POLITICS BEYOND THE STATE

States, national institutions and policy processes guide our understanding
of politics. Processes of globalization and regional integration increasingly
push politics beyond the state. Global economic operators and supranational
institutions give rise to significant volumes of collective decision making
occurring outside or only vaguely related to the national context and its state-based
institutions. The centrifugal migration of politics away from state-based institutions
does not only occur in an upward fashion towards the international level but
also endows decentralized and private actors with policy making powers. The
resulting picture is one in which state institutions and policy processes seem
to be a less appropriate unit to analyze politics. Political processes are dispersed
and spread over different tiers of government, ranging from the supra- to the
sub-national level. Central states continue to be an important, but not the
sole component in the complex, multi-level depiction of politics.

This volume seeks to capture the changing nature of politics both within and
beyond the state. The presence of multiple tiers of government re-orients policy
processes and affects actors and policy outcomes at all levels.

The chapters on electoral politics and coalition formation highlight the changing
political dynamics in complex multi-tiered systems. The chapters on interest
representation and lobbying present the European Union as a supranational magnet
for national and regional interests. Supranational government offers opportunities
as well as limitations to interest representation and lobbying. Central states
relied heavily on taxation and command-and-control legislation to achieve policy
outcomes. In complex multi-level systems other policy approaches are developed
to complement the traditional tools of government. The last chapters of this
book present some of the ‘governance’ tools to achieve policy outcomes
in a context where resources are thinly spread over private actors and a myriad
of public authorities.

The analysis of ‘politics beyond the state’ clarifies that the central
state continues to guide our understanding of politics but that it needs to
be complemented with ample attention to both the sub- and the supranational
tiers of government.

Kris Deschouwer is professor of Politics at the Department of Political
Science of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His research focuses on political
parties and elections, more in particular on the meaning and organization of
party political representation in complex and multi-layered systems. He is editor-in-chief
of the European Journal of Political Research.

M. Theo Jans is professor of Politics at the Department of Political
Science of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Senior Fellow at the Institute
for European Studies. His research focuses on policy-making in complex, multi-level
systems, namely, the Belgian Federation and the European Union.