An authoritarian turn in Europe and European Studies?

ABSTRACT

This contribution contends that the European Union (EU) has taken an authoritarian turn in the past crisis decade, which needs to be systematically addressed in EU studies. Starting from an ideal-typical conception of scenarios for the EU’s emergent political order, it argues that there has been a shift towards decisionist authority structures at both the domestic and the European level. On the one hand, the distinct European emergency politics that characterized the euro crisis have introduced traits of authoritarian rule in the EU’s supranational governance. On the other hand, democratic backsliding and the rise of nationalist populism have prompted authoritarian and anti-European tendencies at the national level. The article claims that the developments are linked and mutually reinforcing – building a ‘cycle of authoritarianism’. Given its dire consequences, EU studies need to reorient towards understanding the dynamic interplay of integration types and domestic politics and rethink questions of democratic legitimacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Authoritarianism
• crisis
• emergency politics
• European Union
• legitimacy
• populism

Acknowledgements

For critical comments and valuable feedback on earlier versions of this article, I would like to thank Michael Blauberger, Tobias Bunde, Benjamin Faude, Cédric Koch, Maurits Meijers, Christian Rauh, Berthold Rittberger, and the three anonymous reviewers. I am also grateful for research assistance provided by Felicitas Fritzsche and Damla Keskekci.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Christian Kreuder-Sonnen is senior research fellow in the Global Governance Department at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany.

ORCID

Christian Kreuder-Sonnen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0397-3452

Notes

1 While certainly cushioned in terms of reach and intrusiveness as compared to domestic authoritarian regimes, European-level authoritarianism follows the same ‘grammar’ of decisionist authority, institutionalizing more autocratic than democratic decision-making procedures and more arbitrary than legally constrained ways of exercising authority.