A Study On The Legitimacy Of European Union's Fight Against Ebola Crisis

Since the beginning of 2014, the Ebola epidemic gradually developed into the most serious public crisis after the Second World War. The international community was involved into the common fight against the crisis. The large-scaled international humanitarian operations provide an opportunity for observing closely the international cooperation to fight against the transnational health crisis. As a member of international community, the European Union (EU), characterized by the governmental and transnational nature, is worthy of further study.The master's thesis is aimed at answering one essential question about the legitimacy of EU's external action:how EU builds its legitimacy in its fight against the Ebola crisis. Here is the hypothesis:The legitimacy of EU in the fight against the Ebola crisis mainly originates from the sovereignty alienation of members states, the massive support of European citizens and the fact that the effectiveness of its humanitarian aids is confirmed by other international humanitarian stakeholders and the crisis-affected countries.In order to test the hypothesis, the thesis is divided into four chapters:the chapter one introduces the main concepts and the analytical structure:the three sources of the legitimacy of EU ("borrowed" legitimacy, "inputs" legitimacy and "outputs" legitimacy).The chapter two focuses on the analysis of the "borrowed" legitimacy in a bid to elaborate on the sovereignty alienation and the division of work between EU and its member states in terms of humanitarian aid. In addition, this chapter tries to clarify how EU and national levels cooperate in the decision-making and in the practice. The chapter three tests the legitimacy of EU from the "inputs" legitimacy perspective by focusing on how European citizens react to EU's fight against Ebola. Plus, this part will analyze how EU intensifies its efforts to better communicate with its citizens. The chapter four concentrates on the analysis of the "outputs" legitimacy of EU by testing the effectiveness of EU efforts and analyzing the acceptation degree of the Ebola-affected African countries and other international humanitarian powers towards EU's efforts.Based on the comprehensive analyze of relative legitimacy theory of EU, the available first hand and second hand sources, the thesis adopts the methods of qualitative and comparative analysis. As a case study of the construction of legitimacy of EU's external action, the thesis is a try to observe this problem on micros.Through the above analysis, we conclude that the hypothesis is confirmed. That is to say that The legitimacy of EU in its large-scaled involvement into the fight against the Ebola crisis mainly originates from the sovereignty alienation of members states, the massive support of European citizens and the fact that the effectiveness of its humanitarian aids is confirmed by other international humanitarian powers and the crisis-affected countries.Moreover, by analyzing EU's concrete humanitarian operations and the dynamic interaction between EU and its member states, citizens and international community, we can track other recent developments:1.EU intends to build and improve the "European public space", which was deemed absent and imperfect before. By means of diversified communication channels and efforts to guarantee the transparence, EU tries to build a mature European public space which encourages more public participation; 2. The common fight against Ebola on European level shows that EU's member state put voluntarily together their resources on European level by using EU's mechanism in order to maximize the effectiveness of efforts; 3. Through the massive international cooperation in the fight against Ebola, EU improves its international "visibility" and reaffirms its leading role in the field of international humanitarian aid.