Europe’s Leadership Deficit

Abstract

The European Project is currently experiencing the most serious crisis in its sixty year existence. Past crises have produced transformational leaders who used them to build more Europe. Today transformational leadership at the European level has been replaced with transactional and laissez faire leaders and is being challenged by charismatic populist ‘strong men’ who oppose more Europe. The structure of the EU, the rise of new media, the large flows of immigrants and refugees combined with economic stagnation and the decline of traditional ideologies have undermined the ability of leaders to shape effective policies. Emerging leaders will be grounded in the nation state and in a more Gaullist Europe.

Keywords:

• Leadership
• post democracy
• populism
• neo-liberalism

Notes

¹ “Bratislava EU Meeting: Merkel Says Bloc in Critical Situation”, BBC, 16 Sept 2016, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37380429

² See Lehmann, “Donald Trump and the Leadership Deficit” : “This is at a time when leadership is one of the most used (abused?) terms in the corporate and business school vocabulary. All these symposiums, courses, coaching, courses, not to mention the voluminous literature and case-studies, seem to be having no effect”.; Salmon, “Europe’s Leadership Deficit”.

³ On these and other key concepts and typologies of leadership, see Burns, Leadership; Northouse, Leadership: Theory and Practice.

⁴ Lasswell, Power and Personality.

⁵ De Gaulle, The Edge of the Sword.

⁶ See Burns, Leadership.

⁷ Weber, Economy and Society, 956-8.

⁸ Maccoby, ”Narcissistic Leaders”.

⁹ See Baker, ”Rise of Donald Trump”, A1.

¹⁰ Hoffmann, Decline or Renewal?

¹¹ Rifkin, The European Dream.

¹² Ibid., 228.

¹³ Ibid., 225.

¹⁴ Hill, Europe’s Promise; Slaughter, A New World Order.

¹⁵ Rifkin, The European Dream, 226.

¹⁶ Drake, “Political Leadership and European Integration”,140-60; Grant, Inside the House that Jacques Built.

¹⁷ Steinmeier, “Save Our Transatlantic Order” and “Germany’s New Global Role”.

¹⁸ Risse, A Community of Europeans?, 227.

¹⁹ Coggan, The Last Vote, 196.

²⁰ Rediker, “The Leadership Deficit”.

²¹ Sandel, “What Isn’t for Sale?”

²² Rifkin, The European Dream, 231.

²³ On this, see Coggan, The Last Vote, 167-96.

²⁴ Salmon, “Europe’s Leadership Deficit”.

²⁵ Coggan, The Last Vote, 3.

²⁶ Sir John Sawers, former head of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, in his first speech since leaving Vauxhall Cross, cited in Gowing and Langdon, Thinking the Unthinkable, 16.

²⁷ Ibid., 16.

²⁸ Krastev, Democracy as Self Correction; see also Crouch, Post Democracy.

²⁹ Benhabib et al., The Democratic Disconnect, vii.

³⁰ See Pew Research Center, “Euroskepticism Beyond Brexit”.

³¹ Rachman, “Trump and Brexit Feed off Same Anger”, 11.

³² See Pew Research Center, “Europeans Fear Wave of Refugees”.

³³ King, “Which Europe Now?”, 41.

³⁴ As Mervyn King recently wrote, “The Schengen Agreement was a laudable objective in earlier times but one almost impossible to sustain when confronted by an influx of millions trying to enter Europe”. Ibid., 41.

³⁵ Stiglitz, “The Problem with Europe”.

³⁶ See Coggan’s treatment of this, as well as that of King. Coggan, The Last Vote, chapter 9; King, “Which Europe Now?”, 36.

³⁷ See Grabbe and Lehne, “How to Build a Flexible EU”.

³⁸ On the need for a more intergovernmental Europe, see Grant, “How Brexit is Changing EU”.

³⁹ Speech by Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel at the opening ceremony of the 61^st academic year of the College of Europe in Bruges on 2 November 2010.