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This contribution argues that there is a fundamental problem for the multi-level governance (MLG) approach in that what the approach is trying to explain has never been fully agreed by the vast group of scholarship that references it. The chapter then examines and proposes that ideas and concepts from network governance, principal–agent (PA) and learning can provide the necessary micro foundations for the MLG approach.

The chapter examines and critiques the original MLG formulations and the later efforts at elaboration. It then reviews the literature and concepts for three public policy approaches that have been associated with European governance to see how core explanations can be elaborated upon in a multi-level context: network governance, principal–agent (PA) and learning.

This contribution suggests that co-ordination, and the resources that help maintain this co-ordination, is the key dependent variable that underpins the MLG approach. With multiple principals and multiple agents, operating at a number of levels of analysis, direct authority and control is harder to evoke. The key explanatory variable underpinning this MLG co-ordination is learning by the participants.

Researchers need to concentrate both their theoretical and empirical efforts in understanding the conditions that support multi-level governance and that sustain its effort.

The contribution outlines some of the key practical questions that policy-makers must face. Can they manage resources and induce learning from all the relevant public and private stakeholders to engage in the MLG effort?

Not only does an effective MLG process involve engaging a wide range of societal stakeholders, these stakeholders have to be persuaded to invest effort in learning about the nature of the governance system, the challenges of the policy problem and the implications of the efforts to resolve these problems.

This chapter isolates the fundamental lacuna at the heart of the MLG project and offers academics and practitioners a conceptual lens for building a clearer analytical structure for studying MLG.

The explanatory power of Multi-Level Governance (MLG) has been and is being questioned. Two main criticisms have been raised: first, that MLG is ultimately descriptive, not explanatory; second, that MLG is a case of concept stretching, that it is ultimately an umbrella notion rather than a theory. This chapter outlines what ripostes may be provided to such critiques and argues that the progress of the study of MLG and its usage in political science and public policy and management may lie to an important extent in fostering the dialogue with other streams of research (thus filling the gap of some ‘missing linkages’ in the extant MLG literature), like network governance; policy learning; the analysis of policy tools and the tools of government in complex systems; models in strategic management like stakeholder analysis and others.

This volume is a collective contribution by authors from different disciplinary backgrounds who all address, from different angles and by using a variety of research methods, the key question of how to bring into the MLG research agenda a range of disciplines and applied fields of inquiry that have so far only limitedly been used in the MLG stream of research and literature more systematically.

It arises from the volume that theoretical frames like network governance; policy learning; policy tools analysis; stakeholder analysis and others have important potential to further the MLG research agenda. A number of contributions address the transformation of MLG in the European Union (EU), the polity where MLG arrangements where first detected and labelled as such (Marks, 1993). Others apply MLG frames to other institutional settings, including non-democratic regimes.

This volume is a collective attempt to suggest ‘cross-fertilisations’ from other disciplines or applied fields that may lead to unleash more of the potential and promises of the MLG agenda. It is hoped that this work lays some of the foundations for building bridges between the MLG literature and disciplines and theoretical frames that may be effectively brought into the MLG research agenda.

MLG has long gone beyond the academic debate, to become an analytical lens employed by EU and other institutions across the globe. MLG informs the practice of policy-making. By addressing some key gaps in the extant literature and furnishing perspectives to link MLG to disciplines that may provide theories and models to further its analytical potential, this volume aims at contributing to improving the practice of MLG.

The volume is – to our knowledge – the first systematic attempt to bring into the MLG literature a whole range of theories and models that may provide ways forward to the understanding and usage of MLG.

This chapter uses Goffman’s concept of total institutions in a comparative case study approach to explore the role of psychotropic drugs in the process of transinstitutionalization.

This chapter interprets psychotropic drug use across four institutionalized contexts in the United States: the active-duty U.S. military, nursing homes and long-term care facilities, state and federal prisons, and the child welfare system.

This chapter documents a major unintended consequence of transinstitutionalization – the questionable distribution of psychotropics among vulnerable populations. The patterns of psychotropic use we synthesize suggest that total institutions are engaging in ethically and medically questionable practices and that psychotropics are being used to serve the bureaucratic imperatives for social control in the era of transinstitutionalization.

Psychotropic prescribing practices require close surveillance and increased scrutiny in institutional settings in the United States. The flows of mentally ill people through a vast network of total institutions raises questions about the wisdom and unintended consequences of psychotropic distribution to vulnerable populations, despite health policy makers’ efforts regulating their distribution. Medical sociologists must examine trans-institutional power arrangements that converge around the mental health of vulnerable groups.

This is the first synthesis and interpretive review of psychotropic use patterns across institutional systems in the United States. This chapter will be of value to medical sociologists, mental health professionals and administrators, pharmacologists, health system pharmacists, and sociological theorists.

The last several decades have brought about a paradigm shift in the conceptualization of disability (Fougeyrollas & Beauregard, 2001; Williams, 2001). The traditional medical model considers disability to be a characteristic of the person, situated within the body. In the medical model view, disability, or difficulty functioning in major life domains, results from bodily impairments associated with a medical diagnosis or disorder, and a medical intervention or treatment is required to “correct” the problem of the individual. Alternatively, contemporary social models argue that disability is a social construction. In the social model view, disability is created by social policies, stigma and other barriers within the social and physical environment. Changes in attitudes and policies and the removal of barriers are needed to “correct” these environmental problems.

Since the beginning of the 20th century environmental health researchers have known about the association between toxicant exposure and disease. However, that knoweldge has not been well integrated into mainstream medicine. Shedding light on why is the focus of this chapter.

To shed light on this issue I analyze the 2011 American Academy of Pediatrics’ clinical practice guidelines for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), focusing specifically on the omission of environmental health research pertaining to ADHD symptoms and exposures, such as lead and mercury.

I found that while environmental researchers have been documenting the link between lead and ADHD for over forty years, the American Academy of Pediatrics has completely omitted this research from its 2012 clinical practice guidelines. Moreover, I argue this omission can be traced to competitive pressures to protect medical jurisdiction, and a reductionist worldview that emphasizes treatment over prevention.

This is the first attempt to analyze the way clinical practice guidelines help reinforce and perpetuate dominant medical perspectives. Moreover, to shed explanatory light, this chapter offers a synthetic explanation that combines materialist and ideological factors.

Beyond the specific case of ADHD, this chapter has implications for understanding how and why environmental health research is omitted from other materials produced by mainstream medicine, such as materials found in the medical school curriculum, continuing medical education, medical journals, and on the medical association web sites.

A major paradigm shift focusing on the dark side of leadership has generated lots of concern for organizations as leadership has cascading effects on employees’ behaviour. This study aims to understand negative behaviours in the organization as a system of interrelated interaction initiated from the top which trickles down to employees.

Drawing on the theories of social exchange and norms of reciprocity, social learning and displaced aggression, this study models how and when abusive supervision relates to employees’ task performance. The model is empirically tested and extended to cover mediation and moderation processes. Drawing data from 218 bank supervisors and employees, this study uses the structural equation modelling to analyse a trickle-down model of abusive supervision.

Results from multi-waved, multi-sourced data indicated a mediating effect on the abusive supervision–performance relationships and provided support for employees’ guilt proneness and emotional dissonance as moderators. Overall, the results provided support for a moderated mediation relationship in the trickle-down model.

This study provides new knowledge into the potential boundary conditions of employees’ guilt proneness and emotional dissonance in affecting the relationship between abusive supervision, counterproductive work behaviour and task performance.