Legitimate Crisis Governance in Multilevel Political Systems

Abstract

The Horizon Europe project LEGITIMULT assesses the impact of the measures taken at the European, national and subnational levels on multilevel institutions and intergovernmental relations in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The project analyzes the effect of these measures on democratic governance, highlighting to what extent multilevel governance influences their impact on democracy, ultimately aspiring to present a model of legitimate crisis management. It assesses all measures taken by 31 European countries in relation to their impact on multilevel governance through the creation of a new dataset highlighting how these procedures link to multiple orders of governance – the EU above the states, and regional and local governments below the national level. The impact of these measures is analyzed through the lens of a variety of dimensions that characterize functional democratic governance (Rule of Law and Democratic Participation; Human and Minority Rights; Trust; Economic Sustainability). LEGITIMULT qualifies the different tradeoffs required within and across these dimensions in order to effectively and quickly deal with a crisis such as Covid-19, while at the same time maintaining a level of democratic governance and ensuring that any limitations to democratic standards are limited. These final trade-offs within and between the different dimensions of democratic governance in crisis management are gathered in a set of policy recommendations, tailored to different recipients, and developed through extensive consultation with stakeholder groups throughout the project This panel presents four empirical papers that result from various data-sets using a mix of qualitative and quantitative data and methods of analysis. The papers are illustrative for the empirical work of the LEGITIMULT consortium. They all contribute to a better understanding of how governance arrangements in multilevel environments can remain legitimate. Arjan Schakel and Bilal Hassan (University of Bergen) present a coding scheme that measures decision-making and implementation authority of subnational governments during the Covid-19 crisis and analyse in how far and under which conditions the Covid-19 crisis has led to centralization or decentralization. Edina Szoecsik (University of Fribourg) discusses the establishment, the composition and the influence of the expert advice bodies during the Covid-19 crisis. Susana Coroado (University of Antwerp) investigates the intricate interplay between trust, transparency, and crisis management in multilevel settings. Finally, Jakob Frateur and colleagues (University of Antwerp) study the conditions that determine political trust in MLG systems in times of crisis at an aggregated level with particular focus on the way in which and at which government level(s) the crisis is governed.

Title	Details
Expert advice bodies’ role in COVID-19 crisis governance	View Paper Details
Navigating Trust in Times of Crisis: Unveiling the Role of Transparency	View Paper Details
Explaining high and low political trust in Multilevel systems in times of crisis: a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) of the 27 EU member states	View Paper Details