Lecture 17: Multilevel Politics

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering multilevel governance, federal and unitary systems, and types of regionalism as discussed in Lecture 17.

Multilevel Governance

The process where political authority is 'pulled down' within the state to local levels and 'sucked up' beyond the state to regional organizations.

Federal Systems

States where sovereignty is shared between central and peripheral institutions, characterized by two or more relatively autonomous levels of government.

Unitary Systems

Government systems that vest sovereign power in a single, national institution, despite having forms of peripheral authority like local government.

Confederation

A form of territorial organization that has generally proved to be unsustainable in the modern world.

Written constitutions

A central feature of federal systems used to determine and settle disputes between different levels of government.

Linking institutions

In federal systems, these are institutions that ensure policy harmony across different levels of government.

Local government

A government specific to a particular locality, such as a village, district, town, city, or county within a unitary state.

Devolved assemblies

The greatest possible measure of decentralization in a unitary system of government, short of becoming a federal system.

Regionalism

A process through which geographical regions become significant political and/or economic units, occurring both subnationally and transnationally.

Subnational regionalism

A process of decentralization within countries, closely associated with federalism and devolution.

Transnational regionalism

A process of cooperation or integration between countries in the same region of the world.

Security regionalism

Regional integration that emerged post-1945 through defense organizations responding to strategic tensions generated by the Cold War.

Political regionalism

Regional integration characterized by the construction of organizations such as the Arab League, the Council of Europe, and the African Union.

Economic regionalism

The primary form of regional integration, which became more prominent since the advent of 'new' regionalism in the early 1990s.

Sovereignty sharing

The central feature of federal structures where power is divided between central and peripheral institutions.

Intergovernmental features

Aspects of an organization, like the EU, where power and decision-making involve cooperation between national governments.

Supranational features

Aspects of an organization, like the EU, where authority exists in institutions that stand above the level of the individual nation-state.

One-third

The approximate portion of the world's population that is governed by states with a federal structure.

Peripheral institutions

Regional, provincial, or local institutions that represent the territorial divisions within a state.

Checks and balances

A network created by diffusing government power in federal systems to help protect individual liberty.

Internationalism

A commitment that, along with economic and security benefits, fuelled the drift towards European integration.

Eurozone crisis

One of the significant challenges faced by the European Union in recent years regarding its progress.

Brexit crisis

A recent challenge to the European Union's progress involving the withdrawal of a member state.

ASEAN

A regional bloc used as a case study to discuss the success or failure of transnational regionalism.

Centralizing forces

The growth of the state’s social and economic responsibilities which historically fuelled political centralization.