Schmidt’s “Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy” Awarded APSA IKP Best Book 2021
Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy: Governing by Rules and Ruling by Numbers in the Eurozone, the latest book by Vivien Schmidt, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration and Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, has been named the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Ideas Knowledge, and Politics (IKP) Section Best Book of 2021.
Schmidt’s latest publication, published by Oxford University Press in July 2020, examines the interrelationship between democratic legitimacy at the European level and the ongoing Eurozone crisis that began in 2010. Using the lens of democratic theory, the book assesses the legitimacy of European Union (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’).
The Best Book award recognizes the best recent book on empirical or normative aspects of the causal role of ideas or knowledge claims in politics or government. In discussing the book, APSA’s IKP Book Award Committee said the following:
The political epistemologist will find much of value in Schmidt’s thorough account. Her analysis is impressively ecumenical, drawing on political theory as well as economics, IR, and comparative politics. But, in common with her previous studies of the EU, Schmidt’s main method is interpretive…Moreover, Schmidt does an excellent job of showing that the various conceptions of legitimacy to which these figures oriented themselves were entirely ideational—and thus intangible…Schmidt’s analysis suggests, the EU’s democratic crisis is nothing less than a crisis of ideas.
Vivien Schmidt is Professor of International Relations and Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies and was the first Director of BU’s Center for the Study of Europe, housed at the Pardee School. Schmidt’s research focuses on European political economy, institutions, democracy, and political theory—in particular on the importance of ideas and discourse in political analysis. Read more about Professor Schmidt on her faculty profile.