Primary aims: 1.Introduce the idea about Europe as governed by MLG 2.Apply the evolutionary model of institutional change to European integration 3.Illustrate policy making: regions offering public counselling to firms Multi-level governance (MLG). The role of non- state actors in EU policy making.

Governance in the European Union? Intergovernmentalism: Policy-coordination among national governments, but the power remains with the national states Multi-level governance (MLG): Understanding the distribution of power across the supranational, the national and the subnational levels and across policy processes

Multi-level Governance (MLG) Political order in Europe cannot be understood in view of the separation of domestic and international politics Decision-making power in the EU is shared across supranational, national and sub-national levels Does not refer to governmental levels: Goes beyond vertical or hierarchical structure of authority Multi-centric system: other collectives than states develop and compete for power (regional authorities, occupational groups and business communities) Politico-economic analyses of European regions: combine the MLG-approach to European governance with theories of public-private co-operative strategies

Institutional change in the EU Neofunctionalism: Functional spillover, whereby a policy in one area creates a pressure to expand into new policy areas Critisism: Choices are not made automatically, even if they are efficient Projects (motivate to break routine and make experimental choices) Both constrained and enabled by existing institutions Recruit participants from different organisations and institutions with multiple and often conflicting goals. Loosely coupled to existing institutional principles and imperative of current organisations Give a direction of institutional changes.

Structures in Multi-Level Governance: 'Governance without government’: provinces choose strategies aiming at challenging the national governments ‘Complex interdependency’: no efforts are made by the regions to capture bargaining power from the central state. Loss of control over cross-border transaction suffices for a state to loose sovereignty to the regional level State-led top-down regionalization : regional policymakers co-ordinate their strategies with the national governments

Public counselling to firms: Case-studies ‘Friendship Towns’ and ‘Friendship Regions’: Twin-city agreement Elsinore-Gdansk (“The Association for Joint- Ventures Elsinore-Gdansk”) Collaboration in the Øresund Region: Agreement between the county Frederiksborg (Denmark) and Scania (Sweden) (“ScanEast Öresund”) Collaboration between county councils and municipalities in Southern Sweden (SydSam)

Reasons for firm-authority alliances: Regional authorities Support the local enterprise, which gives jobs "..regions offering institutional links for increased communication between public and private interests can develop into 'core players' in European integration“ (Kohler-Koch) Companies Need of “doorkeepers” when entering foreign markets Need competent actors that deliver EU policies

Policy making process: ‘Governance without government’ Sub-national leverage in the EU: Institutional context stating that national governments shall involve competent regional authorities in some EU decisions Collaborations of regional authorities = ‘third parties’ in negotiation between the Commission and governments ‘Third parties’ shape the role and relationships of other actors ‘Third party’ convince Commission and governments that it is competent (able to improve the efficiency of the EU legislative process) Commission, which according to ‘institutional context’ is inclined to listen to the regions, influences governments to support increased regional authority involvement.