Personnel Turnover and the Legitimacy of the EU

This book examines the effects of personnel turnover in European Union (EU) institutions. Individuals enter and exit EU institutions with remarkable frequency, and questions involving institutional personnel lie at the heart of populist and feminist critiques of the EU. Are these critiques accurate? How do personnel dynamics affect the EU’s legitimacy? Will changing patterns of turnover help to redeem the EU? Personnel Turnover addresses these issues by considering turnover’s effects on three aspects of legitimacy (input, throughput, and output). Authors use a common framework to explore various questions: Does turnover affect the ways that EU citizens see the EU or the likelihood that citizens will participate in EU elections? Does turnover affect the efficiency of the EU decision-making or the EU’s ability to promote its interests abroad? In tackling these contemporary subjects, the authors throw light on a classical question—what difference does it make when political leadersare replaced?

John A. Scherpereel is Professor of Political Science at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, USA. The author of Governing the Czech Republic and Slovakia: Between State Socialism and the European Union, his research focuses on executive politics, legislative politics, and political representation.