Abstract
European leaders have struggled to find common responses to the polycrisis the EU is facing. This crisis of leadership makes it urgent that scholars provide a better understanding of the role and impact of leadership in EU politics and policy making. This article prepares the ground for a collection of contributions that addresses this need by strengthening old and building new bridges between the academic domains of European studies and leadership studies. It opens with a discussion of the contested concept of leadership in the context of the European polity and politics, challenging the conventional view that leadership is necessarily a matter of hierarchy. Moreover, it argues that rather than leaderless, the EU is an intensely ‘leaderful’ polity. Subsequently, this introduction identifies four key debates in contemporary EU leadership research and discusses the value and insights the contributions in this special issue bring to these debates.
Highlights
European leaders have struggled to find common responses to the polycrisis the European Union (EU) is facing
The inability of European political leaders to tackle problems in a collective and decisive manner has led several observers to conclude that the EU is suffering from a leadership crisis
This supposed leadership crisis makes it urgent that scholars provide a better understanding of the role and impact of leadership in EU politics and CONTACT Femke A
Summary
European leaders have struggled to find common responses to the polycrisis the EU is facing. Considering leadership as a collective endeavour and reciprocal process between leaders and followers – as is the state of the art in leadership studies – we argue that the European Union is the ultimate domain for the exercise and study of leadership (cf Mu€ller 2019).
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