Europe's Crisis of Legitimacy

Abstract

Abstract The Eurozone crisis has generated not only a crisis of economics and politics but also of legitimacy. The European Union’s decision to ‘govern by rules and rule by numbers’ at the inception of the crisis in 2010, by mandating austerity and structural reform, undermined Euro member-states’ economic performance while increasing political volatility. The remedy beginning two years later, centered on reinterpreting the rules and recalibrating the numbers ‘by stealth,’ by not publicly admitting to increasing flexibility, may have improved performance. But it did nothing to change the suboptimal rules and only further contributed to politicization at EU and national levels as well as to citizens’ divided perceptions of EU actors, including the Council, the European Central Bank, the Commission, and the European Parliament. Moreover, although general acknowledgement of rules reinterpretations came as of 2015, the damage had been done. Using the lens of legitimacy, Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy analyzes all aspects of the Eurozone crisis, including governance processes, political economy, and politics. In evaluating Eurozone crisis governance, the book adds the concept of ‘throughput’ legitimacy, encompassing procedural efficacy, accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and openness, to the long-standing legitimizing mechanisms of output legitimacy, defined as policy effectiveness and economic performance, and input legitimacy, as political representation and responsiveness. In addition to theorizing about democracy and legitimacy in the EU, the book uses the analytic framework of discursive institutionalism to highlight actors’ legitimating ideas and discourse during the Eurozone crisis. It concludes by suggesting ways to move beyond the Eurozone crisis through deeper integration balanced out by more decentralized and democratized governance.

Cite this

Vivien Ann Schmidt (2020). Europe's Crisis of Legitimacy. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198797050.001.0001

@book{ann2020europes,
  title  = {Europe's Crisis of Legitimacy},
  author = {Schmidt, Vivien Ann},
  year   = {2020},
  doi    = {10.1093/oso/9780198797050.001.0001}
}

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