We live in a global risk society that challenges the traditional capacities of nation states to deal with a wide variety of adversity. Whether we speak of climate change, suicidal terrorism, cyber wars or terrifying epidemics, these crises increasingly outstrip the response capacity of national bureaucracies. Nation states must cooperate to build international crisis management capacity.

The European Union is increasingly becoming a platform for European states to accomplish such cooperation (Boin, Ekengren and Rhinard, 2013). The EU offers a wide variety of policies, mechanisms and institutions that can, and often do, facilitate a coordinated response of member states to both crises and disasters, emanating from within and outside the Union.

The wider project team of which this PhD will be part, analyzes the EU’s growing crisis and disaster management capacities. It assesses those capacities in light of the EU’s unique system of supranational governance. Moreover, it aims to identify institutional pathways towards the efficient and legitimate development of EU crisis management capacity.

The PhD position is a four-year AIO position within the Department of Political Science at Leiden University. The project will be supervised by Prof. dr. Arjen Boin. The project is financed jointly by the Swedish National Defence College and the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency. the PhD candidate is expected to participate actively in joint activities with Swedish partners Dr Magnus Ekengren (Swedish National Defence College) and Dr Mark Rhinard (Stockholm University). The candidate is based in Leiden and expected to take on a modest teaching load there.