The contested nature of political leadership in the European Union: conceptual and methodological cross-fertilisation

Abstract

European leaders have struggled to find common responses to the polycrisis the EU is facing. This crisis of leadership makes it urgent that scholars provide a better understanding of the role and impact of leadership in EU politics and policy making. This article prepares the ground for a collection of contributions that addresses this need by strengthening old and building new bridges between the academic domains of European studies and leadership studies. It opens with a discussion of the contested concept of leadership in the context of the European polity and politics, challenging the conventional view that leadership is necessarily a matter of hierarchy. Moreover, it argues that rather than leaderless, the EU is an intensely ‘leaderful’ polity. Subsequently, this introduction identifies four key debates in contemporary EU leadership research and discusses the value and insights the contributions in this special issue bring to these debates.

Keywords:

• European Union
• leadership
• EU leadership
• EU institutions
• leadership theory
• research methods

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editors of West European Politics for their support of this special issue, as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Henriette Müller

Henriette Müller is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Leadership Studies at New York University Abu Dhabi. Her research focuses on political leadership as well as women and leadership with a regional focus on the EU and GCC states. Her first book Political Leadership and the European Commission Presidency will be published with OUP in 2019. She has published in Politics and Governance, Journal of European Integration and West European Politics, among others. [[email protected]]

Femke A. W. J. Van Esch

Femke A.W.J. Van Esch is an Associate Professor in European Integration and Leadership at the Utrecht School of Governance. Her research interests include European (monetary) integration, political leadership, ideas, cognitive mapping and German and French politics. She has published in Journal of European Public Policy, West European Politics and Journal of Common Market Studies, amongst others. [[email protected]]