Multilevel Democracy is a highly original study that examines how local institutions and local civil societies became incorporated into contemporary developed democracies. Jefferey Sellers, Anders Lidström, and Yooil Bae develop an innovative classification of multilevel democracies, and they reveal how three types of multilevel democracy vary with regard to policy performance and the quality of democracy up to present times. The historical analysis that substantiates the three types of multilevel democracy is based on an extraordinary wealth of literature, and the exceptional data collection that underpins the analyses of impacts of the three types of multilevel democracy is an extraordinary tour de force.

Sellers, Lidström, and Bae start with developing types of multilevel democracy on the basis of two overarching dimensions (chapter 2). The first dimension encompasses vertical intergovernmental relationships between the local and national state, and the second dimension involves the engagement and inclusion of citizens through political, economic, and civic interests and associations (pp. 26–27). A combination of high or low scores on each dimension yields a two-by-two table with four types of multilevel democracy. Nationalized democracies, such as Sweden, score high on both dimensions and combine national and local accountability with national and local contestation. The United States is exemplary of a civic localist democracy where the local state is not tightly integrated into the national state, but accountability and civic engagement are secured at the local level. Limited accountability and contestation at the local level can be found in local elitist democracies such as France, which score low on both dimensions. The local state becomes rather insignificant in elitist democracies where local elites are held accountable by national elites only and contestation mainly takes place at the national level. Elitist democracies are not further considered in the book because this kind of multilevel democracy cannot be found in contemporary developed democracies (p. 28).

The bulk of the book grounds the three types of multilevel democracy in an exceptional large empirical foundation. In chapter 3, the authors perform a cluster analysis on a remarkably wide range of indicators ranging from politico-administrative and fiscal capacities to geopolitical fragmentation and supra-local supervision. The cluster analysis generates three clusters of 21 developed democracies that clearly overlap with the three types of multilevel democracy. This classification is a major contribution, considering that most typologies of local governance have focused on geographic correspondences instead of being based on a systematic institutional comparison. Unfortunately, the analytical parsimony of the three types of multilevel democracy declines considerably when Sellers, Lidström, and Bae amend their classification by separating “hybrid” from “core” countries, which leads to a three-by-three table in which “hybrid” countries are placed in multiple and different cells (Table 3.12, p. 117).

Chapters 4 and 5 present an illuminating comparative historical analysis that significantly challenges our understanding of state formation. The authors convincingly show that “the contemporary developed world is inherently a multilevel state” (p. 7) and that prevailing understandings of state formation have underestimated the importance of the local dimension in explaining the dynamics of state formation (pp. 119–20). Long-standing differences between local institutions and local civic societies have not only survived forceful processes of nationalization but have also shaped the national institutions that characterize nationalized, civic localist, and local elitist multilevel democracies.

In chapters 6 and 7, the authors attempt to substantiate the claim that nationalized multilevel democracies outperform local elitist and civic localist multilevel democracies in terms of welfare state policy and the quality of democracy (pp. 19–20 and pp. 340–41). This is the least convincing part of the book. The three types of multilevel democracy are supported by a solid and meticulous cluster analysis (chapter 3) and comprehensive comparative historical analyses that are subsequently corroborated by Boolean analyses (chapters 4–5). Despite the wealth of collected quantitative data, the “analyses” of the impact of multilevel democracy on policy performance (chapter 6) and on the quality of democracy (chapter 7) are restricted to comparing averages across the three types of multilevel democracy, in which the statistical significances of these differences are not explored. Nevertheless, these chapters convincingly show that local institutions are an important element for understanding a country’s policy performance and democratic quality.

Multilevel Democracy is exemplary of a recent and growing literature that addresses “methodological nationalism” in political and social science. Theories of state-building focus on the nation-state and “might have directed political scientists’ attention away from important sub-state dynamics, disguising their character and hiding their full extent” (Charlie Jeffery and Daniel Wincott, “The Challenge of Territorial Politics,” in Colin Hay, ed., New Directions in Political Science, 2010, pp. 169-170). In a nutshell, the critique raised by methodological nationalism is that territorial effects have been a “constant presence in European politics” (Michael Keating, The New Regionalism in Western Europe, 1998, p. ix). Yet, political and social scientists have largely ignored territorial effects or not given these effects their due weight in theory. Sellers, Lidström, and Bae provide a powerful corrective to the omnipresence of methodological nationalism in state-building theories by exposing how local institutions became incorporated and shaped the multilevel state.

Multilevel Democracy also successfully addresses the challenges posed by methodological nationalism in another way. Because of a long-standing social-scientific preoccupation with the nation-state as a unit of analysis, political and social scientists have typically sought to collect data for their research at that scale (Charlie Jeffery and Arjan H. Schakel, “Editorial: Towards a Regional Political Science,” Regional Studies 47, 2013). Consequently, Sellers, Lidström, and Bae have to rely on country-level data and historical narratives that focus on the nation-state. They effectively use this data to produce outstanding research, but further grounding of the three types of multilevel democracy on the basis of local-level data would be very welcome. However, this will most likely remain a utopian undertaking, considering that the required local-level data are simply not available. Multilevel Democracy also shows that addressing methodological nationalism entails a tremendous amount of work. A glimpse of the authors’ Herculean effort to collect historical and quantitative data for a wide range of political and social variables is provided by the online supplemental document, which can be accessed without restrictions at htttp://multimediafluids.uam.elogim.com/MultilevelDemocracy.

In conclusion, Multilevel Democracy offers a significant contribution to the broad field of comparative political science and is a must-read for a wide range of political scientists interested in state-building, civil society, democracy, federalism, institutions, political mobilization, and governance. By successfully addressing methodological nationalism, Multilevel Democracy is a groundbreaking study that will provide an invaluable step forward in the development of an emerging (sub-)field within political science on comparative territorial politics.