The Changing Organization of Multilevel Water Management in the European Union. Going with the Flow?

Regulatory networks have become an essential feature of the European administrative system. They have expanded EU administrative capacities and consolidated a pattern of multilevel implementation along sectoral cleavages. This article examines how networks develop and take effect when more crosscutting policy aims are to be implemented. It argues and demonstrates with a case study of the Common Implementation Strategy of the Water Framework Directive that vertical and cross-sectoral coordination can be institutionalized in a network, suggesting an innovative role of regulatory networks. Such coordination supplements and challenges the role of national policy coordination, both horizontally across sectors and vertically down to the domestic sub-national, river basin.