Denationalization and the recentring of political authority in multilevel governance

Abstract

Different streams of political research have pointed to two macro-phenomena that appear as opposite at first glance: On the one hand, the increasing delegation of competencies to jurisdictions beyond the central government, resulting in the denationalization of political authority. On the other, the passing of reforms that reassert the centre of the nation state through policy integration and administrative coordination. In this article, we argue that these two processes can be analysed under a unified framework in terms of multilevel dynamics, whereby delegation ultimately elicits recentring reforms at the national level. To examine this argument and break down the mechanisms at work, we develop two sets of hypotheses: first, we theorise how the delegation of competencies to international organisations, sub-national entities and independent agencies can eventually trigger recentring reforms; second, we propose that the capacity to act attributed to these actors also shapes such reforms. Our empirical analysis relies on an original dataset across four policy fields and 13 countries. By using multilevel regression models, we show that especially the delegation of competencies to agencies at the national level as well as the double delegation to European agencies increases the probability that governments pass recentring reforms. Furthermore, if these agencies have a stronger capacity to act, recentring becomes more likely. Our findings contribute to the development of multilevel governance as a dynamic theory of policy making.