Oliver Merschel, M.A.

Anxiety in the ‘engine room’? How EU bureaucrats perceive and cope with the (Poly-)Crisis 

This thesis engages with two prominent claims: Firstly, the claim of living in times of ‘polycrisis’ – a complex accumulation of interrelated and rapidly occurring crises. Secondly, the claim that the European Union (EU) is stuck in a state of anxiety and permanent crisis – and thus struggling to cope with the ‘polycrisis’. Both claims have become increasingly widespread and even taken for granted, but their empirical basis remains rather thin. Specifically, little is known about how ‘the EU’ actually perceives and deals with the (poly)crisis. This thesis addresses this gap by asking the people directly involved: Bureaucrats working for the EU. Corresponding to and challenging the two widespread claims, the thesis aims to find out (1) how EU bureaucrats perceive crises (e.g. do they increase to form a polycrisis?) and (2) how they cope with crises (e.g. do bureaucrats see themselves as able to cope with crisis or as stuck?). For this end, more than 30 semi-structured interviews with EU bureaucrats have been conducted and analyzed by means of a qualitative, discourse-analytical approach. The results do not aim to make claims about the ‘reality’ of crises, but rather interpretatively trace the discursive construction and handling of crises as described by EU bureaucrats. These results can contribute to a critical engagement with the construction and handling of crisis, challenging taken for granted tropes of the polycrisis or widespread anxiety often used in societal and political debates.

Publications 

Bartenstein, Aline, Hendrik Hegemann & Oliver Merschel. 2024. „The everyday life of a security project: the ‘Security Union’ in the EU’s ‘engine room’”, European Security: 1-22, DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2024.2319230. 

Bartenstein, Aline, Hendrik Hegemann, Oliver Merschel. 2022. „Vom Friedensprojekt zur Sicherheitsgarantin? Das neue Schutzversprechen der Europäischen Union in Zeiten existenzieller Ungewissheit.“ Integration 45 (4): 257-274. DOI: 10.5771/0720-5120-2022-4-257.

Merschel, Oliver, Antje Wiener et al. 2022. “Global International Relations. ‘Doing Theory’ from ‘Somewhere’.” CSS Working Paper Series 5. Hamburg: Center for Sustainable Society Research. DOI: 10.25592/css-wp-005.

Merschel, Oliver. 2022. “Book Review: Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union. By Stella Ghervas.” International Affairs 98 (3): 1075-1076. DOI: 10.1093/ia/iiac027.

Bartenstein, Aline, Hendrik Hegemann, Oliver Merschel. 2021. „Sicherheitsunion“ EU: Zukunft gestalten statt Status quo erhalten. Policy Brief 6/2021. Hamburg: IFSH, https://ifsh.de/file/publication/Policy_Brief/21-06_Policy_Brief.pdf  

Merschel, Oliver. 2021. “Determinanten der Sicherheitsarchitektur. Oliver Merschel über Ursula Schröder, The Organization of European Security Governance”, in Peter Niesen / David Weiß (Hg.), 100 Jahre Politikwissenschaft in Hamburg: Bruchstücke zu einer Institutsgeschichte: 146-151.