Ideas and Legitimation: The European Central Bank’s Discourse During the Eurozone and Covid-19 Crises

The paper analyses how the European Central Bank (ECB) presidents legitimized the measures taken during the eurozone and Covid-19 crises in their introductory statements. Building on legitimacy theories and ideational discourse, it differentiates throughput (decision-making) from output (result) legitimation arguments based on measure appropriateness and measure efficiency respectively. Despite hypothetical legitimation by results, the analysis reveals that the ECB mostly attempted to build legitimation through measure appropriateness, without a significant evolution over the two crises. We argue that this significant presence of throughput legitimation arguments increases the ECB’s accountability to stakeholders and leaves additional space for stakeholders’ intervention that may open the door to enhanced democratic legitimacy. The analysis allows for a refined appreciation of the ECB’s discursive construction of throughput and output legitimacy mechanisms, the evolution and possible learning processes in crisis communication, and potential democratic enhancement based on crisis communication.