Although subnational entities play an important role in governance for sustainable development, they are often not recognized as decision-making actors in multilateral bodies, where an important part of the policy debate takes place. Adopting a Multi-Level Governance perspective, this article presents four alternative routes they can use to be involved in multilateral decision-making. It further zooms in on inter-subnational networks, an application of one particular route, called the direct route. Inter-subnational networks are associations between subnational entities based upon common interests. They have both external and internal objectives. On the one hand, they want to represent their members at multilateral organizations and influence decisionmaking. On the other hand, they are aimed at fostering cooperation between their members and at stimulating policy learning. This article focuses on the participation of Flanders in two networks in the area of sustainable development: nrg4SD and ENCORE. Flanders is an interesting case because of its exceptional degree of autonomy. The analysis concludes that Flanders is mainly (but not exclusively) interested in the internal dimension of the networks. It further reveals a low political involvement, which seems due to the subject of sustainable development itself.

This article addresses the impact of intermunicipal cooperation on the administrative power of municipalities. It focuses on a specific form of intermunicipal cooperation in the Netherlands, which is called ‘WGRplus’. This concerns the intermunicipal cooperation in the major urban regions in the Netherlands. In this article administrative power is not used as a fixed and quantifiable concept, yet as a process that might contribute to the performance of individual municipalities. It is argued that intermunicipal cooperation strengthens the possibilities of municipalities to address social challenges. The cooperation is considered to be successful and rewarding. It also stimulates the cooperation with relevant social organisations. Yet this form of intermunicipal cooperation has a weak democratic and political profile. Next year the Dutch government will conduct a thorough evaluation of this specific form of intermunicipal cooperation. This is still necessary because the evidence that the administrative power of the municipalities benefits from this specific form of intermunicipal cooperation is not absolutely convincing.

This article examines the relations between local government and the private welfare sector in Flemish municipalities. It argues that because of important transformations in society local governments are dependent on the activities of the private sector to solve social challenges. Within the welfare sector Flemish local governments still have an important role. The question is how municipalities are able to withstand and cope with the power and strength of these private organisations. Maybe the answer lies within professional network management.

This article investigates the cross-national prevalence of five news frames in quality papers’ coverage of the Treaty of Lisbon (EU Constitution). Three frames were identified in earlier studies: economic consequences, conflict, and human interest. Two additional frames were identified and composed: power and nationalization. During the seven-month period leading up to the signing of the Treaty of Lisbon (December 2007), we analyzed 341 articles from four quality papers: Le Monde (France), De Volkskrant (The Netherlands), De Standaard (Dutch speaking community of Belgium), and Le Soir (French speaking community of Belgium). Our results show that although significant differences between newspapers were found in the amount of framing, overall they reflected a similar pattern in the adoption of the news frames. The economic consequences frame, followed by the power frame, appeared most prominently in all of the newspapers’ coverage. However, the conflict and nationalization frames recurred in a significantly lesser degree. These findings indicate that the meaning behind the Treaty of Lisbon as a symbol of supra-national unity could have led to a shift from a domesticated, conflict oriented coverage as found in previous studies to a more unified portrayal of the EU within and between the quality papers under study.