ABSTRACT

The locus of integration policies has shifted to the local level. This raises various conceptual and theoretical questions regarding how to understand the relation between national and local integration policies. From a multilevel governance perspective, this chapter discusses various ideal-typical modes of relations between national and local policies. It defines multilevel governance as only one out of several modes of configuring national–local relations. Based on an analysis of national–local relations in the UK and the Netherlands, the chapter concludes that decoupling seems to be more the trend in current European policies than the much referred to multilevel governance model.