Postscript

Summary

We began this volume with an examination of several alternative ways that democratic nation states incorporate civil society and local institutions. Historical analysis traced the origins of contemporary differences in multilevel democracy. Comparison showed them to have affected both the performance of policy and the overall quality of democracy over the long run. Even among the relatively successful multilevel democracies examined in this study, however, the problem of enhancing and sustaining multilevel democracy poses persistent challenges. Across the developing world, even greater challenges confront efforts to construct new, more inclusive and effective institutions at the local scale. Following a brief summary of the overall argument, this chapter briefly sketches these questions for the future.