SOLID: Policy Crisis and Crisis Politics
The SOLID project aims to provide an original general theory of political crisis through the study of the several crises that have hit the EU in the last decade. In doing so, it aims to understand how the severe crisis situation can go together with resilience from the EU. Covering developments since 2009, SOLID aims at assessing the overall soundness of the EU’s foundations in the wake of the political crisis.
Coping with COVID-19: A Comparative Political Economy Analysis of European Policy Responses
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered unprecedented economic decline in advanced economies, often exacerbating challenges inherited from previous crises. However, the policy responses to these common pressures in the initial ‘fast burning’ phase of the COVID-19-induced recession vary significantly across countries. This project uses a comparative political economy approach to make sense of this variation within the EU and to derive relevant policy implications. It aims to generate insights about the preconditions for effective policy responses to sudden shocks.
Democracy in lockdown: What role for the European Parliament in the COVID-19 crisis?
The COVID-19 crisis poses a particular problem for parliamentary democracy: how to uphold the main democratic principles if parliamentarians cannot meet? Internally, assemblies need to adapt to a sudden process of digitalisation and remote participation; externally, the crisis disrupts legislative processes and the capacity to shape policy. This is all the more noticeable on the European Union (EU) level, where crises often lead to a competition for leadership between executive and legislative powers.
Driving Us Further Apart? The Impact of Social Media on Political Attitudes toward Covid-19 Policies
As European governments cautiously proclaim to have the Covid-19 pandemic under control, the political debate on whether the response was appropriate has gained pace. Some think the response excessively hurt the economy and infringed on people’s personal freedom, while others maintain that the response was appropriate and highlighted the benefits of an interventionist state. Will Covid-19 give rise to a new political consensus, or will it instead amplify existing political divides?
COVID-19: How Europe as Union Fares
The aim of this comparative study is analyse how ‘Europe’ and the ‘EU’ featured in the extraordinary voluminous narrative about Covid-19 in a selected number of seven Member States and at the EU level. It has the merit of arriving from nowhere and becoming the dominant issue facing the EU and its member states in a very short time frame.
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