The effects of governance on economic resilience : a comparative analysis of the EU 28

Abstract

Although the economic crisis of 2008, and the consecutive period, is generally considered to have had a detrimental impact on all of the EU, recent studies have shown how different Member States experienced different reactions to the crisis. Theories on the concept of economic resilience, which is mostly concerned with the ability to adjust or recover from an external economic shock, look to answer why these differentiations in economic performance have been registered. Similarly, governance, or more specifically 'good' governance, a vital component in resilience building, is often seen as one of the fundamental causes of the crisis. The goal of dissertation, therefore, is to analyse the relationship between economic resilience and the 'good' governance indicators within the EU 28 Member States, with the main hypothesis proposing that a positively correlated relationship exists between the different variables. In analysing this relationship, a better understanding on the concept of resilience and how it has developed within the EU will be attained. In order to test the different correlations between economic resilience and governance, a mixed-method approach is used in this study. The respective data is analytically correlated and compared using statistical software, thus giving the most accurate results possible. The results produced confirm the existence of a positive relationship between economic resilience and 'good' governance; however, certain discrepancies in the data suggest that the relationship is far more complicated and country specific.