Understanding multilevel governance ultimately requires looking beyond the existence and responsibilities of regional and local governments to the wider political, administrative, and fiscal relationships that shape how different levels of government actually work together. This includes the extent of self-rule—the authority subnational governments have to make their own political, policy, administrative, and fiscal choices—as well as shared rule—the ways in which different levels participate in joint decision-making, coordinate policies, share resources, and hold one another accountable.
These arrangements differ greatly across countries and often cannot be understood from constitutions or organizational charts alone. A fuller picture of multilevel governance therefore requires examining how authority, resources, incentives, and accountability are distributed across levels—and how the different parts of the intergovernmental system interact in practice.