How a Resurrection Really Feels: Untangling and Revitalising

Decentred, Decoupled and Disjointed Governance in a Welsh Context

Dion Curry

Swansea University

D.S.D.Curry@swansea.ac.uk

Please do not cite without permission.

This paper explores the conception of governance narratives as they relate to academic and

political discourse on the subject. It aims to explore the following question: how do elite and

academic perceptions of governance processes fit with governance as it is practiced? Do

these perceptions complement or contradict processes in practice? The paper first uses

bibliometric analysis to examine the conception of multi-level governance in the academic

literature and to determine whether MLG is a vital concept in terms of conceptual breadth

and depth over time. Drawing on past research and using a new theoretical framework for

understanding multi-level governance, the work examines structural, relational and policy

factors that form multi-level governance processes, mapping these to corresponding notions

of policy inputs, outputs and throughputs. It then presents a new, decentred framework for

understanding and assessing governance, before applying this framework to the case study of

the National Assembly for Wales.

The research draws upon a bibliometric analysis of the entire corpus of texts written on multi-

level governance since the conception of the term (1191 articles), a survey of all 2016

National Assembly for Wales candidates and a content analysis of NAW debates and

discussions on the topic of governance from 2011-2017. It uses these sources to draw a

mixed-methods assessment of how governance is perceived by academics and political elites,

and whether these perceptions fit with narratives on governance derived from actual

discussions in the Welsh Assembly. It finds that elites feel that political decision-making

should focus on processes that emphasise output, policy-orientated conceptions of

governance. While academic literature supports this focus on policy and outputs, NAW

debates show a markedly different picture of how governance is utilised in practice. There,

the focus is clearly on governance as a structural, throughput issue, with little focus on

governance as policy output or input focussed. These findings illustrate a clear governance

mismatch between what elites feel governance should be and how it plays out in practice.

‘Governance’, of course, is a difficult term to define. I think it means organisations are

accountable to the citizen, service users and the wider communities they serve, and they take

well-informed decisions in a transparent manner and lead people to achieve their objectives.

In other words, they do the right things in the right way for the right people, and they uphold

the value set for the Welsh public sector.

Vaughan Gething, Plenary Debate, 17 June 2015, 17:39.

Governance is a contested concept within both the broader politics literature and specific sub-

disciplines of political studies, and various subsets of governance, such as multi-level

governance (MLG), have attempted to reconcile the horizontal and vertical pulls of modern

governance arrangements. Within the MLG subset, different conceptualisations and

typologies of MLG both complement and compete with each other (for example, see Bache

and Flinders, 2004; Stephenson, 2013). In addition, it is unclear where this academic debate

can be placed in regard to practical discussions of new modes of governance, legitimacy,

accountability, transparency and openness. This points to a need to examine governance as

not just a process, but also a social construct that evolves over time and use. Looking at

governance – and multi-level governance – from this decentred perspective (Bevir, 2002;

Bevir and Rhodes, 2006; Bevir, 2013) allows for a greater understanding of the underlying

perceptions that both shape and are shaped by governance processes. This paper will focus on

analytical ways that the debate around multi-level governance can be decentred and present a

nuanced conception of multi-level governance that will then be used to examine conceptions

of governance as they shape political processes in Wales.

The paper aims to answer several questions: how do elite and academic perceptions of

governance processes fit with the realities of governance? Does academic research

correspond with elite narratives of governance? Do these perceptions complement or

contradict processes in practice?

The paper brings together various types of analysis to contextualise governance – and more

specifically multi-level governance – in terms of both academic research and political and

policy usage. First, it will use bibliometric analysis to examine the breadth and depth of the

concept in order to develop a conceptual map of MLG and how this differs across disciplines

and sub-disciplines. This data can be used to analyse key research and sources used in

conceptualising MLG, how the concept travels across disciplines and how research clusters

on MLG exist statically and have developed over time. By identifying key articles, more fine-

grained qualitative and quantitative analyses of the meaning of the concept of MLG can also

be developed and theorised based on the breadth of the concept through the discipline and the

depth of the concept in terms of cited references. Based on these findings, the paper will then

develop a new framework for understanding multi-level governance, which takes into

account structural, relational and policy factors that shape governance processes. The final

part of the paper will then apply this understanding and analytical framework to the case of

Wales, using a candidate survey to examine elite conceptions of governance in terms of

policy decision-making. This will be combined with a content analysis of National Assembly

for Wales plenary debates on issues and discussions directly related to governance.

The paper is highly relevant to understanding academic and practical applications of multi-

level governance. First, it provides insight into how a concept develops, grows and spreads

academically and across disciplines in both normative and analytical ways. This allows for an

assessment of the robustness of this concept, with bibliometrics providing a quantitative

approach to understanding the breadth and depth of literature on MLG. Second, it provides

insight on new areas into which the concept is moving and how it can be theorised, thus

highlighting where innovative approaches to conceptualisation may be found and how

academic work on MLG can be linked to practical applications of the concept. The Welsh

case then illustrates the usefulness of this conception in understanding how governance works

(or fails) in practice. Methodology

Bibliometrics as a method of analysis grew out of library science and can be used to examine

literature to reveal specific subjects, concepts or trends in large bodies of literature (Lawani,

1981; Hung, 2012; Bornmann, 2013) and has been used before in examining politics- and

public administration-related concepts (Curry and Van de Walle, forthcoming; Vogel, 2013).

Analyses looking at concepts can examine a full body of literature for

1. The quantity of literature on a subject;

2. The temporal span of this body of literature;

3. The types of literature;

4. The general importance of the literature, as measured by total citation counts;

5. The key titles for each field, as measured by citation counts for individual articles;

6. The origins and the spread of the literature (adapted from Lawani, 1981, p. 309).

The analysis was limited to multi-level governance (MLG) in order to provide a more

focussed and manageable area of study. Articles on MLG were collected through Web of

Science using the WoS Core Collection database. A topic search (which includes instances of

multi-level governance in title, keyword or abstract) was conducted in all WoS journals,

using both ‘multi-level governance’ and ‘multilevel governance’ variants. No lower year

limit was set on the search, but the earliest articles on MLG dated to 1996 and an upper limit

of 2016 was put on to avoid partial 2017 records. Once duplicate records were removed, this

produced a body of 1191 articles from 1996 to 2016. The articles were then analysed using

Bibexcel (available at http://homepage.univie.ac.at/juan.gorraiz/bibexcel/, Persson, Danell

and Schneider, 2009) and VOSviewer. Analyses were conducted using WoS field codes,

including title, author, journal, publication year, abstract, key words and author addresses.

References cited within those texts, drawn from the WoS CD field code, were also analysed

to determine conceptual depth. In the 1191 articles, a total of 51,022 citations were mined

after being cleaned (by author and title). These citations were likewise analysed in Bibexcel

to the full extent of the data, looking at cited authors, journals and years. The major

limitations to this type of study are 1) the extent of the records kept by Web of Science, and

2) the extent of bibliographic information available on each article. WoS focuses mainly on

articles, which can be seen as limiting. However, other sources – most notably books – are

incorporated through the citation analysis, which covers any material cited and not only

articles. Second, bibliographic information on the journal articles can be limited, especially as

one explores further and further back through the years. For this reason, the analysis focuses

on more recent years, and the large number of sources (1191 articles, over 51,000 citations)

helps to limit the effects of any outlying or poor data.

The article focuses on two analyses of the vitality of the concept – breadth and depth.

Conceptual breadth looks at the body of literature on MLG itself to determine the spread of

the concept through political science and potentially into other disciplines. This will be

measured in three main ways. First, journal sources will be analysed to see where articles are

published. Second, authors and countries of origin will be examined. Finally, title, abstract

and keyword searchers were conducted.

Source of Analysis Sign of Conceptual Vitality

Journal sources

Authors and country

Titles, abstracts and keywords

Spread of journals

Spread of authors and author

locations

Robust, discrete word co-occurrences

Conceptual depth examines the sources that articles on MLG cite. This allows for exploration

of how authors on MLG engage with the wider literature. Here, three main measures can be

used to assess the vitality of the literature. First, the extent of diffusion of references indicates

whether a wide range of material is used to address the subject. Second, reference

specialisation (i.e. lack of reliance on review publications) indicates a continued and updated

approach to studying the concept. Finally, the usage of contemporary references shows that

study has not stagnated by referring to older publications, and that authors continue to engage

with new literature on the subject.

Source of Analysis Sign of Conceptual Vitality

Reference diffusion and co-citation

Specialisation of references

Reference age

Spread of references

Lack of reliance on review literature

and significant co-citation

Usage of contemporary references

Vitality of the body of literature can therefore be assessed in these two ways, looking at the

literature itself and the references that that literature uses.

The second half of this paper focuses on an analysis of governance in Wales, both as a

snapshot (prior to the 2016 National Assembly for Wales election) and over time (through a

2011-2017 analysis of debates on governance in the Assembly). As this paper focuses on

broader views of governance as a process, it will focus only on the 2011-2017 period, as this

aligns with an increase in powers held by the Assembly, along with its ability to create

primary legislation. This also covers the 4th

and 5th

Welsh Assemblies, minimising any churn

created by changes in party make-up and government. The main sources of data are a

candidate survey of Welsh Assembly candidates in the 2016 NAW election, along with a

documentary analysis of all NAW plenary debates held from 2011 – 2017.

All party candidates in the 2016 NAW election were surveyed about various issues related to

the election, Europe and politics in the UK (Trumm, 2016). Use of the candidate survey

focuses on one specific question asked of respondents about how they perceive the

importance of various considerations in evaluating governance processes

Politicians often make decisions by balancing political participation, processes, and

outcomes. In your opinion, what are the most important considerations in making

political decisions? Please rank the following statements from 1 ‘most important’ to 3

‘least important’.

Political decision-making should result in the best outcome for the most people

Political decision-making should involve the largest number of people and groups possible

Political decision-making should follow clearly-defined rules and processes

The survey was sent out to all party candidates apart from those running on the Official

Monster Raving Loony Party list. The overall response rate for the survey was 35%, with 150

responses out of 429 requests. In total, between 119 and 128 candidates answered the

question1 for a response rate of 28%-30%. The responses to this question were then analysed

based on other factors such as party, position on the left-right spectrum and views on

Welsh/UK/EU power sharing.

To deepen the analysis, plenary debates in the NAW were also analysed for any discussion

directly revolving around governance. A simple keyword search was conducted, and

references were coded by date, speaker, party lines, and full quote. Each speech was

separately coded, but multiple references to governance in one speech were only coded once.

In addition, these responses were coded as either structural (discussing governance

arrangements, how governance is conducted and related ideas), relational (discussing who is

involved in the governance process) or policy (discussing specific outcomes from

governance) responses about governance. If these discussions included references to multiple

types of governance, they were coded as ‘Multiple’. Responses were coded as not applicable

if they referred to a title including governance (such as the Commission on Public Service

Governance and Delivery), and were coded as ‘General’ if these discussions used the word

governance with no context or further information, and both of these instances were removed

from the final analysis. This analysis turned up 487 instances of debate around governance

between April 2014 and March 2017, with 327 of these instances relating to structural,

relational or policy views of governance.2

A Bibliometric Analysis of Multi-Level Governance in the Academic Literature

Conceptual Breadth

Articles and Journal Sources

A total of 1191 articles on MLG were produced up to the end of 2016, with a steady upward

trend in the number of articles published each year on the topic. While not too much can be

concluded from that observation, as most terms will display this upward trend simply due to

the preponderance of sources in online form over the years, it still indicates a widely-used

concept in the literature. There was significant journal spread for these articles, with 361

unique journals publishing articles on multi-level governance. The most common journal was

1 Some people did not rank all three options.

2 This data will eventually go back to 2011, when the National Assembly for Wales initially got primary

legislative powers.

the Journal of European Public Policy with 50 articles on the subject, followed by

Environment and Planning C – Government and Policy with 42 articles. 24 journals

published more than 10 articles on the subject. Authors were also significantly spread, with

1923 authors over the 1191 articles. Only Ian Bache (14) wrote more than 10 articles on the

subject, and a further 24 authors wrote more than five articles. In comparison to bibliometric

analysis of other politics terms, the literature on MLG is relatively diffuse. Notably, there has

also been a significant uptick in recent years in both the number of authors writing on MLG,

and the number of authors writing multiple articles on MLG. The top ten journals publishing

on ‘New Public Management’ produced 32.7% of overall articles. In comparison, the top ten

journals publishing on MLG accounted for 22.0% of all articles. Given the highly specific

terminology, the spread of journals can be seen as quite high.

This diffusion is also evident in the Web of Science categorisation of the publications.

Notably, the number of articles categorised under Environmental Studies has significantly

increased relatively recently, with it overtaking Political Science as the most-referenced

subject only in 2016.

Top Web of Science Categories for MLG Articles (85 categories total)

1. Environmental Studies (368)

2. Political Science (365)

3. Public Administration (247)

4. Geography (129)

5. Economics (125)

6. Environmental Sciences (115)

7. International Relations (101)

8. Planning & Development (99)

9. Urban Studies (92)

10. Law (54)

The literature was also remarkably fractured, given the specificity of the term. There were

few ‘star’ authors with a significant number of publications on the topic, with the top author

(Ian Bache) having 14 articles on the subject. There were 1923 authors in total, giving a

significantly high author/article rate (1.61 authors per article, as compared to 1.38 authors per

article for NPM). When looking at a weighted distribution of authorship,3 65 authors had

written more than two occurrences on MLG. In contrast to other measures, this does indicate

some weak core of MLG researchers, as the proportion of authors with multiple articles on

the subject is higher than that found in NPM research. However, the central core, as measured

by the top ten authors in NPM and their weighted proportion of overall papers, is similar to

that shown in the NPM literature, with the top ten accounting for 4.7% of all papers, as

compared to 4.5% for NPM.

3 Single-authored papers are weighted as 1.0 to that author, two-authored papers are weighted as 0.5 to each

author, three-authored papers are weighted as 0.33 to each author, etc.

Author Diffusion

The vast majority of the publications were journal articles (84.6%) and almost exclusively

published in English (97%). Geographically, there was a significant spread of countries with

authors writing about MLG, with 62 different countries producing articles on the topic.

Despite its European origin, 3 of the top ten countries producing MLG literature are non-

European (Australia, Canada and the United States). The United Kingdom produced the most

articles on MLG by a substantial margin (more than 100 papers), and the top 10 countries

accounted for 93.6% of all articles. In comparison, the top ten countries for NPM literature

accounted for only 77.1% of all articles, with 59 countries overall. This indicates that there

was a more even spread across countries in the NPM literature, whereas it was more

concentrated in fewer countries (with a long tail of countries with very few articles) for MLG.

However, within the top ten, there was a more even spread between countries, with five

countries having more than 100 articles on the topic, compared to only two countries for

NPM.

The most cited article on MLG was Hooghe and Marks’ ‘Unraveling the Central State, but

How? Types of Multi-Level Governance’ with 585 citations, followed by Adger et al.’s

‘Social-Ecological Resilience to Coastal Disasters’ (573) and Folke et al.’s ‘Resilience and

Sustainable Development: Building Adaptive Capacity in a World of Transformations’ (573),

with a significant drop after those articles. Interestingly, three of the top ten articles were

clearly outside the politics sphere of academic literature, and seven of the top ten articles

dealt with environmental issues. Overall, 23 (1.9%) articles had more than 100 citations,

which is slightly higher in comparison to the NPM literature (with 1.4% of articles having

100 or more citations). The corpus as a whole was similar to that of NPM literature, with

13,390 citations (without self-citations) in 11,249 articles, an average of 12.75 citations per

item and an h-index of 54. NPM articles, which had a similar number of articles, were cited

12,657 times in 9148 articles, an average of 13.21 citations per article and an h-index of 51.

Title/Key Word/Abstract Usage

Once multi-level governance and variations thereof were removed, a few notable words and

phrases were prominent in the literature. ‘Climate’ and ‘Climate change’ were used

frequently, with climate being the fifth most-used word in titles. Environmental issues were

strong overall, with ‘Environmental’, ‘Water’, ‘Sustainability’ and ‘Sustainable’,

‘Biodiversity’ all placing highly as most commonly used words. There was still a strong

focus on Europe in the literature, with ‘Europe’ being the second-most used word and ‘EU’

being the 11th most-used word. Structural terms such as ‘structures’ and ‘institutions’ were

also prominent, as were related relational terms such as ‘relation’ and ‘network. Inputs were

mentioned 20 times, outputs 25 times and throughputs 7 times.

The papers covered a wide range of topics, but certain specific areas (either geographic or

policy-related) could be discerned. In analysis of titles, ‘European’, ‘Europe’ and ‘EU’

(combined) were the second most-used terms, and ‘climate’ was the fifth most-used term,

with ‘Environmental’ and ‘Water’ also high on the list. Other signifiers, such as ‘Regional’,

‘Local’, ‘Urban’ and ‘global’ were commonly used in titles. ‘Climate change’ was also the

third most-used key word (behind only ‘multi-level governance’ and ‘governance’), even

higher than the European Union and Europeanization (fourth and fifth respectively).

However, there was not a significant overlap of key words, with only 35 being used in more

than ten papers each. In terms of subject fields, Environmental Science & Ecology was the

second most-used category as well (376 occurrences).

Conceptual Depth

Reference Diffusion and Co-Citation

There were a total of 51,022 citations in the 1191 articles, slightly more than the number for

NPM (over 47,000 citations). Hooghe and Marks’ 2003 ‘Unravelling the Central State, but

How? Types of Multi-Level Governance’ in American Political Science Review was the most

cited article, with 201 citations. Article citations reveal a few notable factors. First, perhaps

unsurprisingly, Liesbet Hooghe is the most cited author, followed by Gary Marks, Harriet

Bulkeley, Elinor Ostrom, Ian Bache, Fritz Scharpf, Michele Betsill and Andrew Moravcsik.

The European Commission (and its predecessor, the Commission of the European

Communities) was also highly cited, as was the OECD.

There were 279 articles cited at least 10 times, as compared to 175 for NPM. There were also

a higher number of journals cited at least 10 times compared to NPM. This indicates a

reasonable spread of citations, with greater diffusion than was evident with NPM. While

conceptual literature may get routinized over time, where certain sources – such as Hooghe

and Marks – may become the ‘default citation’, this appears to be less the case with MLG

than with NPM. Co-citation did not reveal any pairings between article citations that were

unexpected (e.g. the most common pairs were between the most significant pieces of MLG

literature). There did however appear to be the genesis of two separate MLG bodies of

literature – the traditional body of ‘governance’ literature and the newer environmental policy

literature – but more analysis must be done to confirm this. In terms of subject depth, there

was the noted move towards environmental policy, and expanding the scope to include non-

European countries. In terms of general conceptual review articles, Hooghe and Marks’

ground-breaking work, and Bache and Flinders 2004 update, were the latest highly-cited

pieces. As those are between 10-15 years old at this point in time, there appears to have been

less development in further conceptualising MLG.

Specialisation of References

While not a perfect proxy, the number of books that are heavily cited can be used to indicate

a focus on review literature. 19 of the top 50 references were books, compared to over half of

the top 50 in NPM, indicating a stronger journal presence for MLG. There was a similar

spread of authors in the top 50 cited articles between the two terms, with 31 authors for NPM

and 30 authors for MLG. However, there was more spread in the most heavily cited articles.

While Hood and Pollitt dominated the most cited articles in NPM, there were at least six

authors near the top of the most-cited list for MLG. While Hooghe and Marks are, to a certain

extent, the ‘default’ authors of MLG, their citations are spread over multiple articles, and

interspersed with significant numbers of citations to other authors as well. The move to MLG

as an environmental concept has also increased the specialisation of references evident in the

MLG literature.

Usage of Contemporary References

32 of the top 50 references came after the year 2000, compared to only 15 for NPM,

signifying a much newer literature for citations in MLG, and 65% of the top 100 articles date

from 2000 or later. The most recent articles in the top 100 most cited articles are six dating

from 2010. The most cited year for MLG research was 2009, with 3118 citations. The top ten

years for citations all came in the 2000s, with the earliest year being 2003 and the latest being

2012. These findings contrast sharply with the NPM literature, where references focused on

much older literature, with a significant majority (over 65%) of the articles being written in

the 1990s or earlier, and the latest article in a list of 100 most-cited articles dates from 2007.

16.8% of articles cited were from the previous 5 years,4 which is a common benchmark for

the ‘newness’ of a concept (Price, 1970), a significantly greater proportion than the 8% of

citations for NPM. These findings support bibliometric research and the concept of

obsolescence (Line and Sandison, 1974; Sandison, 1987; Line 1993; Rowlands and Nicholas,

2007, pp. 226), which states that ‘literature of the past few years account for a large

proportion of total citations’ in non-obsolete cases (Lawani, 1981, pp. 31; Meadows, 2005,

pp. 91).

Citation Years

4 As the cut-off date was 2015, the previous five years were 2011-2015

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

Year 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014

Citations/Year

Citations

The mean reference age is 10 years old, which puts it at significantly lower than that for NPM

(16 years) and at the low end of average compared to (outdated) averages for economics

(10.6), business (10.9) and sociology (12.5) (Glanzel and Schoepflin, 1999, pp. 41).

MLG Vitality: A Broad and Deep Concept

Overall, the bibliometric analysis points to MLG as a vital and current concept. In terms of

breadth, the literature has spread into new areas, most notably environmental policy, and

there is a wide spread of journals that write on MLG, even outside of the traditional political

science and public policy channels. While the spread of countries with authors writing on

MLG was somewhat limited, there was a larger number of countries producing significant

numbers of articles on NPM, including many countries outside of Europe. This indicates that

the concept has moved beyond its traditional EU trappings.

In terms of conceptual depth, as measured by the works cited in the MLG literature, the

concept also proved vital. There was a greater diffusion of references – both in terms of

authors and journals – than was evident in comparable literatures such as New Public

Management. There was a greater spread of authors being cited as well, and a heavier

reliance on journal articles, rather than books, than NPM. Finally, references were

significantly more current for MLG than NPM, with both a higher number of articles from

the last five years being heavily cited and a much shorter average article age than NPM (10

years, as compared to nearly 16 years for NPM). Overall, this points to a vital concept that is

still developing and moving in new directions.

The quantitative analysis of MLG as a concept does point to some ways in which the concept

can develop. While MLG is moving into new policy spaces, there is still a heavy reliance on

original conceptualisations of MLG developed by Hooghe and Marks. In other words, MLG

is being used in different ways, but the ways in which the term is understood have changed

less and not been refined beyond the Hooghe and Marks’ typology. This points to more room

to examine what MLG actually means, not just where it is evident. While the literature is vital

enough to not require a prescriptive remedy for how to further develop it, conceptualisation

of MLG is still somewhat underdeveloped and can be expanded upon. This paper now turns

to a qualitative examination of MLG and governance more generally, along with a proposed

refinement of the traditional MLG typology.

Governance as a Concept – Decentring, disjoining and decoupling MLG

Multi-level governance as a concept wades into an already crowded pool of related but

distinct concepts of governance (such as network governance) over multiple levels (such as

federalism or multi-level government). Originally, MLG aimed to provide an alternative and

somewhat middle-ground theory to European integration that avoided both the state-centric

nature of intergovernmentalism and the federalism (or federalism light) espoused by

supranationalism and neofunctionalism (Marks, 1993). The initial ideas underpinning this

new conception of governance evolved into a more nuanced picture of two distinct types of

multi-level governance. Type I MLG systems resemble federal-type structures, with non-

intersecting, general purpose jurisdictions, clear spheres of authority and well-defined levels.

In contrast, Type II MLG, a somewhat ‘newer’ governance form, is distinguished by

overlapping, policy-focussed jurisdictions operating at shifting numbers of levels that are

more flexible and inevitably messier than traditional federal-type multi-level structures

(Hooghe and Marks, 2003).

While MLG was initially used as a way of analysing EU-level processes, it has since

broadened out to include regional (e.g. Bache and Andreou, 2011) and state-level analyses

both within and outside the EU (e.g. Horak and Young, 2012) as well as bottom-up

examinations of the roles of local governments (Grisel and van de Waart, 2011). This

includes expansion into functional uses, where the concept was applied in new policy areas or

country studies (Stephenson, 2013, p. 822) and even development of the concept as a way of

identifying a normative ‘good’ form of governance (European Commission, 2001;

Committee of the Regions, 2009). This creates the danger of conceptual stretching (Sartori,

1970) or the creation of a ‘container concept’ that tries to be everything to everyone (Van

Geertsom, 2011, p. 169).

The broadening and deepening of the concept over time has in turn led to new attempts to

categorise different modes of governance (see, for example, Grisel and van de Waart, 2011;

Howlett, Rayner and Tollefson, 2009; Curry, 2015; March and Olsen, 1996; Offe, 2006;

Scharpf, 1991; Treib et al., 2007; Weaver and Rockman, 1993). These all offer their own

strengths and weaknesses, trying to strike a balance between comprehensiveness and

elegance, general applicability and specific nuance. These refinements of the concept also

raise new issues regarding MLG and its practical effects, including questions of scope (can

MLG be applied outside of Europe, or to international relations?), academic rigour (is MLG a

theory or just an organising framework?) and legitimacy and accountability (who is

ultimately responsible when multiple elected and unelected actors at different levels are

involved in crafting and delivering a policy?).

Towards a Refined Conception of MLG

This paper has shown that multi-level governance, almost 25 years on, remains a vital

concept that has both breadth in the literature it produces, and depth in the literature it

engages with. The paper gives quantitative evidence that MLG has expanded beyond its

traditional EU confines to be used in both new national and policy contexts. Most notably, it

has gained significant traction in non-European contexts and with non-European academics,

and has a robust literature developing mainly in the field of environmental science and

policy. While these new national and policy applications continue to thrive, less work has

been seen in further developing what MLG actually means as a concept. The greater focus on

specific policy areas, such as environmental policy, shows that MLG is growing on policy

terms, while connections to concepts such as networks and institutions illustrate that

structural and relational factors are also being taken into account. However, sources that can

be seen as conceptual in nature (rather than based on specific policies or cases) were more

limited and mainly date back to Hooghe and Marks’ and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Bache

and Flinders’ initial work on the concept. While new case studies do increase the robustness

and application of MLG, it remains important to consider the interplay between the structural,

relational and policy considerations at play.

The changing way in which MLG is applied and used makes it ideal for decentring its study

and examining the constituent parts that create the governance narratives underplaying this

multi-levelness. A review of the literature reveals certain factors that go into shaping MLG,

which can be broken roughly into structural, relational and policy factors. These in turn

roughly coincide with the idea of policy throughputs, inputs and outputs, respectively

(Scharpf, 1997, 1999; Schmidt, 2013). Complex institutional structures (throughputs) can

lead to fragmentary policy-making. Relationally (inputs), hierarchy may make coordination

difficult as actors compete for power. Finally, different actors may have competing,

conflicting or shifting policy (output) interests and goals (Taȿan-Kok and Vranken, 2011, pp.

16-17). These structural, relational and policy processes map onto Hooghe and Marks’

typology of MLG, but provide a more granular way of analysing the factors influencing

MLG.

Type of

Governance

Process

Manifestation Effect

Structural Defines institutional effects on the

policy process (throughputs)

Increases/decreases structural

complexity of governance processes

Relational Defines number and configuration

of actors involved in the policy

process (inputs)

Increases/decreases number of actors

involved in governance processes

Policy Defines outcomes and specific

results from the policy process

(outputs)

Increases/decreases net beneficiaries

from policy outcomes of governance

processes

The three categories of processes can be mutually reinforcing, contradictory or separate.

Institutional structures and actor relations will have an impact on what policy options are

open. The realities of policy-making and specific policy areas will, in turn, affect how actors

work together and use institutional structures to develop policy. If these three factors are

mutually reinforcing, structures that are supportive of MLG-type processes will develop. This

will give actors more room to manoeuvre in shaping policy outcomes in a multi-level

manner, actors may utilise structures in a way that supports multi-level solutions, and/or

policies may lend themselves to solutions that make use of structures and relations in a multi-

level way. If these processes are not mutually reinforcing, they can result in governance

mismatch, which can take two forms. When these processes operate in contradictory fashion,

disjointed governance can result, where actors, institutions and policies operate at cross

purposes (Curry, 2015). Finally, when these processes operate separately, you find cases of

decoupled governance, where there is little coordination between actors, institutions and

processes (Scholten, 2013). This mismatch may occur granularly – that is, in terms of

mismatch within the structural, relational or policy factors, or at a higher level, where there is

mismatch between the processes and their intended outcomes.

The paper will now look at how this framework for understanding governance on structural,

relational and policy processes can be applied in practice, using governance in Wales as a

case study.

The National Assembly for Wales

The National Assembly for Wales (NAW) was founded in 1999 after powers were devolved

to Wales following a successful referendum on devolution. In Wales, devolution was

perceived to be ‘a process not an event’ (Davies in BBC, 1999) and the devolution settlement

has changed in the subsequent years. The initial devolution settlement only gave Wales

secondary legislative powers within a single corporate structure that fused the role of the

government and the Assembly. The work of the Welsh Government and the NAW were

separate through the 2006 Government of Wales Act, and following a 2011 referendum, the

NAW was given further powers, including primary legislative powers. The latest changes to

the powers of the Assembly came in January 2017 with the Wales Act 2017, which moved

the Assembly from a conferred powers to a reserved powers model. In a sense, the creation of

the Assembly created an entirely new level of governance within the UK governance

structure, along with new structural, relational and policy processes within the level. As it has

changed over time, it has in turn created a changing narrative of governance within the

nation. This leaves it well placed to examine how governance is conceived and perceived by

political elite in Wales over time.

Elite narratives form a key part of how governance is conceived and executed, and this

research focuses on political conceptions of governance within Wales. As part of a survey of

all candidates for the NAW elections in 2016, they were asked to rank whether political

decision-making should focus on governance processes that emphasised policy inputs,

throughputs and outputs.

Table 1: Politicians often make decisions by balancing political participation, processes, and outcomes. In

your opinion, what are the most important considerations in making political decisions? Please rank the

following statements from 1 ‘most important’ to 3 ‘least important’.

1st Choice (%) 2

nd Choice (%) 3

rd Choice (%)

Political decision-

making should result

in the best outcome

for the most people

68.0 22.7 9.4

Political decision-

making should

involve the largest

number of people

and groups possible

27.3 55.4 17.4

Political decision-

making should

follow clearly-

defined rules and

processes

12.6 17.7 69.8

The candidates showed a strong tendency to favour an output-orientated view of governance,

with a large majority (68%) of respondents ranking that as their first choice. Conversely, an

even larger majority rated a throughput-orientated view of governance as the least important

consideration. Just over one quarter of respondents saw an input-orientated view of

governance as the most important consideration in decision-making.

These results were examined for correlations on other political factors. No clear correlations

were discerned based on questions about what level of government should have the most

influence (local, Welsh, UK or EU). While there were no statistically significant results given

the small sample size, a few trends could be identified. People who chose output-oriented

governance approaches as the most important were closest to the overall mean in terms of

placing themselves on a left-right spectrum, while people who focused more on inputs tended

to lean slightly more left-leaning and people who focused on structural ideas of governance

were slightly more right-leaning. There was also a slightly stronger tendency for Plaid Cymru

candidates to support an output-based view of governance (88%), which is interesting given

their focus on input-oriented ideas of moving governance closer to the people of Wales.

Liberal Democrats were least likely to support an outcome view of governance (53%). Again,

however, it must be emphasised that these results are not strong enough to draw any wide-

sweeping conclusions about political or party preferences. However, when combined with

information from the plenary debates, the findings become more robust.

Plenary debates were analysed for references to governance in their speeches. These

references were coded along the same input, output and throughput lines as laid out in the rest

of the paper and the candidate surveys. Results were analysed along party lines, contextual

references to governance and temporally. Overall, 487 references to governance were found

(excluding references to specific initiatives with governance in the title). Of these references,

160 were general references to governance without any specific intent, leaving 327 references

to specific governance processes, be they structural-, relational- or policy-focussed.

Labour was the most likely party to discuss governance, which is not surprising considering it

has consistently had the largest party representation in the Assembly. A rough average gives

approximately 8.2 references to governance for each AM. The Conservatives were the second

most likely to discuss governance in total number, with an average of 8.9 references per AM.

Interestingly, Plaid Cymru was considerably less likely to discuss governance, despite being

the second- or third-largest party, with an average of only 4.7 references per AM. The Liberal

Democrats averaged the highest average number of references per AM, with 12.4 references

per AM.

Party Frequency Percentage References/

AM

Labour 245 50.31 8.2

Plaid Cymru 52 10.68 4.7

Conservatives 116 23.82 8.9

Liberal Democrats 62 12.73 12.4

Independent 6 1.23 6

UKIP 5 1.03 0.715

Other 1 0.21 N/A

When these numbers are broken down based on structural, relational or policy references to

governance, some trends emerge. While all parties talk most about structural, throughput

conceptions of governance, the Conservatives were the only party not to talk about it a

majority of the time. Instead, the Conservatives were more likely to focus on policy (output)

and mixed conceptions of governance. The Liberal Democrats were, perhaps unsurprisingly,

relatively more likely to focus on relational, input-orientated views of democracy, and in this

measure Plaid Cymru was also somewhat more likely to discuss governance inputs. However,

these differences are relatively minor and should not be overplayed. Overall thought, the

Conservatives are a statistically significant outlier in their stronger focus on policy outputs.

P value of Chi Squared (Conservatives)=0.002

Finally, the results were analysed over time. While structural discussions of governance

always dominated, there has been a clear and marked increase of this tendency over time,

from less than half of the debates to over 80% of debates.6 All three other types of

governance conceptions (including mixed) decreased significantly over the same time period,

from a starting point of nearly 20% of the debates for each type to less than 5%.

5 This number is artificially low as UKIP did not have any AMs in the 2011 Assembly.

6 As 2017 results are incomplete, they are more likely to be influenced by specific debates, so definitive

conclusions should not be drawn. Still, the trend is clearly upwards.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Labour Plaid Cymru Conservatives Liberal Democrats

Structural

Relational

Policy

Mixed

P Value of Chi Squared: 0.001

These findings show a clear elite focus on structural, throughput-orientated conceptions of

governance in debates. This is a marked contrast to the output-orientated type of governance

that elites say should be emphasised. Only the Conservative party came close to matching

their debates with their intent, but even there output-orientated discussions around

governance only constituted just over 20% of their discussions.

Discussion

After presenting a conception of governance that separates out input, output and throughput

factors that shape governance processes, these findings shed some light on the relative

importance that elites and academics give to each type of governance, as well as the

mismatch between perceptions of how governance should operate and how it does in practice.

The survey of NAW candidates showed a clear and strong preference for focussing on

output-orientated types of governance, but debate in plenary sessions showed an equally clear

and strong tendency to discuss governance in structural, throughput terms. Only the

Conservative party spent a higher proportion of time talking about output, policy-focussed

conceptions of governance. This points to a clear governance mismatch between elite

perceptions and governance focus in practice, as measured through the debates. More

specifically, this appears to point towards a disjointed form of governance, where there is a

clear disconnection between perceptions and practice, rather than a case of decoupled

governance where these processes may operate separately but more equally. To bring this

back to a decentred view governance, it also displays an incongruity between how

governance is being conducted in the NAW and elite narratives on how governance should

work and what values should be emphasised. Perhaps encouragingly, bibliometrics shows

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2014 2015 2016 2017

Structural

Relational

Policy

Mixed

that academic research tends to more closely mirror the perceived elite need to focus on

output/policy-orientated views of governance. The debate on multi-level governance has

matured over the years to take on a more significant policy focus, especially in examining

questions of environmental governance. Less encouragingly, this may have come at the

expense of theory-building.

As always, there are some shortcomings to this research. While bibliometrics allows for a big

picture, broad brush view of an academic literature, it inevitably loses some detail in its

analysis, as well as focussing more on metrics-based ideas of literature than on a deep reading

of key texts. In empirical terms, the candidate survey response was too low and too small to

draw definitive conclusions, apart from general descriptive statistical views of governance.

While the plenary debate data is more robust, it focuses on only one aspect of governance in

Wales and does not look into detail on other ways that input- or output-orientated views

governance may be manifested. However, the triangulation of these sources does provide a

relatively rich view of the state of governance and governance narratives in Wales both as a

snapshot and over time.

Conclusions

This paper has presented a mixed-methods approach to understanding governance narratives

both in theory and practice. A bibliometric analysis was conducted on literature written about

a specific subset of governance, multi-level governance, which found a concept with

significant vitality in terms of debate on the topic, and a movement over time towards a more

policy-focussed (rather than theory-focussed) study of MLG. These findings were used to

develop a new framework for understanding and assessing governance narratives, looking

separately at structural, relational and policy factors that shape governance in ways that either

produce mutually-reinforcing governance processes or ones that are mismatched in execution

or design. This framework was then used to examine governance in the National Assembly

for Wales. A survey of the 2016 candidates for the NAW elections on perceptions of

governance was combined with a content analysis of NAW debates that pulled out

discussions on governance within the Assembly plenaries. The findings from these sources

show a clear preference for elite narratives focussed on governance as output- and policy-

focussed, but debates show relatively little focus on this type of governance in Assembly

business. Interestingly, policy inputs – that is, involving more people in the policy process –

was not emphasised in either the survey or the debates, despite an increasing focus on

referenda, co-creation, participatory budgeting and other processes to involve more

stakeholders in the policy process. This points to a clear governance mismatch between

perceptions of how governance should be and how it plays out in practice.

This research provides a solid base for assessing governance narratives and practice, with the

Welsh case providing evidence that the framework proposed here provides a nuanced and

theoretically-bound view of how governance can be assessed and evaluated in practice. It also

provides a methodological toolkit for assessing governance in different contexts and ways.

Moving forward, the research can be developed in several ways. First, the implied connection

between governance and legitimacy that is developed through the use of Scharpf’s and

Schmidt’s work can be more fully developed, looking at how political legitimacy is

conceptualised and related to governance. Second, the framework can be applied in additional

cases, as well as used to examine the perceptions and narratives developed by other actors

that take part in the governance process, such as citizens, the media, bureaucracy and experts.

Finally, the methods used can be refined and utilised in more depth, as well as combined with

deeper qualitative approaches to assessment, such as interviews, focus groups, or

experiments, to identify how perceptions and narratives of governance may change over time

either individually or collectively.

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