Mulitilevel governance and democracy: a local governance perspective

From a local perspective, multilevel governance represents a promising problem-solving strategy vis-à-vis the challenges of globalisation since it promises to enable cities to collaborate with other public and non-public actors affected by the same issues on different territorial scales and coordinate actions with them. However, critics of multilevel governance have also highlighted a ‘problem-generating’ side in terms of a democracy/efficiency trade-off. More specifically, local governments are likely to face a double accountability dilemma since they will have to account for their actions to both their electoral constituencies and other stakeholders and institutional actors engaged in multilevel collaborative venues. This chapter addresses the democracy/efficiency trade-off and the ensuing double accountability dilemma in two steps. First of all, I discuss the relevant literature and highlight how the dilemma crucially affects both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of engagement by local governments in multilevel governance policymaking. Hence, I provide an account of the issues raised by the internationalisation of cities and local migration policy. Both cases highlight the fact that participation by local governments in multilevel governance relations can be underpinned by a disconnection between accountability to local electoral constituencies and to partners in multilevel governance venues, leading to deficits in terms of links with electoral (multilevel) politics and access to rights and services. The analysis is based on both existing relevant literature and evidence drawn from first-hand empirical research.