Multilevel governance in Continental Europe. State- local relations and institutional reform capacity

Even though empirical studies on cooperative and informal actions of the state and administration agree in general, uncertainty remains with regard to the impact of informal exchange relationships and network-like cooperation on the political and administrative ability to control and reform. In addition, it remains contentious whether the extent and the effects of cooperative state and administrative actions vary by country. The impact of varying organizational set-ups of the national administrations also remains disputed. The article therefore analyzes the informal relations of political control between the state and the local level with regard to their impact on institutions' ability to reform at the subnational level. The article conceptualizes the interaction between these levels as an instance of multilevel governance and elaborates in how far the countries differ with regard to their coordination of these multiple levels. The territorial and functional reform processes in Germany and France serve as empirical examples. Thanks to the prominently different design of the state-local relations in these countries, studying these two cases provides answers to the research question at hand.