The search for a robust balance of power is a continuous challenge
for multilevel political system. Institutions like parliaments or
courts can protect the existing order. However, necessary
adjustments to economic, social, or international challenges or
policies determined to improve ineffective structures or to prevent
disintegration require constitutional amendments. Whereas
constitutional policy appears as essential to maintain balance,
changing a constitution is rather difficult in multilevel
governments. Due to the veto power of many actors pursuing
divergent interests, policies aiming to redistribute power or
fiscal resources risk to end in the joint decision trap. Hence,
multilevel government is confronted by a fundamental dilemma.
Constitutional Policy in Multilevel Government compares processes
of constitutional reform in federal and regionalized states. Based
on a theoretical framework emphasizing the relevance of
negotiations in parliamentary, intergovernmental, and societal
arenas, it identifies conditions for successful reforms and
explains the consequences of failed reforms. Moreover, it
highlights the interplay of reform processes and constitutional
evolution as essential to maintaining a robust balance of power.
The book demonstrates that an appropriate arrangement of multiple
arenas of negotiation including executives, members of parliament
and civil society organizations, and sequential order of reform
processes proves fundamental to prevent federal or regionalized
governments from becoming either instable or ending with rigid
constitutions. Transformations in Governance is a major new
academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed
to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative
politics, international relations, public policy, federalism,
environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of
authority from central states up to supranational institutions,
down to subnational governments, and side-ways to public-private
networks. It brings together work that significantly advances our
understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of
multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective,
containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high
quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series targets mainly
single-authored or co-authored work, but it is pluralistic in terms
of disciplinary specialization, research design, method, and
geographical scope. Case studies as well as comparative studies,
historical as well as contemporary studies, and studies with a
national, regional, or international focus are all central to its
aims. Authors use qualitative, quantitative, formal modeling, or
mixed methods. A trade mark of the books is that they combine
scholarly rigour with readable prose and an attractive production
style. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the VU Amsterdam,
and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.
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