Despite the overwhelming scale and urgency of the current Euro-crisis, EU political and financial leaders have struggled to find an answer to the problems. One of the underlying barriers is the lack of a common understanding amongst the European political and financial elite on the causes and nature of the crisis. In my paper, I will study the beliefs of the French and German political and financial leaders on European economic and monetary unification, ascertain the extent to which a common understanding existed amongst European leaders before the crisis, and determine how the crisis affected these beliefs.
Previous studies suggest that no easy answers exist to the question on how crises affect leaders’ beliefs and that these effects may be conditional. To contribute to this theoretical debate, the paper will test the mediating effects of three key variables identified in political psychology on the relation between crises and leaders' propensity for cognitive stability or change: level of leaders’ belief-strength, their openness to information and the level of pressure.
It will do so by building on the technique of Comparative Cognitive Mapping (CCM) that has been developed in political and social psychology and organizational studies. CCM enables a systematic quantitative and qualitative longitudinal comparison of leaders’ policy-beliefs. More in particular, the study will focus on the beliefs of the Heads of State and Government as well as Central Bank Presidents of France, Germany, Ireland and Spain.
