ABSTRACT
For many people, the idea of politics may suggest the endless theatre of politicians, journalists, judges and activists that compete with the ‘soaps’ and with sport for our attention on television and in the newspapers. Another way to experience politics, however, is to suffer the delays caused by new road projects or under-invested railways, to enjoy subsidised theatre or public parks, or to seek permission to build or extend a house. In other words, politics is about almost every aspect of life where public agencies provide benefits, impose duties or redistribute resources from some citizens to others through taxes and other charges. In this political process, the government, parliament and bureaucracy in Dublin described in many of the other chapters of this book are an important factor. But government at the state level is only part of the story. The everyday pattern of public provision is the responsibility of many other agencies, few of which feature in the model of politics as a daily drama. Some of the complexity of everyday politics, and the traditional political science question of ‘who gets what, when and how’, is captured in the phrase ‘multi-level governance’. This expression is used in the present chapter to capture some of the growing intricacy that marks the way politics in the form of public services is delivered, particularly by public bodies outside the central government.
