Strengthening EU legitimacy through self-organizing governance
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60054/PEU.2025.12.86-97Keywords:
EU Legitimacy, Self-Organizing Governance, Multi-Level Governance, Polycentric Coordination, Crisis ManagementAbstract
The European Union (EU) faces interconnected legitimacy challenges stemming from perceptions of a democratic deficit and the strain of recurring crises. While existing research has documented these challenges, less attention has been paid to how network dynamics within EU institutions could address them. This paper proposes a novel analytical framework based on self-organizing network theory to examine how decentralized, adaptive governance patterns can strengthen legitimacy and improve crisis responses within the EU’s multi-level governance system. By comparing how the EU has responded to different crises, the paper investigates the mechanisms through which distributed authority architectures, metagovernance feedback loops, and emergent polycentric coordination may enhance multi-level governance, bridge representation gaps, and reinforce institutional resilience. The paper’s findings suggest that incorporating self-organizing network principles into institutional design could help the EU better balance flexibility and stability in crisis management while strengthening democratic legitimacy. This research contributes to ongoing debates on EU governance by offering practical insights into how institutional design can adapt to polycrisis conditions.
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