Europeanization of turkish subnational administrations

2.3. MULTI-LEVEL GOVERNANCE AS AN ANALYTICAL APPROACH

MLG is not a theory that seeks to clarify complex decision-making processes; rather, a key analytical approach to discuss the activities at the subnational level in the EU and the interplay between supranational institutions and subnational actors²⁶. Historically, the starting point of the MLG approach was the EU’s cohesion policy, where in 1988 a reform of the structural funds had given the regions a real voice in EU policy-making for the first time (see Chapter 4). The structural policy provided incentives, politically and economically, to SNAs to advance their interests both in the domestic arena and the EU level. Of the principles of structural funds, the partnership has particularly provided the Commission with a powerful tool to establish bilateral relations between the national governments and their regions at the domestic level. This makes the EU’s fund management a process of multi-level cooperative policy making (Hooghe, 1996; Bache, 1998). In considering the new emerging Euro-polity, Marks (1993:392) defines the MLG approach as:

‘a system of continuous negotiation among nested governments at several territorial tiers—supranational, national, regional and local—as a result of the broad process of institutional creation and decisional reallocation that has pulled some previously centralized functions of the state up to the supranational level and some down to the local/regional level’.

From the rational-institutionalist perspective, one may consider this as a process of redistribution of resources and power within different territorial tiers. In this process, the MLG holds a middle-ground between the supranationalist and state-centric traditions by not overstating or downgrading the role that SNAs play within the day-to-day European politics. What it suggests is the transformation of states because of the independent role of EU level institutions and the participation of SNAs in the implementation and monitoring stage of the regional policy-making process. The interplay between subnational and supranational actors does not address the sovereignty of states directly. Instead, it simply argues that a multi-level structure is being created by various actors at various levels. MLG acknowledges that there is a change in the mode of EU governance without assuming that the power of member states is in terminal decline. Hooghe and Marks (2001:3) even acknowledge that national governments are the most important players in EU governance.

More specifically, as Bache (2008) posits, MLG crosses the traditionally separate domains of domestic and international politics to highlight the increasingly blurred distinction between these domains in the context of European integration. In identifying the applications of the MLG approach in EU governance, Bache and Flinders (2004:197) classify four different strands:

‘that decision making at various levels is characterized by the increased participation of non-state actors; that the identification of discrete or nested territorial levels of decision making is becoming more difficult in the context of complex overlapping networks; that in this changing context the role of the state is being transformed as state actors develop new strategies of coordination, steering and networking to protect and in some cases, enhance state autonomy; and that the nature of democratic accountability has been challenged and needs to be rethought or at least reviewed’.

On the basis of jurisdictional features, the MLG approach has recently been refined to incorporate a non-territorial dimension. Marks and Hooghe (2004: 17) discern the two types of MLG as Type I and Type II. The former mainly refers to the dispersion of decision-making authority among different levels of government. The latter refers to a flexible design within which the exercise of public-authority involves task-specific jurisdictions with intersecting memberships at a number of jurisdictional levels (see Table 2.1). Baun and Marek (2008:6) discuss that Type I concerns the vertical redistribution of power between different governmental levels, while Type II deals with the horizontal transfer of state authority to functional governmental arrangements involving non-governmental or private sectors. Considering Type I and Type II in relation to Vivien Schmidt’s categories of simple and compound polities, Bache (2008: 27) argues that the former relates to the dimension of state structures, while the latter concerns the nature of policy-making processes (pluralist or statist).

Table 2.1 Types of Multi-Level Governance

In view of the structural funds and their underlying principles on the issue of regional representation, Fargion et al. (2006) suggest that two impacts of partnership principles within the structural funds could be distinguished, ‘region as actor’ (or MLG Type I) and ‘region as arena’ (or MLG Type II). In the former case, the vertical dimension of the partnership allows SNAs to participate actively in the decision and policy-making process. The EU Commission has also promoted community initiatives such as Interreg, which encourage interregional cooperation and regional activation across the national boundaries. Region as an arena on the other hand refers to the emergence and structuring of a set of recurrent patterns of relations among actors, private and public within each region (ibid: 758-759). The latter case relates to the fact that the horizontal dimension of partnership, though it has changed over the years (see Chapter 4), has driven interest organizations and associations to participate actively in the planning and implementation process.

In summary, MLG shows the way in which certain competences are transferred from the portfolio of national states to the supranational level, and to the subnational, public and private authorities (Ivan & Cuglesan, 2009). Thus, it refers to a ‘multi-level’ and a ‘multi-actor’ paradigm, improving the EU’s legitimacy and encompasses both vertical and horizontal dimensions. Nevertheless, the above distinction regarding the jurisdictional features of the MLG is essential for the purpose of this study. As will be seen in the empirical analysis, the adoption of the NUTS system and the subsequent creation of RDAs in Turkey have included elements of both vertical and horizontal dimensions (Type I and Type II). Given the main focus is on ‘region as actor’ within the vertical dimension of MLG, it is aimed in this thesis to examine the extent to which the EU has been identified and perceived as an opportunity structure by Turkish SNAs in order to mobilize their (functional) territorial interests within a broader political game across the EU arena.

Critiques on the Multi-level Governance Approach

Some scholars consider that two different aspects of multi-level governance derived from the Europeanization process, have appeared at one and the same time to both empower and disempower regions and localities (Bache & Marshall, 2004; Carter & Pasquier, 2010). Carter and Pasquier (2010) called these two distinct impacts ‘de-centralization of power’ and ‘centralization of power’ narratives. The former suggests that the integration process provides new political and financial opportunities to the regions and strengthens their position vis-à-vis the central state administrations (Bache & Marshall, 2004; Carter & Pasquier, 2010). According to Carter and Pasquier (2010: 298), this has to date driven research in specific ways and in particular towards the study of four empirical phenomena: the strategy of the European Commission in regional policy design; the implementation of the EU structural funds policy; the institutionalization of regional representation at EU level; and the transnational activity of the regions. Given the primary empirical aim of this research, the third and fourth accounts will be analysed in the following chapters.

The second narrative claims the opposite. European integration, for this narrative, has created different types of ‘regional deficit’ such as competence and access problem which are the object of extensive study (Carter & Pasquier, 2010: 300, emphasis added). Initially, European integration leads to a disempowerment of regions and thus to a re-centralisation of power, since a number of internal regional competences are transferred upwards to the EU level, where the main actors of decision-making are the national executives (Bache & Marshall, 2004). The thinness of regional policy acquis makes this narrative more salient especially for the case of SNAs from applicant states. This carries two additional problems for an effective subnational level. At the outset, the degree and substance of change in subnational arrangements largely depend on the behaviour of state and political elites and their willingness to share the responsibility with SNAs. Particularly for the partnership principle, the historical legacy and governmental and administrative traditions imprint on the possible outcomes, which may (or may not) provide political spaces for the mobilisation of SNAs (discussed below). This is echoed in the historical institutionalist terminology of path dependency.

Secondly, the centralization narrative not only reinforces the gatekeeping role of national governments on the implementation of structural funds and regional policies, but also impedes the direct relations of SNAs with the EU institutions and their ability to influence policy outcomes (Bache, 1998). Hence, national channels, as intergovernmentalists argue, may become an important arena for SNAs to represent their interests and fulfil their demands. This view has lately gained more credit from scholars because the Commission after 2000 abandoned its previous emphasis on decentralization and instead encouraged the centralized administration of EU assistance by the CEECs in order to ensure the efficient utilization of allocated funds (Baun & Marek, 2008:7; Bauer & Börzel, 2010: 256). Even if a certain level of regionalization was promoted in the CEECs from the beginning, the Commission has paradoxically promoted centralization during the accession stages and for the first couple of years after the accession process (see Chapter 4).

Bailey and De Propis (2004) aptly consider that whilst the Commission used pre-accession funds to shift candidate countries towards a system of MLG in relation to EU structural policy, it also sent mixed signals and thus national governments quickly learned their gatekeeping role. As will be shown in the subsequent chapters, the success of the Turkish national institutions as gatekeepers owes much to the extreme resource dependency of SNAs. It is also because at the interface between the European and subnational arenas, central institutions have continued to play an important role and perform crucial coordinating functions in the management of pre-accession funds. In fact, many interview participants at the subnational level seemed to accept the leading role of national institutions due to their lack of organizational capacity, though this was mostly the case in less-developed cities and/or regions (see Chapter 7).

The gatekeeping role, however, has already become more difficult, and not been as effective as government controlling the channels to the EU arena (Bache, 1998). Governments, especially those in centralized states, like the UK, therefore, tried to ‘extend the gatekeeping’ to the implementation stage rather than seeking to gatekeep the channels of communication as it is increasingly difficult if not impossible to do so (ibid: 142). Suffice it to say, the national government in Turkey has usually seemed to be the old style of gatekeeper because of their prime concerns on the access or direct relations of SNAs with the EU institutions as well as on the central coordination for EU matters. However, the national government has recently tried to monitor and regulate the international funds that some SNAs gained from different international donors (see Chapters 6 and 8). This suggests that the government has started to extend its gatekeeping role during the implementation stage.

As for the second deficit (i.e. access problem), the transfer of competences to the EU level may exacerbate the centralist character of the EU’s organizational architecture undermining the access of SNAs to the EU decision-making process (Carter & Pasquier, 2010:300). The mobilisation of SNAs thus remains ultimately constrained by state-centric organizational structures. Here, Bache (1998) challenges the MLG approach by stating that the problem of MLG was in justifying the importance of subnational actors. As he conceives, while structural fund partnerships challenged existing territorial relations with member states, this challenge was met with different degrees of resistance and with diverse outcomes (ibid:141). In some member states, SNAs were mobilized, but not necessarily empowered. As a prominent scholar of the second narrative, Jeffrey (2000:3) also argues that MLG overplays the significance of central state—EU interactions in catalysing subnational mobilisation. For him, MLG needs to be developed to be capable of presenting an additional domestic politics perspective focused on those arguably rather more significant intra-state factors which support and catalyse subnational mobilisation.

Both narratives on multi-level governance, albeit contradictory in their conclusions and in their interpretation of empirical developments, display the same research focus: the influence of the SNAs on the EU integration process and the empowerment or disempowerment of the regions through European integration (Bache & Marshall, 2004). Consequently, while the former may be considered Europeanization of subnational affairs (Marks & McAdam, 1996: 109), the latter may be seen as the domestication of European affairs (Jeffrey, 1997a:56). In considering the potential and limitations of the MLG concept, Bache and Flinders (2004: 204) postulate that empirical studies in a number of fields have shown that a range of actors have mobilised and can play a role in the EU policy system, but they argue that MLG needs to generate clearer expectations in relation to the influence of subnational and non‐state actors as well as highlighting their mobilisation and participation.

MLG has in fact been unable to fully explain why and under what conditions this mobilisation may take place (Jeffrey, 2000; Moore, 2011). Jeffrey (2000:8), for instance, argues that subnational mobilisation is not an incidental by-product of central state-EU interplay, which is providing opportunity structures for SNAs to exploit for the sake of mobilisation. Hix and Hoyland (2011:177) similarly consider that the existence of EU competences in the area of regional policy, and the deliberate funding and promotion of regional representation by the Commission, are not the only explanations for the different levels of subnational mobilisation in the EU arena. Another important factor is whether the member state of which a region is a part has a tradition of private/pluralist/or state funded/corporatist interest representation (Jeffrey, 2000). In other words, SNAs tend to mobilize across the EU arena not because of the competences of the EU (i.e. pulling effect), but because of their own competences and incentives vis-à-vis national governments (i.e. pushing effect of organizational capacity). Accordingly, a top-down understanding may miss the empirical reality because SNAs may themselves, and from the bottom-up, actively seek to change and succeed in changing those dynamics in ways which facilitate mobilisation (ibid). As a result, this research argues that the multi-level governance approach will be more valuable if it is weighted with the domestic politics lens.