Political leadership in the European Union: an introduction

Abstract

In light of recent crises in the European Union (EU) there is a need for more systematic analysis of political leadership in the EU, which is what we seek to do in this collection. This introduction offers a theoretical and conceptual background for the volume. Drawing on Burns, Blondel, Elgie, Young, and others, this contribution identifies how political leadership can be analysed in various institutions and institutional settings of the EU. The questions we ask are: what kind of leadership is there in different domains; how and with what tools does political leadership occur and operate in various case studies and how effective have those been? Although difficult to synthesise the results into one overarching leadership concept, or indeed locus, we argue that the individual studies demonstrate that the EU is by no means leaderless.

Keywords:

• Crisis
• EU
• institutions
• leaders
• political leadership

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Thomas Christiansen and the participants of the workshop on ‘Political Leadership in the EU’ held 19–21 November 2015 in Osnabrück as well as the reviewers of Journal of European Integration for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this contribution. The authors also wish to thank Zoey Verdun for editorial assistance.