EU LEADERSHIP AND SANCTIONS A comparative analysis of EU’s crisis response during the Russia-Ukraine conflicts of 2014 and 2022

Sammanfattning: The research field on international political leadership is a rich field focusing on leaders as individuals, at institutions and relations between leaders and followers. The literature regarding political leadership in the EU has its focus on supranational and intergovernmental leadership. During the last decades of crises facing the EU, how leadership is demonstrated and how it comes about have seen changes. There are plenty of studies focusing on a single leader in a crisis or different actors willing to take on leadership in a crisis. However, there are not too many comparative analyses regarding leaders in different situations. This study focusses on comparing the leadership, when implementing sanctions, demonstrated by Angela Merkel in 2014 during the Ukraine crises and Ursula von der Leyen in 2022 during Russia’s war of aggression towards Ukraine. The study used a qualitative content analysis to study the leadership demonstrated as well as demand for, and supply of leadership to understand who took on a role of leadership in a crisis. Both leaders demonstrated more than one type of leadership and when studying the demand and supply there were also some significant differences whereas the supply was reluctant from Merkel while the demand was not completely clear when studying von der Leyen. This opens up for how it further needs to be studied how the demand and supply effects what actor takes on a leadership role.