CSDP and Democratic Legitimacy: Public Opinion’s Support in Times of Crisis

The issue of legitimacy lies at the core of the debate on policy integration in the European Union (EU). In the specific area of security and defence, the role of institutional settings or the normative and discursive foundations of legitimacy have been widely discussed (Bono, 2006; Mayntz, 2010; Schmidt, 2013; Stie, 2010). Less extensive is research on the more political and sociological meaning of legitimacy (Battistelli et al., 2012), which is related to the democratic process of policy legitimisation. As security policies in general, and peace operations in particular, are highly political and ideological in nature, and as their objectives go far beyond the halting of violence or the management of open conflicts, they have to be legitimate.