journal articles
In this section, you can find peer-reviewed academic articles, but also some blog pieces. Peer-review involves the assessment and critique by scientists, which ensures the academic quality of an article.
For the list of all LEGITIMULT project outputs, please visit our community online page on Zenodo.
Summary
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‘We’re All in This Together?’A Survey Experiment on the Perceived Legitimacy of Region‐Specific Crisis Interventions in Germany and the Netherlands was published in Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions. In responding to crises, governments often need to enact restrictions on the freedoms of citizens that might be perceived as intrusive and unfair. Yet, government interventions need to retain legitimacy in the eyes of citizens. We study the perceived legitimacy of pandemic crisis interventions with a focus on the effects of multi‐level governance and region‐specific interventions.
As the Covid-19 pandemic demanded coordinated action from governments at all levels, the role of federalism, decentralization, supranational authorities and other multilevel governance (MLG) institutions and processes in responses to it has come under much scholarly scrutiny. Three years on, much of this literature remains fragmented and in need of synthesis. In this systematic literature review we summarize the literature on the effects of MLG on governments’ policy responses to Covid-19.
This document presents the Introductory Explanatory Note and the texts of two scholarly articles:
Žagar, M. (2024). Perceptions of Persons Belonging to (Social) Minorities on the Legitimacy of Crisis Management during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Presentation of Field Research Results. Submitted for publication in June 2024 to the journal Teorija in praksa / Theory and Praxis (in Slovenian; English translation by ChatGPT-40).
Žagar, M. (2023). Legitimate Multilevel Crisis Management from the Perspective of Human Rights, Minorities, and Non-Discrimination. Treatises and Documents / Razprave in gradivo, No. 91, 5–24. ISSN 0354-0286. Available here.
This article examines how and why political trust declined across Europe during the later stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. While early studies focused on the initial surge in trust, this research analyzes the period from summer 2020 to winter 2021, when trust began to erode. Using time-series qualitative comparative analysis across 28 European countries, the authors identify key combinations of factors—such as rising policy stringency, mortality rates, and political contestation—that contributed to this decline. They outline three main pathways leading to reduced trust and explore them further through five in-depth case studies.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that political actors and were willing to take or endorse drastic measures to mitigate the spread of the virus. At the same time, the political systems responding to the pandemic have become increasingly interconnected into multilevel governance structures. Also, studies have shown that political trust is seen as an important precondition for the functioning of a political system, especially in times of crisis, while the drivers of political trust are less often studied. The concept of political trust is also relevant from an MLG perspective, as different tiers of government (in)directly influence citizens’ trust and as citizens can express trust in different levels simultaneously. However, the effect of both contexts on political trust is rarely studied. This paper therefore examines how crises mitigating measures and multilevel governance contexts impact political trust.
In multilevel systems, (at least) two orders of government are responsible for crisis management. It is essential to understand how these systems deal with a major crisis such as COVID-19. Based on a review of the literature on crisis management in federal and other multilevel systems, this contribution discusses the advantages and disadvantages of decentralisation and intergovernmental coordination when it comes to the management of external shocks (article in Spanish).
Spain’s mishandling of another climate disaster reveals deep flaws in crisis governance. The article “Rising Waters, Fading Lessons” on The Loop explores how poor coordination and top-down decision-making failed communities. LEGITIMULT research shows that legitimacy improves when governments collaborate across levels and include local voices. This case shows exactly why multilevel, inclusive governance matters in times of crisis.
“Citizens’ Juries (CJs)” introduce a fresh and innovative approach to decision-making. This concept, falling under the broader umbrella of Democratic Innovations, brings together a diverse group of ordinary citizens to deliberate on complex issues, providing a unique opportunity for their voices to not only be heard but also considered in the policymaking process.
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