IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/poango/v13y2025a8944.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fonder From Afar: Distance, Leadership, and the Legitimacy of the EU

Author

Listed:
  • Femke van Esch

    (Utrecht University School of Governance, Utrecht University, The Netherlands)

  • Sebastiaan Steenman

    (Utrecht University School of Governance, Utrecht University, The Netherlands)

Abstract

Why do people support political leadership? This age-old question is increasingly relevant in international politics and especially for the EU, which is seen as suffering from a legitimacy deficit. In EU studies, the question of legitimacy has been approached predominantly from an institutional perspective. However, in times of increased mediatisation and personalisation of politics, leaders play an increasingly important role in determining the legitimacy of politics in the eyes of the people, especially in “distant” polities like the EU. Following these insights from leadership studies, this article examines to what extent citizens’ trust in the EU is influenced by their assessment of different types of EU leaders, as well as distance. A unique survey of citizens’ assessments of EU leaders on five dimensions—being democratically elected, credibility, ideology, social identification, and emotions—is used to answer this question. The study unexpectedly finds that the more distant the leader, the more positive people’s evaluation of their EU leadership. Moreover, the assessment of these leaders significantly and strongly correlates with the extent to which citizens trust the EU. This finding holds for all three categories of EU leaders but is strongest for the most distant leaders. No support, however, is found for the expectation that, in the case of increased distance between leaders and followers, the psychological aspects of legitimacy dominate over the more utilitarian considerations underlying people’s trust in the EU.

Suggested Citation

  • Femke van Esch & Sebastiaan Steenman, 2025. "Fonder From Afar: Distance, Leadership, and the Legitimacy of the EU," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 13.
  • Handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v13:y:2025:a:8944
    DOI: 10.17645/pag.8944
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/8944
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/pag.8944?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:bla:jcmkts:v:46:y:2008:i::p:619-640 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Thomas Risse, 2014. "No Demos? Identities and Public Spheres in the Euro Crisis," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(6), pages 1207-1215, November.
    3. Christopher Lord & Paul Magnette, 2004. "E Pluribus Unum? Creative Disagreement about Legitimacy in the EU," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/166587, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    4. Christopher Lord & Paul Magnette, 2004. "E Pluribus Unum? Creative Disagreement about Legitimacy in the EU," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(1), pages 183-202, February.
    5. Anna Brosius & Erika J van Elsas & Claes H de Vreese, 2020. "Trust in context: National heuristics and survey context effects on political trust in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 21(2), pages 294-311, June.
    6. Vivien A. Schmidt, 2013. "Democracy and Legitimacy in the European Union Revisited: Input, Output and ‘Throughput’," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 61(1), pages 2-22, March.
    7. Andrew Moravcsik, 2002. "Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(4), pages 603-624, November.
    8. Piret Ehin, 2008. "Competing Models of EU Legitimacy: the Test of Popular Expectations," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(3), pages 619-640, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:bla:jcmkts:v:46:y:2008:i::p:1001-1023 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Muireann O'Dwyer, 2022. "Gender and Crises in European Economic Governance: Is this Time Different?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(1), pages 152-169, January.
    3. Vaaks Katri, 2013. "The European Union in the Estonian Public Discourse," TalTech Journal of European Studies, Sciendo, vol. 3(2), pages 50-67, October.
    4. Richard Hyman & Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick, 2020. "(How) can international trade union organisations be democratic?," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 26(3), pages 253-272, August.
    5. John R. Moodie & Viktor Salenius & Michael Kull, 2022. "From impact assessments towards proactive citizen engagement in EU cohesion policy," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(5), pages 1113-1132, October.
    6. Veit Bader, 2008. "Eurospheres? Fragmented and Stratified or Integrated and Fair? A conceptual and pretheoreticalmapping exercise," EUROSPHERE Working Paper Series (EWP) 9, Eurospheres project.
    7. Scharpf, Fritz W., 2014. "After the crash: A perspective on multilevel European democracy," MPIfG Discussion Paper 14/21, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    8. Marcel Lubbers & Eva Jaspers, 2011. "A longitudinal study of euroscepticism in the Netherlands: 2008 versus 1990," European Union Politics, , vol. 12(1), pages 21-40, March.
    9. Luuk Middelaar, 2016. "The Return of Politics – The European Union after the crises in the eurozone and Ukraine," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(3), pages 495-507, May.
    10. Christoph Engel & Luigi Mittone & Azzurra Morreale, 2024. "Outcomes or participation? Experimentally testing competing sources of legitimacy for taxation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(2), pages 563-583, April.
    11. Alexander Kentikelenis & Erik Voeten, 2021. "Legitimacy challenges to the liberal world order: Evidence from United Nations speeches, 1970–2018," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 721-754, October.
    12. Isuru Koswatte & Chandrika Fernando, 2022. "Policy Development for Crisis Management in the Context of Sri Lanka," Managing Global Transitions, University of Primorska, Faculty of Management Koper, vol. 20(3 (Fall)), pages 295-327.
    13. Carina I. Hausladen & Regula Hänggli Fricker & Dirk Helbing & Renato Kunz & Junling Wang & Evangelos Pournaras, 2024. "How voting rules impact legitimacy," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-10, December.
    14. Marlous Blankesteijn & Bart Bossink, 2020. "Assessing the Legitimacy of Technological Innovation in the Public Sphere: Recovering Raw Materials from Waste Water," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-16, November.
    15. Christopher Gandrud & Mark Hallerberg, 2015. "Does Banking Union Worsen the EU's Democratic Deficit? The Need for Greater Supervisory Data Transparency," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(4), pages 769-785, July.
    16. Christopher J Williams, 2016. "Issuing reasoned opinions: The effect of public attitudes towards the European Union on the usage of the 'Early Warning System'," European Union Politics, , vol. 17(3), pages 504-521, September.
    17. Petia Kostadinova, 2015. "Improving the Transparency and Accountability of EU Institutions: The Impact of the Office of the European Ombudsman," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(5), pages 1077-1093, September.
    18. Nikitas Konstantinidis & Konstantinos Matakos & Hande Mutlu-Eren, 2019. "“Take back control”? The effects of supranational integration on party-system polarization," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 297-333, June.
    19. Camille Kelbel & Virginie Van Ingelgom & Soetkin Verhaegen, 2016. "Looking for the European Voter: Split-Ticket Voting in the Belgian Regional and European Elections of 2009 and 2014," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(1), pages 116-129.
    20. Scharpf, Fritz W., 2014. "No exit from the euro-rescuing trap?," MPIfG Discussion Paper 14/4, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    21. Hugh Breakey, 2021. "Harnessing Multidimensional Legitimacy for Codes of Ethics: A Staged Approach," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 170(2), pages 359-373, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v13:y:2025:a:8944. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.