Pluralism in Research Methodologies

Challenges to Intergovernmental Coordination Inquiry

Abstract

Intergovernmental coordination remains a multidimensional and ever-contested concept, involving complex interactions across multiple levels of governance. In spite of the rich tradition of federalist scholarship, existing research often relies on descriptive, country-centric approaches and remains largely at a meta-theoretical level, offering limited insight into the mechanisms shaping coordination. This research note argues that the prevailing institutionalist bias overlooks the crucial role of individual political actors. It advocates methodological pluralism to capture both formal and informal processes. By examining the incentives of executives, ministries, political parties, lobbyists, and civil society, it disentangles the “unified actor” premise and provides a roadmap for advancing theory and empirical rigor in multilevel governance.