Schmidt Speaks at Keynote Panel for REGROUP
Professor Vivien Ann Schmidt attended the first roundtable discussion called “Democratic Legitimacy in Turbulent Times” for EU Horizon’s 2020 project REGROUP as a keynote panelist. Held at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, the talk explored the various repercussions of the COVID-19 period. Schmidt was joined by fellow speakers Federico Fabbrini, professor at Dublin City University and Kalypso Nicolaidis, professor at University of Oxford.
Schmidt’s contribution to the project was to theorize about questions of legitimacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also wrote a research paper on the topic called “Power and Legitimacy During Emergency Politics: A Democratic Audit of Responses to the Covid-19 Crisis” and presented some of her findings during the talk, elaborating on their current implications.
At the session, Schmidt focused on issues associated with legitimacy in Europe that surfaced during the pandemic, particularly in terms of trust in governing authority and how these were underpinned by a tradeoff in governing activities between political (input), procedural (throughput), and performance (output) legitimacy.
The professor also remarked on how legitimacy was substantially retained whilst the 2020 pandemic (with good performance compensating for reduced political participation, procedural accountability, and transparency)—something that was absent in the Eurozone crisis.
Schmidt concluded by arguing that if the European Union intends to sustain legitimacy in all three areas of governing activities, then it has to successfully respond to the emerging geopolitical challenges it faces.
To read more about Professor Schmidt’s research on legitimacy, click here.
Vivien Ann Schmidt is a Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Professor Emerita of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, and Professor Emerita of Political Science, as well as the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Europe, all at Boston University where she taught from 1998 to 2023. An authority on European politics and society, the European Union, and France, she has written several books including Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy: Governing by Rules and Ruling by Numbers in the Eurozone (2020) which received the Best Book Award of the American Political Science Association’s Ideas, Knowledge, and Politics section. To learn more about her work and accomplishments, visit her faculty profile.