European integration from its very origins and early stages has been a unique, also in the terms of fitting in some political theory schools. It had had problems with being classified or framed by some theories or even theoretical approaches. It did not fit in any of the grand theories or in developed from them approaches. That was the reason, why during the further integration process political thought revealed new approaches and integration theories that could completely explain this unprecedented political development of Europe and interpret the integration processes in the EU.
Multi-level governance is a theory of European integration by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks. It appeared in the early 1990s and is linked to the Maastricht Treaty (TEU). In this view, European governance is now a complicated set of interconnected institutions that exist at three levels: supranational, national, and subnational. Multi-level governance is not really a proper theory, rather it is an approach. The main difference from other theories of integration is that it gets rid of the continuum or grey area between intergovernmentalism and supranationalism and in its place leaves a descriptive structure. This theory does not address the sovereignty of states directly, but instead simply says that a multi-level structure is being created by subnational and supranational actors. One of the main questions of integration theory, namely, the transfer of loyalty and sovereignty between national and supranational entities and the future of this relationship in the EU is not specifically addressed.
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