IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/eeupol/v26y2025i3p552-572.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Crisis management and attitudes towards democracy: The case of the COVID-19 recovery plan in Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Lea Heyne

    (Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal)

  • Rubén Ruiz-Rufino

    (Department of Political Economy, King’s College London, UK)

Abstract

What is the relationship between crisis management strategies and democratic attitudes in a supranational economic union? We analyse the process of policy convergence within the European Union (EU) in the handling of the economic crisis induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, comparing countries with different conditionality experiences during the 2010 sovereign debt crisis. Unlike in 2010, the strategy for managing the 2020 crisis reflected institutional efforts towards greater fiscal solidarity at the supranational level and policy responsiveness at the national level. We argue that this policy shift has improved attitudes towards democracy. Using quasi-experimental evidence from an unexpected event analysis during Eurobarometer 93.1 fieldwork, we show that the announcement of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) in 2020 increased satisfaction with democracy (SWD), particularly among individuals who experienced strict conditionality during the 2010 crisis.

Suggested Citation

  • Lea Heyne & Rubén Ruiz-Rufino, 2025. "Crisis management and attitudes towards democracy: The case of the COVID-19 recovery plan in Europe," European Union Politics, , vol. 26(3), pages 552-572, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:26:y:2025:i:3:p:552-572
    DOI: 10.1177/14651165251340209
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14651165251340209
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/14651165251340209?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:26:y:2025:i:3:p:552-572. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.