Power and Legitimacy during Emergency Politics

I have just come out with a research paper for the REGROUP Horizon 2020 project, which explores theoretical questions about legitimacy and the exercise of emergency powers during the Covid-19 pandemic in a number of domains, including a) lockdowns, border closures and movement restrictions; b) steps towards Health Union; and c) the suspension of the fiscal rules and creation of the Next Generation EU and the Resilience and Recovery Fund. It first explores how to think about legitimacy in terms of the activities of governing authorities—regarding performance (output), procedures (throughput) and politics (input)—and then discusses how these concepts apply in the context of a democratic audit in emergency times. Overall, the paper finds that, with a few exceptions, governing authorities at national and EU level did provide sufficient legitimation for emergency actions in which they balanced out reductions in political and procedural legitimacy (input and throughput) with beneficial outcomes related to  performance legitimacy (output), and in so doing met most of the criteria expected by a democratic audit of emergency politics.

Vivien A. Schmidt (2024) “Power and Legitimacy during Emergency Politics: A democratic audit of responses to the Covid 19 pandemic.” Research paper no 12, Regroup Horizon 2020 project (April 2024)