 Welcome, everyone. Once again, let's talk about politics and governance. I have invited Jan Uppkens and Sophie Bernhardtaker to explore today on this episode the European Union's experience with crisis and explore the different scales, different levels of this crisis. And now the European Union has implemented crisis management over time. Jan and Sophie, welcome to our episode. Thank you. Thank you so much, Rodrigo. We're very pleased to be here and explain our research. Maybe before we start, I want to emphasize that it is a co-authored piece, a co-authored article, which Professor von Hohenacker, Professor Neuhold and myself have written. And we're very excited to present it here. Perfect. So Jan, let's follow up on that. Why did you and your co-authors, did you feel the need, the importance of studying the impact of different crisis in the European Union and its responses? Yes. Well, we've witnessed, of course, the EU being in a state of Perma crisis. Over the past 15 years, the US operated in non-stop crisis mode, starting with the financial crisis, moving to the migration crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and more recently also the war in Ukraine, which are also at the center of the special issue we are featured in. We see this constant state of crisis, which also corresponds to more and more literature dealing with how the EU responds to a crisis. So in a singular sense, but also comparing the US response among crisis, but we also see more attention to how crisis impacts the EU as a polity, as a system of governance. Amid this increasing literature, what we observe jointly as a team, is that there's a lack of engagement with the term crisis itself. So we see more attention for crisis, but a lack of attention to engage with the term, to conceptualize it. So we still witness some kind of umbrella concept. So crisis being applied almost as a one-size-fits-all concept, for which we think it's important to be more precise when you apply the term. So we see inflation of a term crisis, and we think that's a risk, because we think that if everything is called a crisis, in the end, everything, yeah, nothing is a crisis anymore, so to speak. So what we try to do in our article is to have a two-step approach. So we first want to make sure, make clear that analytical precision is needed when dealing with this concept. So we want to first conceptualize what is a crisis? What is a crisis in the European Union? And we think this has not received enough attention. And we do so by unpacking the traditional definition of a crisis, which was put forward already in the 80s, by scholars such as Professor Rosenhaal and later refined by others. So that's what we first wanted to do. And our second main argument, building on this, we argue that one crisis is not like another. In fact, there's different types of crises, which also merit attention. So we put forward a conceptual model consisting of three key analytical dimensions, severity, symmetry, and speed. We call them the three S's in our article, and they can help us distinguish between, we call this broadly a mild, severe, or an existential crisis. And this is actually very important, these creditions, because they also impact how do you respond, who responds, when, and how a crisis is addressed. So to keep it very short in a concluding remark, the importance of the article that we jointly believe is that we really provide a new explanatory angle of looking at crisis. And by doing so, we bring together different separate previous explanations, such as those focusing on symmetry. We bring them together in one new framework. And it's important because academics and practitioners, they use the term as academics. There's more conceptual nuance when comparing crisis for practitioners being able to define what is a crisis and what is not. And what type of crisis it is, and do that quickly, actually also helps save resources and allocate resources there where it's really needed. Perfect. Thank you, Jan. Sophie, let's follow up on the literature part that Jan mentioned. So what was specifically missing in the research that you wanted to address? As you will have seen, actually, the aim of our article has been more conceptual rather than empirical. And firstly, by building on the broader international crisis literature, we have tried to contribute to the definition of what a crisis means in the particular context of the European Union. Also in the European Union, a crisis constitutes a threat to values and life sustaining systems and also in the EU, the crisis needs to be addressed urgently under conditions of uncertainty. But the European Union is not a state. And what we do in our article is we are reflecting on what it means that EU crisis management takes place in a multinational and a multilevel context. And we hope that our reflections will also give future studies of EU crisis a more clear and explicit conceptual base. And has already been mentioned by Jan. Second starting point was that the EU literature on crisis does not pay enough attention to the fact that crisis differ in terms of severity, speed and symmetry. So what we do, we try to disentangle different types of crisis and we try to show the heterogeneity of crisis. Of course, you have both gave a good background for the conversation, what type of crisis, there's different crisis, a multinational entity. So Jan, let us know about the most important highlights of the paper. Yeah, I would say Rodrigo, there are three, three key findings that we are distilled from the research. One is that the traditional definition of crisis as put forward by Rosenthal and others and later, Professor Boyd and others actually is applicable to the EU, because the defining features of that definition are threats to life sustaining systems or and or threats to core values, urgency, uncertainty. These also apply to the European Union. So that's what we found at the same time as Sophie also mentioned, there is a strong need to not go for a copy paste approach at the EU has a distinct nature, which needs to be taken into account so the international, the multi, multi level governance structure of the European Union is essential to take it into account when explaining the definition. What we also found is that the gradation of the type of crisis, like I said before, mild severe existential can actually to a large extent be grasped by those three critical dimensions as similar to severity symmetry and speed. So we see that severity in terms of the intensity of the crisis, which we can measure by the degree of the level of threats to life sustaining systems and core values. That's actually a very important factor in predicting the type of crisis symmetry, the second S out of the three, in terms of the number of member states, similarly affected or the number, the extended number of policy areas also affected that actually makes a difference between a crisis in the EU and a crisis of the EU has a more existential crisis. And finally, speeds really determines when decisions need to be made. That's fine number one fine number two is that the continuum of crisis from mild severe existential, we call them also code yellow code orange and code red in our informal discussions. It's not, it's not static. So actually, at some point the crisis can switch back and forth on that spectrum on that scale of crisis, depending on the circumstances depending on the development. So that that's the second one. A third finding for us and which is important to pay attention to is that building those bridges between the more traditional crisis management literature, which originated in North America mostly but also in the Netherlands was later developed and literature focusing specifically on the EU and EU's response to crisis. They actually offer a fertile ground to join forces and to, they have the potential to jointly develop into kind of a new research agenda, which, which focuses really on EU crisis studies. So these three points are the most important ones we distilled. Okay, that's some good findings and Sophie before we look ahead in what academia we can follow up on this and I know that this being a conceptual paper it's hard but I'm curious to know more Sophie about potential policy implications of this. Thank you very much for that question. Indeed, actually, despite the fact that it's a conceptual paper we indeed expect that our conceptual framework identifying these different shades of crisis will also be helpful for policymaker because there's not only help to identify what is a crisis and what isn't. But it also allows to be more precise about the type of crisis one is facing. And this is important for policymakers as it allows, as it allows more well founded decisions on how and when the crisis can best be addressed and by who an existential crisis, for example, like the pandemic which is also covered in the special issue is clearly a chef's Sacher COVID-19 could not be addressed by the ministers of health, but it really required the involvement of the highest level the heads of state and government meeting in the European Council. Also, the high level of symmetry and the fact that all the member states were severely affected and not just one or two, meant that there was the need for intense EU coordination and a high level of involvement in all the institutions. Okay, perfect. Also, that our work helps to counter the increasing tendency of an inflationary use of the term crisis. And this is indeed this inflationary tendency is not without risk. Okay, diverse the discourse resources from real crisis and lead to missed opportunities in terms of building more resilient structures and drawing lessons. Okay. Yeah, and you, you, Sophie and Christine you're writing your article, several venues for future research, for example, the need to conceptualize the term crisis within the European Union, legitimacy of decision making so let us know more about this about future venues of research. Yes, we all see this really as a starting point so a conceptual basis, which aids us but also other scholars focused on the EU focus on crisis in the EU. And of course when writing this, this article we were faced also with some word limitations, but we really want to test our analytical framework also get also in practice so we want to operationalize these three s three s is the three dimensions and make them measurable. We already now observe quite some variation if you look at different and also recent crisis, we already observe quite some variation. And like Sophie mentioned between in terms of severity symmetry and speed so we want to look at that further except I've already started writing a article about this in which which will do so. And also as you have seen in our article you apply what we call an integrative approach. So we say perception is important. So how a crisis perceived that kind of personal dimension is very important. On the other hand, objective criteria can also be very, very helpful in identifying the type of crisis or the place of the crisis on the spectrum of different gradations. So more work is needed to make these indicators very clear, very measurable. We also want to really emphasize and highlight how do the three s s actually operate next to each other. So how you how our severity symmetry and speed how they interrelated how they reinforce each other, or strengthen each other. We've also witnessed in the crisis can be existential on one dimension, let's say severity, but it's not particularly so on the other other two. So how do they kind of, yeah, how do they interact. That's a second point you want to do. Another thing that more work is needed to study how the shades of crisis impacts the question that the four W's high like we said so who has so who responds the timing of the response when the type of input and governance of the crisis so how to solve it at which level in which fora is it addressed. So in general, we think there's more work needed to analyze the impact of this per mark crisis. Yeah, on governance, but also the use ability to actually weather crisis to respond to Christ and also apply crisis learning. Yeah, after each crisis it has faced so we think that also that's very important to focus on that further. Perfect. So if you once again I think I'll finish this episode with the most challenging question that our speakers think is, if someone just joined our conversation and you had to sum up our episode in one to one or two sentences, the punchline, what would it be. Well, actually I have three takeaways, but I will be very short. Not every crisis is the same. It's important to identify whether you're facing a mild, severe or existential crisis and link to this different types of crisis invoke different dynamics and require different policy responses. And finally, the existing crisis management literature is very useful for those studying crisis in the EU. But at the same time, it's important that you scholars take into account the particular EU context. Straight to the point and great episode. Sophie, Jan, thank you very much. You're very welcome. For those who are watching us on YouTube, you can find all the resources, all the materials, including the article that we just discussed on the Let's Talk About Politics and Governance website. You can also listen to this conversation wherever you get your podcast, you can subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter at Kojitatiu LTA.