The challenges that have been facing the European Union in recent years have given rise to the question: who leads the EU? This book offers a systematic analysis of political leadership in the EU. This volume offers a theoretical and conceptual analysis of political leadership in the EU. It deals with questions such as what kind of leadership is there in the different domains (such as climate change or central banking). It also examines how various EU institutions (European Commission, European Parliament) exert or have exerted leadership. Furthermore, it examines the role of the presidents of some of these institutions, such as the European Commission the European Council, the European Central Bank, but also of selected national leaders. Although the book does not advance a single leadership concept, the findings of the individual case studies show that the EU is by no means leaderless. The chapters originally published as a special issue in the Journal of European Integration.

This work is the first systematic study of the presidency of the European Commission. Drawing upon cases of attempted leadership by Jacques Delors, the Commission President from 1985-95, it examines the leadership capacity of the office-holder. This points to the inherently shared and contingent nature of Commission President's leadership in a Union where the leadership sources are widely dispersed. While this is essentially an empirical study, Endo addresses some of the theoretical implications of its findings and resulting issues.

Explaining the origins and key institutions, this book provides an assessment of the European Union’s leadership role in international climate change politics, with case studies on Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, businesses and environmental NGOs.

This volume is the first comprehensive analysis of women's ascendance to leadership positions in the European Union as well as their performance in such positions. It provides a new theoretical and analytical framework capturing both positional and behavioural leadership and the specific hurdles that women encounter on their path to and when exercising leadership. The volume encompasses a detailed set of single and comparative case studies, analyzing women's representation and performance in the core EU institutions and their individual pathways to and exercise of power in top-level functions, as well as comparative analyses regarding the position and behaviour of women in relation to men. Based on these individual studies, the volume draws overarching conclusions about women's leadership in the EU. Regarding positional leadership, women continue to be underrepresented in leadership positions, they more often hold less prestigious portfolios in such positions, and manifold structural hurdles hamper their access to power. Furthermore, huge variations exist across EU institutions, with the intergovernmental bodies being the hardest to access. Regarding behavioural leadership, women acting in powerful EU positions generally perform excellently. They successfully exercise a combined leadership style that integrates attributes of leadership considered to be 'masculine' and 'feminine'. This is not to argue that women per se are the better leaders. Yet more often than men they are exposed to stronger selection processes and their prevalent practice of a combined leadership style tends to best meet the requirements of modern democratic systems and particularly those of the highly fragmented EU.

In recent years climate change has emerged as an issue of central political importance while the EU has become a major player in international climate change politics. How can a ‘leaderless Europe’ offer leadership in international climate change politics - even in the wake of the UK’s Brexit decision? This book, which has been written by leading experts, offers a critical analysis of the EU leadership role in international climate change politics. It focuses on the main EU institutions, core EU member states and central societal actors (businesses and environmental NGOs). It also contains an external perspective of the EU’s climate change leadership role with chapters on China, India and the USA as well as Norway. Four core themes addressed in the book are: leadership, multilevel and polycentric governance, policy instruments, and the green and low carbon economy. Fundamentally, it asks why we have EU institutional actors, why certain member states and particular societal actors tried to take on a leadership role in climate change politics and how, if at all, have they managed to achieve this? This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in EU studies and politics, international relations, comparative politics and environmental politics.

The EU's pluralistic, nonhierarchical system of multilevel governance lacks clear structures of both government and opposition. According to the EU treaties, the presidency of the European Commission is thus not explicitly expected to exercise political leadership. However, the position cannot effectively be exercised without any demonstration of such leadership due to its many leadership functions. Examining this curious mix of strong political demands, weak institutional powers, and need for political leadership, this book systematically analyses the political leadership performance of the presidents of the European Commission throughout the process of European integration. The basic argument is that Commission presidents matter not only in the process of European integration, but that their impact varies according to how the different incumbents deal with the institutional structure and the situational circumstances, and thus their available strategic choices. The primary research question is thus, What makes political leadership in European governance successful and to what extent (and why) do Commission presidents differ in their leadership performance? In addressing this question, this book departs from existing research on EU leadership, which has to date often analysed either the EU's institutional structure and its potential for leadership or mainly focused on only the most recent incumbents in case study analyses. Focusing on the multiterm European Commission presidents Walter Hallstein, Jacques Delors, and Jos� Manuel Barroso, this book conceptualizes their political leadership as a performance, and thus systematically analyzes their agenda-setting, mediative-institutional, and public outreach performance over the entire course of their presidential terms.