The last 15 years have brought a dramatic change in public decision-making and policy building. A trend toward decentralisation has meant that sub-national governments increasingly find themselves responsible for providing a host of public goods and services. Although co-ordination is essential there is no "optimal" contractual arrangement that fits all co-ordination contexts. How then should governments decide which arrangements to pursue? This book offers an analytic framework for assessing multi-level governance arrangements, which is subsequently applied to five case studies of regional development policy: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. This book should be of interest to policy makers and practitioners seeking to identify and design new and better mechanisms for effective multi-level governance, to NGOs and firms engaged in regional development, and to academics interested in multi-level governance and regional policy.