Citizens’ exit from the EU, back to the Nation-State? Policy feedback and legitimacy in times of crisis

Dupuy, Claire [IEP Grenoble PACTE] Van Ingelgom, Virginie [UCL]

The paper is meant to advance the analysis of EU legitimacy in times of crisis in two ways. First, the paper researches EU legitimacy in comparison to nation-states’ and investigates whether the post crisis context is concurrent to shifts in legitimacy recognized by European citizens to both levels of government. Second, the paper studies the sources of EU legitimacy in times of crisis by testing both responsiveness and policy feedback hypotheses. This paper’s research design is based on the comparison of various policy areas, some of them highly Europeanized, other very little Europeanized. The paper reports on the existence of feedback effects of the most Europeanized policies and on the overall absence of European policy responsiveness.