Abstract
ABSTRACT This contribution engages with the empirical analysis of emergency politics in the EU, arguing that executives’ public communication helps to distinguish crisis management from crisis exploitation. An initial, descriptive text analysis of emergency emphasis in more than 19,000 executive speeches suggests that supranational actors, most notably the European Central Bank, do indeed use rather alarmist language over and beyond objective crisis pressures when their competences are contested. Yet, this behaviour does not appear to be a ubiquitous phenomenon, pointing to the need for more specific expectations on when and why EU executives pro-actively embark on the emergency politics script.
Highlights
IntroductionThe crisis exploiter will frame matters as an emergency in a much more pronounced and, relative to the original crisis-triggering events, much longer lasting manner (i.e., during what Vivien Schmidt, 2021, calls the ‘slow burning’ phase of a crisis)
Kreuder-Sonnen and White (2021) aim to stimulate a more critical reading of crisis responses in and by the European Union
Neither do national budget deficits, the degree to which austerity politics stirred domestic conflict, nor the distinction between creditor and debtor states align with the degree to which the respective national executives communicatively played up the state of emergency during the Eurocrisis
Summary
The crisis exploiter will frame matters as an emergency in a much more pronounced and, relative to the original crisis-triggering events, much longer lasting manner (i.e., during what Vivien Schmidt, 2021, calls the ‘slow burning’ phase of a crisis) Based on these considerations I derive an empirically observable implication from the Kreuder-Sonnen and White model: If the emergency politics script is taking hold in European governance, we should see higher levels and prolonged emphasis on the state of emergency in the public communication of those European executives whose competences and policies are politically contested and/or constitutionally constrained. This cross-sectional perspective shows that we cannot attest a decidedly supranational emergency politics script. Neither do national budget deficits (and the related risks of sovereign default), the degree to which austerity politics stirred domestic conflict, nor the distinction between creditor and debtor states (or promoters of austerity and redistribution) align with the degree to which the respective national executives communicatively played up the state of emergency during the Eurocrisis
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