periods of crisis (Kay&Baker, 2015). Drawing on policy and legal documents, and semi-structured interviews, the analysis will trace how the dimensions within layered policies interact at different levels of governance.