Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy: Governing by Rules and Ruling by Numbers

Session Submission Type: Virtual Author meet critics

Session Description

This panel centers on Vivien Schmidt’s book: Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy: Governing by Rules and Ruling by Numbers in the Eurozone. Critics will engage with the author in a discussion of the book, which focuses on the dilemmas of legitimacy sparked during the Eurozone crisis, which began in 2010, slowed as of 2012, and took on new forms when the Covid-19 pandemic struck. As such, the book provides essential background knowledge for understanding the unfolding of the Covid-19 pandemic, and for assessing the nature and possible effects of the new measures taken by the EU to grapple with the Covid-19 pandemic.

The book is highly innovative in its use of the lens of legitimacy to analyze all aspects of the Eurozone crisis, including governance processes, political economy, and politics. Its contributions are not only empirical—in its detailed examination of events, actions, and actors during the crisis—but also theoretical. In evaluating the legitimacy of Eurozone crisis governance, Vivien Schmidt 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 author uses the analytic framework of discursive institutionalism to highlight actors’ legitimating ideas and discourse during the Eurozone crisis.

The book argues that the European Union’s decision to ‘govern by rules and rule by numbers’ at the inception of the crisis, by mandating austerity and structural reform, undermined Euro member-states’ economic performance while increasing political volatility. The subsequent remedy, 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. The book concludes by suggesting ways to move beyond the Eurozone crisis through deeper integration balanced out by more decentralized and democratized governance.

Sub Unit

• Division 15: European Politics and Society

Chair

• Jane Mansbridge Harvard Kennedy School

Presenters

• John Erik Fossum University of Oslo

• Jane Mansbridge Harvard Kennedy School

• Sheri Berman Barnard College, Columbia University

• Sergio Fabbrini Luiss Guido Carli

• Vivien A. Schmidt Boston University