PLATO — The Post-crisis Legitimacy of the European Union European Training Network

Results in brief

The Post-crisis Legitimacy of the European UnionEuropean Training Network

The European Union has suffered multiple crises since 2008. But has it experienced a legitimacy crisis, defined as a crisis that calls into question its very justification as a form of political power? Addressing that problem is of foremost societal importance. Without solving collective action problems and managing externalities between themselves, European democracies may find it hard to meet their core obligations to their own publics to secure rights, justice, welfare, freedom from domination and democracy itself. They may struggle to provide their own publics with rights against polluters, monopolists, tax-evaders, terrorists, traffickers or discriminators if the sources of those ills are located in other states. They will also need to manage inter-state externalities if they are to control pandemics, provide collective security, avoid systemic risk in financial systems or fight climate change. Yet, it is precisely the role of political systems in making public policy and law aimed at managing externalities between other systems that expose them to risks of legitimation crisis. Problems can be displaced from financial, demographic or ecological systems in ways that overwhelm the ability of political systems to satisfy all conditions needed for their legitimacy simultaneously. Problems can also be displaced in a similar way between political systems. All of that, arguably, happened with the financial crisis after 2008 and, again, with the migration crisis of 2015. To investigate whether the EU has experienced a legitimacy crisis as a result of multiple other crises in European integration, PLATO (The Post-Crisis Legitimacy of the European Union) had the following objectives: 1. To build theory of what would count as a legitimacy crisis in the case of the EU 2. To design methods of evaluating whether the EU has experienced a legitimacy crisis 3. To use cases to generate new empirical understanding of whether the has experienced a legitimacy crisis 4. To combine the foregoing research with a training programme aimed to train future research leaders across sectors 5. To embed PLATO’s research findings in a new, improved state-of-the-art PLATO has achieved those objectives through an Innovative Training Network of nine university partners from across Europe and eleven training partners from the policy advice, consulting, media, and career development sectors, as well as from civil society. The academic programme has trained 15 PhD researchers through a common multidisciplinary investigation into the EU’s legitimacy. The professional training has included professional skills, individual professional career planning and work experience from relevant sectors that provide the main users of research into the EU.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Is there a crisis in the legitimacy of the European Union? That research question is timely and important. Investigating it is also an ideal way of training research leaders of tomorrow to rethink our assumptions about the study of legitimate political order. Whilst, however, the financial crisis has raised new questions about the legitimacy of the EU, existing theories of legitimacy crises are largely based on single-state political systems. New theory is, therefore, needed to understand what would count as legitimacy crises in the case of a non-state political system such as the EU. PLATO’s (The Post-Crisis Legitimacy of the EU) ESRs will work together as a team to build new theory from 15 investigations into different standards and actors with whom the EU may need to be legitimate. ESRs will go well beyond the state-of-the-art by building a theory of legitimacy crisis in the EU from a uniquely interdisciplinary understanding of how democracy, power, law, economies and societies all fit together with institutions within and beyond the state to affect the legitimacy of contemporary political order. By developing the analytical tools needed to understand a core predicament in which the EU may both need to develop legitimate forms of political power beyond the state and find those forms of power hard to achieve, PLATO will train ESRs with the conceptual clarity needed to define new research questions at the very frontiers of their disciplines and the methodological skills needed to research those questions. They will also be prepared for careers in the non-academic sector (policy-advice, consulting, civil society, European institutions and expert bodies). PLATO’s ambitious cross-university, cross-country and cross-sectoral programme of research training, supervision and secondments will pool resources from a unique network of 9 research-intensive universities and 11 non-academic partners who are themselves key users of state-of-the-art social science research.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

UNIVERSITETET I OSLO · OsloCoordinatorNorway
BRUEGEL · BRUXELLESBelgium
CAREERS RESEARCH AND ADVISORY CENTRE (CRAC) LIMITED (THE) · CAMBRIDGEUnited Kingdom
CENTRE FOR EUROPEAN POLICY STUDIES · Bruxelles / BrusselBelgium
DEMOCRACY INTERNATIONAL E.V. · CologneGermany
EUROPEAN CITIZEN ACTION SERVICE · Bruxelles / BrusselBelgium
EUobserver.com ASBL · BrusselsBelgium
FONDATION NATIONALE DES SCIENCES POLITIQUES · ParisFrance
FREIE UNIVERSITAET BERLIN · BerlinGermany
INSTITUT FUR HOHERE STUDIEN - INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES · WienAustria
JACQUES DELORS INSTITUT - BERLIN · BERLINGermany
KELLEN · BRUSSELBelgium
POLSKI INSTYTUT SPRAW MIEDZYNARODOWYCH · WarszawaPoland
SOCIOLOGICKY USTAV AV CR V.V.I. · PRAHA 1Czechia
STICHTING NEDERLANDS INSTITUUT VOOR INTERNATIONALE BETREKKINGEN CLINGENDAEL · WASSENAARNetherlands
STIFTUNG WISSENSCHAFT UND POLITIK · BerlinGermany
THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE · CAMBRIDGEUnited Kingdom
UNIVERSITEIT ANTWERPEN · AntwerpenBelgium
UNIVERSITEIT TWENTE · EnschedeNetherlands
UNIWERSYTET JAGIELLONSKI · KrakowPoland

PLATO · The Post-crisis Legitimacy of the European Union European Training Network

Results in brief

The Post-crisis Legitimacy of the European UnionEuropean Training Network

Project objective

Participants

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