Europe's fast- and slow-burning crises

ABSTRACT

The European Union has been confronted with crises across a range of policy areas. Crises have typically been viewed as providing impetus for further integration but are now straining the European project. This research agenda piece proposes a framework to understand crises and distinguish how they are comprehended as ‘fast-burning’ and ‘slow-burning’ phenomena. Those who view crises as fast-burning typically rally material and ideational resources to address issues with high political intensity. When a crisis is perceived as slow-burning, the key concern is with how the issue is framed and how social expectations are changing. Thinking of fast- and slow-burning crises permits analytical distinctions in how authorities and social actors view crises and how they consider actual conditions and future narratives. The framework assists in specifying how authorities and expert and civil society groups develop policy programmes and frames, as well as changes to European societies’ experiences and expectations.

KEYWORDS:

• Crisis
• temporality
• frames
• policy programs
• social expectations
• expertise

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Leonard Seabrooke is Professor of International Political Economy and Economic Sociology at the Copenhagen Business School.

Eleni Tsingou is Associate Professor of International Political Economy at the Copenhagen Business School.

Notes

1. Speech by President Jean-Claude Juncker at the Annual General Meeting of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises, Athens, 21 June 2016, available at http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-16-2293_en.htm.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the project ‘European Legitimacy in Governing through Hard Times (#649456-ENLIGHTEN), a European Commission Research and Innovation action under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program.