B3 Democratic Multilevel Governance and Europeanization
Research Area B3 is dedicated to the challenges of democratic governance in multilevel political systems and gives special attention to the European level. The development of multilevel systems is not restricted to the EU; vertical relationships can also be found in many other political systems, for example in federalised or decentralised countries.
Analytical units under scrutiny in this area are individual, corporate, and collective actors in regional, national, and EU arenas, which shape the outcome of democratic decision-making processes. The research area includes projects that analyse how citizens perceive political decisions within the context of multilevel governance. The latter is of key importance, since we need more information on the degree of democratic legitimacy in times when a significant share of citizens consider processes of political decision-making to be in crisis at all levels of the political system. Projects thus focus on the impact of European integration on the behaviour of citizens and institutional actors such as parties or national governments. They address processes of political decision-making at the EU level and ask how these affect decision-making processes of political authorities at the national, regional, or local level of EU member and non-member states.