The role of legitimacy in robust crisis governance. Examining the failed European response to the turbulence of the 2015-16 refugee crisis

This article examines the European governance failures that occurred during the 2015-16 refugee crisis through the lens of robust crisis governance. The article asks whether these failures can be explained by a failure to meet the double criterion for robust governance proposed by Ansell and colleagues, which is (i) creating adaptive or innovative crisis responses and (ii) doing so while maintaining legitimacy. To answer this question, the article takes three main steps. First, the article develops the legitimacy dimension of Ansell et al.’s robust governance framework by integrating Beetham’s three-dimensional concept of legitimation as legality, justifiability and consent. Second, the article applies the resulting augmented framework to three national case studies, each of which demonstrate a different route to failure, namely: institutional inertia (Spain), unlawful neglect, (the Czech Republic), and opportunistic agility (Denmark). Third, the article conducts a historical analysis of European migration policy to understand how incoherences between the three dimensions of legitimation contributed to the failures at robust governance observed in the case studies. By examining cases of failure through a legitimation lens, the article puts meat on the bone of Ansell et al.’s previously underdeveloped assumption that legitimacy is a necessary condition for robust crisis governance. The analysis implies that, to a degree not generally recognized by the crisis management literature, robustness in national crisis management relies on the preexistence of coherent legitimation structures, i.e., structures that explicate and manage contradictions among legal frameworks, policy goals and stakeholders.