This issue of Policy & Politics features a series
of articles addressing recent developments in
intergovernmental relationships in the advanced
Western democracies. There is today, we believe,
sufficient uniformity in these developments across different jurisidictions to allow a discussion on the causes, mechanisms and consequences
of a new or emerging type of
relationship between institutions at different levels.
While it is also true that intergovernmental
relationships in each individual country are developing
to some extent according to the
trajectory of institutional relationships which is
typical of that national context, we suggest that
the triggering mechanisms have been, on the
whole, fairly similar across the western world.
What we are thus witnessing is a gradual institutional
– and inter-institutional – change reflecting
both similar problems facing countries in different
parts of the world and, at the same time, the
trajectory of institutional change in each national
context.