The paradoxes of legitimate EU leadership. An analysis of the multi-level leadership of Angela Merkel and Alexis Tsipras during the euro crisis

Abstract

In times of crisis, political leaders are torn between calls for strong leadership and the need to maintain their license to operate amongst their constituents. The predicament of European Heads of State and Government (HSG) during crises provides a particularly strong example of this. For on top of the inherent tension between political leadership and democracy, in the European multi-level system, HSG have to balance the demands of many groups of potential followers while facing weak and contradictory vectors of legitimate leadership. This contribution presents a framework by which the inherent tensions of legitimate European leadership may systematically be assessed. It applies this framework to two HSG that were key to the management of the euro crisis, the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the Greek Prime Minister Tsipras in their attempts to walk the tightrope between legitimate and decisive EU leadership.

Keywords:

• Leadership
• euro crisis
• legitimacy
• Heads of state and government
• social identification
• ideology

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the participants of the workshop ‘Political leadership in the EU’ and its organisers professors Amy Verdun and Ingeborg Tömmel for their feedback on earlier versions of this article. Finally, I would like to thank Henriette Mueller and the participants of the workshop ‘Political Leadership Performance and Economic Growth’ at NYUAD and the reviewers for their helpful input.