"The extended gatekeeper: Central government and the implementation of EU regional policy in the UK"

The policy networks approach is used to evaluate the merits of multi-level governance as a model of EU decision-making. According to the multi-level governance model, "decision-making competencies are shared by actors at different levels rather than monopolized by state executives" (Marks, Hooghe, and Blank 1996: 346). This model is tested in relation to the implementation of EU regional policy in the UK for two reasons. First, that regional policy, along with other EU structural policies, is considered to be at "the leading edge of multi-level governance in which supranational, national, regional, and local governments are enmeshed in territoriality overarching policy networks" (Marks, 1993: 402). And second, that "multi-level governance is prominent in the implementation stage" (Marks, Hooghe and Blank, 1996: 365). In the terms specified by the advocates of multi-level governance, there would appear to be no better case study than the implementation of EU regional policy