This article analyses modes of policymaking related to asylum-seekers' reception in Italy and other European Union (EU) countries during the decade of the so-called 2015 asylum crisis. It shows that, while most EU countries experienced shifts towards more hierarchical modes of policymaking on asylum, Italy pursued a unique experience of multilevel governance (MLG) between 2014 and 2016, which was then dismantled in 2017. By looking at this MLG experience as a ‘heuristic case’, the article contributes to an ongoing debate about the drivers of MLG as a mode of policymaking. The existing literature suggests that MLG modes of policymaking are driven by institutional and structural factors or pressure by subnational and supranational actors for more participatory policymaking processes. Complementing and challenging these theoretical explanations we generate some hypotheses about additional factors that drive the emergence and dismantling of MLG. First, we argue that both supranational actors and subnational authorities, typically considered to be agents promoting MLG, can also advocate for more hierarchical modes of policymaking. Second, we argue that a fundamental prerequisite for MLG to emerge or persist is an overall convergence of political priorities and goals among the actors involved in multilevel policymaking. Both the kind of pressures made by supranational and subnational actors and actors' political priorities can be decisively shaped by dynamics of multilevel party politics. These findings are derived from analyses of 147 interviews with key actors involved in Italian asylum policymaking in the 2010s.

In the past five years, there has been a striking increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness, including unsheltered homelessness, across Canada (Infrastructure Canada, 2024). Facing this growing crisis, local governments are changing and expanding their responses. An important innovation is tiny homes, a form of deeply affordable and supportive housing for people leaving homelessness. In this brief article, I ask what explains local government's increased leadership and innovation with respect to homelessness and housing crises. Drawing on interviews and document analysis regarding the development of a tiny homes community in a mid-sized BC municipality, I identify three factors that have contributed to local government's policy innovation: 1) local officials are keenly aware of the inadequacies of federal and provincial responses and of the need for alternative approaches; 2) they hold important resources, notably local knowledge and land; and 3) they are facing pressure to respond from citizens and service providers.

Trust between constituent actors within the European Union (EU)’s multilevel regulatory regimes is decisive for regulatory success. Trust drives information flows, increases compliance, and improves cooperation within these regimes. Despite its importance, systematic knowledge regarding the drivers of trust within regulatory regimes is limited. This paper inquires whether trust in regulatory agencies is influenced by their affiliation with the national or EU governmental level, as well as by their performance. While existing literature predominantly focuses on why citizens place their trust in governments or regulatory agencies, this paper presents original insights regarding the formation of trust among elites within the regulatory regime, including politicians, ministerial officials, agency officials, interest groups, and regulated entities. We employ data obtained from a large-scale vignette experiment conducted in six countries involving 752 decision-makers from relevant organizations. The experimental results suggest that both public and private elite actors’ trust assessment of regulatory agencies does not hinge on cues associated with the governmental level, but rather depends on agency performance. Accordingly, belonging to the national or EU governmental level does not create a difference in trust assessment of regulatory agencies in itself. It, however, shows that particularly elite actors are rather sensitive in terms of the performance of a regulatory agency.

In both Sweden and Finland, water law has traditionally provided strong protection for hydropower operations by issuing permanent environmental licences. This national protection has started to erode as a result of the requirement of the European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD) for permit reviews to improve the ecological status of rivers. In the light of this dynamic between European and national frameworks, this article compares the Swedish and Finnish implementation of the WFD regarding existing hydropower operations. Whereas Sweden has adopted comprehensive legislative and policy reforms that embrace a systemic perspective on reconciling hydropower with the current societal and ecological circumstances, Finland has relied on bottom-up collaborative processes at the grassroots level. The article shows that both approaches are problematic in so far as they push the boundaries of proper implementation of the WFD and, by extension, the achievement of the ecological objectives of the WFD in waters affected by hydropower. Our comparison highlights tensions between EU law requirements for formal legal effectiveness in national implementation, and the WFD's aspirations for adaptive river basin-based governance.

Despite increasing research into populist parties in power, their impact on subnational institutions has been neglected. Taking a novel multilevel perspective, this article inquires into the policy consequences of populist radical right parties (specifically, the FPÖ and Lega) in local government, and the effect of their simultaneous participation in national government. The article shows the expansion of exclusionary policy that follows their concurrent presence in national and local government. The process that leads from national government entry to local policy influence is traced using interview and newspaper data. The article argues that the influence of central parties over these ‘showcase’ localities is rooted in different multilevel governance configurations. These vary cross-nationally according to two factors: the strength of mayors’ linkages with higher government levels in the different institutional settings and, due to the different extent of party nationalization, the strategic value of the municipality to the central party.

Governments perceive UN human rights conventions and the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as separate legal regimes. WTO jurisprudence, by contrast, interprets WTO rules as parts of international law and may soon be confronted with legal claims that WTO obligations are to be construed with due regard to the human rights obligations of WTO members. The diverse constitutional traditions of WTO members, and their political opposition to linking WTO law to human rights, make it unlikely that WTO members will respond to the UN proposals for a ‘human rights approach to trade’ by adopting a WTO Declaration clarifying that WTO rules are flexible enough to be interpreted and applied in conformity with the human rights obligations of WTO members (section 1). Following the invitation by WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy to form ‘cosmopolitan constituencies’ in support of global public goods (like a rules-based world trading system), this article makes concrete proposals for the initiative by the International Law Association (ILA) to elaborate an ILA Declaration clarifying the complex interrelationships between trade law, human rights and WTO jurisprudence (section 2). As many human rights arguments presented in trade disputes in the EC Court and in the European Court of Human Rights could likewise be raised in WTO dispute settlement proceedings, the article examines whether the ‘constitutional methodologies’ applied by European courts offer lessons for further ‘constitutionalizing’ trade governance in the WTO in conformity with the human rights obligations of all WTO members.

International negotiations for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and the enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) were finally concluded in 2015. However, due to the complex design and implementation processes of REDD+ policies and measures, including benefit sharing at national and subnational levels, several challenges exist for sustainably reducing emissions while simultaneously managing the provision of social and environmental side-objectives. We review the realities of REDD+ implementation in 13 REDD+ candidate countries and the risks related to REDD+ policies and benefit sharing based upon a synthesis of the findings presented in ‘country profiles’ that were developed between 2009 and 2013 as part of the Center for International Forestry Research's (CIFOR) Global Comparative Study on REDD+. We find that REDD+ policies in all countries studied are at high risk of ineffectiveness, inequity and inefficiency. By classifying these risks and understanding not only their impacts on different stakeholder groups, but also the consequences for achieving specific objectives, countries can identify solutions in order to address these shortcomings in their implementation of REDD+.

In this article we set out a fine-grained measure of the formal authority of intermediate subnational government for Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand that is designed to be a flexible tool in the hands of researchers and policymakers. It improves on prior measures by providing annual estimates across ten dimensions of regional authority; it disaggregates to the level of the individual region; and it examines individual regional tiers, asymmetric regions, and regions with special arrangements. We use the measure and its elements to summarize six decades of regional governance in Southeast Asia and conclude by noting how the Regional Authority index could further the dialogue between theory and empirics in the study of decentralization and democratization.

Democracy and federalism are commonly viewed as complementary components of a political system. Conversely, a long-standing discourse claims the incompatibility of inevitable intergovernmental coordination in federalism with democracy, the former being viewed as an impediment or disruption to democratic governing. However, neither are the two inherently compatible nor inevitably incongruous. Instead, research and practice of democratic federations show that their relationship is one of multiple tensions. These may generate conflicts and impasses, yet can equally prove to be productive. To delineate these tensions, but also how different federal systems deal with them, this article examines federalism and democracy as two discrete, but interdependent institutional dimensions. Building upon this framework, we depict variants of coupling between institutions of federalism and democracy-based on selected cases. We demonstrate that particular modes of multilevel governance and intergovernmental relations are essential for linking the logics of federalism and democracy in loosely coupled, flexible patterns. Moreover, federal democracies can effectively cope with these tensions by continuously balancing power established in the two institutional dimensions.