Fragile legitimacy: The rise and crisis of the EU's 'sustainable biofuels' policy

Abstract

The EU's biofuels policy has made a full normative turn: introduced to advance sustainable development, it was curtailed as a threat to the global environment. Central to the crisis of legitimation was a contested scientific idea, emissions from indirect land-use changes. This article takes up the large impact of this small idea to discuss a central question of contemporary institutionalist and constructivist scholarship: Why and under what conditions can ideas and events become catalysts for change? Tracing the rise and crisis of the EU's biofuels policy, my central theoretical intervention is to conceptualize the fragile legitimacy of policies and institutions. In addition, I specify the scope condition that heighten or reduce a policy's fragility, arguing that it depends on: (a) a tight/loose coupling of legitimacy to underlying authoritative discourses, (b) the volatility of these sources of authority and (c) the agenda-setting power of groups opposing the status quo.