Event Highlights: Vivien Schmidt Book Presentation
This virtual launch of CSE founding director Vivien Schmidt’s new book, Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy: Governing by Rules and Ruling by Numbers in the Eurozone, now available from Oxford University Press, took place via Zoom on Thursday, September 17, 2020. Schmidt’s presentation was followed by remarks by Mark Blyth, William R. Rhodes ’57 Professor of International Economics and Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs at Brown University; Vlad Perju, Director of the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College and Professor of Law at Boston College Law School; and Philomila Tsoukala, Professor of Law at Georgetown Law. The event was moderated by Daniela Caruso, Professor of Law and current Director of the Center for the Study of Europe.
The book examines the interrelationship between democratic legitimacy at the European level and the ongoing Eurozone crisis that began in 2010. Europe’s crisis of legitimacy, Schmidt argues, stems from ‘governing by rules and ruling by numbers’ in the sovereign debt crisis, which played havoc with the eurozone economy while fueling political discontent. Using the lens of democratic theory, she assesses the legitimacy of EU governing activities first in terms of their procedural quality (‘throughput),’ by charting EU actors’ different pathways to legitimacy, and then evaluates their policy effectiveness (‘output’) and political responsiveness (‘input’). In addition to an engaging and distinctive analysis of Eurozone crisis governance and its impact on democratic legitimacy, she offers a number of theoretical insights into the broader question of the functioning of the EU and supranational governance more generally. She concludes with proposals for how to remedy the EU’s problems of legitimacy, reinvigorate its national democracies, and rethink its future.
