Book contents
- Robustness and Fragility of Political Orders
- Robustness and Fragility of Political Orders
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Robustness and Fragility of Political Orders
- 3 End of Democracy or Recurrent Conflict: Minimalist Democracy, Legitimacy Crisis, and Political Equality
- 4 Politics and the Administrative State
- 5 Roots in Common: The Fragility–Robustness of Democratic and Ecological Regimes
- 6 The End of Communist Rule in Europe: A Comparative Perspective on the Fragility and Robustness of Regimes
- 7 Democracy’s Fragility and the European Political Order
- 8 The American Fragility–Robustness Nexus
- 9 The Perils of Choice: Structure and Agency in EU Crisis Management
- 10 Conclusions
- Index
9 - The Perils of Choice: Structure and Agency in EU Crisis Management
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2022
- Robustness and Fragility of Political Orders
- Robustness and Fragility of Political Orders
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Robustness and Fragility of Political Orders
- 3 End of Democracy or Recurrent Conflict: Minimalist Democracy, Legitimacy Crisis, and Political Equality
- 4 Politics and the Administrative State
- 5 Roots in Common: The Fragility–Robustness of Democratic and Ecological Regimes
- 6 The End of Communist Rule in Europe: A Comparative Perspective on the Fragility and Robustness of Regimes
- 7 Democracy’s Fragility and the European Political Order
- 8 The American Fragility–Robustness Nexus
- 9 The Perils of Choice: Structure and Agency in EU Crisis Management
- 10 Conclusions
- Index
Summary
This chapter explores how the EU (European Union) managed the multiple crises that it confronted during the decade from 2010 to 2020, the extent to which these crises provoked its disintegration or closer integration and – primarily – how far the EU’s crisis management policies were structurally determined or shaped by agency. It argues that the decisions made by the EU in the Eurozone and coronavirus crises – decisions that forged closer political integration – were largely structurally determined, whereas those that culminated in political disintegration either involved a combination of structural and agency-related causes, as with the refugee crisis, or, as with the Brexit crisis, were the result of a sequence of decisions that were taken by political actors who possessed agency and that therefore could well have been different.
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- Information
- Robustness and Fragility of Political OrdersLeader Assessments, Responses, and Consequences, pp. 229 - 269Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022