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In an early contribution to MLG theory in 1988 that was subsequently widely cited, Fritz Scharpf had identified stalemating commonalities between the decision-making structures of the German federation and those of the multilevel EC/EU system arising from their mutual dependence on unanimous or nearunanimous voting procedures, which he as a “joint-decision trap”. In a 2006 paper (republished as a chapter in his edited 2009 volume), he continues to claim, with justification, that his original seminal analysis is “still basically valid”, even though the European Union had diluted its unanimity voting requirements to that of near-unanimity in 1992. But he concedes that this analysis needs to be complemented by a similar account of non-governmental policy-making processes in the “supranational-hierarchical” modes of governance by the European Community Bank (ECB) or European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the financial and judicial policy sectors.

Scharpf (2009) also reviews some theoretical extensions and modifications that he made to his joint-decision trap thesis in recent years. He notes in particular his focus on and use of a hybrid model during this phase, containing three different modes of EU-intergovernmental relations: 1) the “intergovernmental mode” (i.e. an “applied negotiation mode”) in which the “joint-decision trap” thesis readily applies and in which institutionalising national governments remain in full control at the lowest level of policy-making, 2) a combined or “mixed mode” of joint-decision-making that includes aspects of both intergovernmental negotiations and supranational centralisation) in which the “joint-decision trap” may or may not apply, and 3) a “supranational hierarchical mode” (exemplified by the European Court of Justice and the European Bank), in which the “joint-decision trap” does not apply. He also suggests ways that these impediments to efficient EU policy-making may be mitigated or overcome. He acknowledges that “the effectiveness of problem-solving in policy-making at the national as well as the European and international levels varies considerably from one policy field to another” (Scharpf 1997). And he agrees with other advocates of MLG that “the complexity of the multilevel European polity is not adequately represented by the single-level theoretical concepts of competing ‘intergovernmentalist’ and ‘supranationalist’ approaches.” But he also warns that “empirical research that focuses on multilevel interaction overemphasises the uniqueness of its objects of study or attempts to create novel concepts which are likely to remain contested by Europeanists and over-isolates this area from general theory and the political science mainstream” (Scharpf 2009). These arguments are, in our opinion, well [38] founded, and should be incorporated into an updated and current assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of MLG as an analytical concept.