Abstract
The governance of complex policy problems such as climate change requires the involvement of several levels of government. Especially in multilevel systems embedded in the EU, the division of competences across multiple levels makes intergovernmental relations (IGR) across such levels indispensable. While there is ample literature on IGR structures and institutions, there is very little research, let alone empirical research, that has focused on individual-level IGR practices, despite a common assertion in the literature that it is ultimately policy elites as individuals who decide on how to engage in IGR within these structures. Therefore, this project studies how individual policy elites at subnational and national levels of government approach IGR and how individual IGR practices contribute to policymaking. The empirical focus of the project is on national position formation on EU proposals for climate transitions. The research relies on a survey experiment to study how policy elites approach IGR, and on desk research and interview data from four multilevel systems (Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain) to study how individual-level IGR contributes to the shaping of a national position, using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and process-tracing. This project brings together and contributes to academic literature on IGR, political behaviour, federalism and EU climate governance, and to practitioners' debates on how to optimize national EU policy coordination.
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