If your source of legitimacy comes from outputs - 'what have you done for me lately' - and those outputs turn negative, you turn to how you do things for legitimacy - 'sticking to the rules.' But as the EU discovered from 2011-2015, doing so will not solve an output problem. Instead, to solve that output problem EU governors increasingly 'reinterpreted the rules' while proclaiming that they were not doing so, which led publics to question their legitimacy still
further.Vivien Schmidt describes this 'slippery slope' of declining legitimacy for the EU perfectly
Vivien A. Schmidt is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Professor of International Relations, and Professor of Political Science at Boston University. During a distinguished career she has published a number of volumes including, Democracy in Europe (OUP, 2006) and The Futures of European Capitalism (OUP, 2002).