Intergovernmental Policy Management: Cooperative Practices in Federal Systems

Abstract

Federalism in its broadest sense involves multiple levels of government that necessarily interact. As the late Daniel J. Elazar (1996: 419) concluded, “It is not that states are disappearing, it is that the state system is acquiring a new dimension, one that began as a supplement and is now coming to overlay (and, at least in some respects, to supersede) the system that prevailed in the modern epoch. That overlay is a network of agreements that are not only militarily and economically binding for de facto reasons but are also becoming constitutionally binding, de jure.” That is why there are so many diversified experiments with various forms of federalism and federal arrangements: to face the complexity in 21^st-century governing. Indeed, within various countries some combination of ethnic/territorial governing, regional economic development, local democracy/citizen government, supranationalism (e.g., European integration), global concerns and globalization, and cross organizational networking are converging to ensure this variety. That is why the question “Which Federalism?” becomes relevant. Different cultural, political, and economic forces lead to the variety of federal situations in countries like Italy, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Canada and the United States, to name a few. Underlying all of these emergent federal arrangements, however, is the need to manage the interactions within the network of agreements that necessarily emerge throughout various federal systems. That is the focus of this chapter. Specifically, how collaborative management operates between levels in various countries which, as will be demonstrated, have become operational matrices rather than hierarchical pyramids (Agranoff 2001b).