What makes the EU legitimate? An actor-centered approach

In EU studies, the question of legitimacy has been approached predominantly from an institutional perspective and rarely acknowledges the role of individual actors. However, times of increase mediatization and personalisation of politics, actors like national and supranational political leaders – play an increasingly important role in determining the legitimacy of the EU in the eyes of the people. Using insights from leadership studies and political and social psychology, our paper questions to what extent the legitimacy of different types of EU leaders – supranational, transnational and national – plays a role in determining the legitimacy of the EU. Moreover, it takes into account a key insight from leadership studies that the attribution of legitimacy to ‘distant’ leaders like EU leaders has an important social-psychological and emotional dimension (Nielsen and Capelos 2018; Popper 2013; Ruchet 2011; Van Esch 2017). To test these insights, we use an unique survey of citizens attitudes towards EU leaders in nine EU member states to explore the extent to which their evaluation of these actors on five dimensions – being democratically elected, perceived leadership qualities, vision, social identification and emotions - play a role in peoples’ trust in the EU (Gooty et al. 2010; Haslam, Reicher, and Platow 2011; Van Zuydam 2018). Our study finds that people evaluate distant supranational and transnational leaders more positively than their national leaders. Moreover, the level to which EU leaders are seen as legitimate significantly and strongly correlates with the extent to which citizens trust the EU. This finding holds for all three categories of EU leaders, but is strongest for the supranational and transnational leaders. However, no support is found for the expectation that a distant polity with distant leaders, the psychological dimension of legitimacy dominate over the more utilitarian dimensions in determining trust in the EU.