Political actors operate in multiple jurisdictions. These can be overlapping or competing and can span across territorial levels or sectorial areas. Within these jurisdictions, different actors display varying degrees of embeddedness. Some are thoroughly embedded in a variety of jurisdictional arenas, others spread themselves more unevenly, sometimes thinly. This panel focusses on sub-state authorities in global governance to analyse the phenomenon of multi-jurisdictional embeddedness from both a sectorial and territorial perspective. We conceive of sub-state authorities as covering all authorities at local and intermediate levels of government and/or administration below that of the state. We put the spotlight on sub-state authorities as these have been gradually empowered in most democratic countries worldwide. They hence represent an increasingly relevant – though often understudied – category of political actors within global governance. The first two papers tackle the issue of the three-level embeddedness of sub-state authorities in the EU. The first analyses the type and breadth of involvement of sub-state authorities in the EU’s capital in terms of policy portfolio prioritization. The second assesses the usefulness of sub-state antennas in Brussels as perceived by their home administration. Whilst these two papers have a look at supranational representation by sub-state actors, the third deals with the compliance side of the policy process, describing and explaining degrees of compliance with European Human Rights law among sub-state authorities. The final paper analyses two-level interactions within the American context, with a particular focus on taxation policy. Together, these four contributions highlight the pertinence of the sub-state level within multi-jurisdictional systems in both national and international arenas such as the USA, the EU and the Council of Europe. The panel is discussed by a leading scholar of multi-level governance (OUP, 2010).