Tracing leadership

The ECB’s ‘whatever it takes’ and Germany in the Ukraine crisis

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6406986
AutoresMagnus G Schoeller (0000-0002-5826-0900, University of Vienna, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume43
Fascículo5
Páginas1095-1116
Data de publicação2020-07-28
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoWest European Politics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0140-2382 • E-ISSN: 1743-9655
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01402382.2019.1635801
OpenAlexW2963946215
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10
Referências citadas32

Political scientists face problems when assessing a leader’s impact: how can we know that a policy outcome or institutional change is caused by leadership? This article argues that in addition to relying on comparisons and counterfactuals, we need to trace the causal mechanisms by which leadership affects outcomes. Therefore, the article proposes a way to trace leadership and applies it to two cases of EU crisis management: the European Central Bank’s role in announcing Outright Monetary Transactions in the eurozone crisis, and Germany’s role in shaping the EU’s response to the Ukraine crisis. Systematic process-tracing shows that both actors provided leadership ‘by default’. However, while the ECB had to combine the provision of knowledge with unilateral action in order to overcome the eurozone crisis, Germany could use manifold bargaining-based strategies and thus became the EU’s de facto agenda setter and main representative in managing the Ukraine crisis

Crisis management · De facto · Economic policy · Economics · European debt crisis · European integration · European union · Face (sociological concept) · Financial crisis · Macroeconomics · Order (exchange) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Process tracing · Setter · Sociology · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · European Union Policy and Governance · Finance · Law · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies · Social Policy and Reform Studies