Following the Crowd or Developing a Thicker Skin? Assessing the impact of politicization on the attitudes of Commission officials

This paper investigates how Commission officials’ attitudes on supranationalism are affected by the politicization of the European Union (EU) within their home countries. Building on a norm-guided open system approach, I theorize that concerns about the legitimacy of their organization leads Commission officials to be responsive to politicization. However, the attitudinal impact of the EU politicization appears moderated by cultural background. Officials from Protestant and egalitarian societies are pulled towards intergovernmentalism in response to critical voices in their societies, whereas officials from Catholic and hierarchical societies defend supranationalism in response to politicization in their societies

Undermining, defusing or defending European integration? Assessing public communication of European executives in times of EU politicisation

How do mainstream political executives cue their politicised constituencies on European integration? Moving beyond static expectations that EU politicisation induces executives to either undermine, defuse or defend integration, this article theorises executives’ incentives under different configurations of public and partisan Euroscepticism in their home countries. Expectations are tested on the sentiment and complexity that executives attach to European integration in almost 9,000 public speeches delivered throughout the Euro Crisis. It is found that national leaders faced with sceptical public opinion and low levels of partisan Euroscepticism rhetorically undermine integration, whereas European Commissioners faced with similar conditions are prone to defend it. These responses intensify disproportionally with growing public Euroscepticism, but are moderated by Eurosceptic party strength in surprising ways. When such challenger parties come closer to absorbing the Eurosceptic potential in public opinion, executive communication turns more positive again but also involves less clear rhetorical signals. These findings move beyond existing uniform expectations on mainstream responses to Eurosceptic challenges and highlight the relevance of different domestic configurations of EU politicisation

On Legitimacy Crises and the Resources of Global Governance Institutions : A Surprisingly Weak Relationship?

While scholars commonly assume that Global Governance Institutions (GGIs) need legitimacy to perform effectively, there are few systematic empirical studies assessing the consequences of legitimacy (or the lack thereof) for the functioning of GGIs. Inspired by the new institutionalism in organization theory, which predicts that more legitimate organizations will get more resources than illegitimate ones, we look into how legitimacy affects the resourcing of GGIs. We assess how crises of legitimacy affect the staff and financial resources of 21 GGIs from 1985 to 2015. Multivariate statistical analysis suggests that the effects of legitimacy crises on GGI resourcefulness are interesting but surprisingly weak, often GGI specific, and dependent on time and the source of the challenge. Specifically, we find that elite criticisms of GGIs lead to deep resource cuts in the short and medium term, while the effect of mass protests takes longer. The paper concludes by setting an agenda for further theorizing and empirical testing of the consequences of legitimacy in global governance