Research Design

This chapter explains the methodological choices made in this book on accountability in the multilevel and multi-actor environment of EU security and defence. The inquiry stretches across governance levels, while the focus lies on accountability arrangements involving the Brussels-based crisis management bureaucracy. Rooted in a constitutional perspective on accountability, which establishes a link between accountability and key concepts of constitutional law (eg the rule of law) and thus puts an emphasis on countervailing powers, the analysis covers both law and practice. The sources, hence, include legal and empirical material. The chapter also presents the criteria, according to which the appropriateness of accountability arrangements in the context of civilian crisis management is evaluated.

Dynamic Governance

Chapter 3 present a set of key notions to be employed in framing and approaching the dynamic governance process, and the phenomena associated with it, in ways that are particularly relevant for governance analysis and design: (a) the very idea of process-focused, dynamic governance itself, having at its core the voluntary action principle; (b) the notions of countervailing powers and voluntary sector, nonstate governance, leading to the overarching and encapsulating notion of polycentricity, the governance keystone of the normative individualist system of classical-liberal inspiration; and (c) the epistemic dimension, and the conceptualization of the role of knowledge discovery, production, aggregation and distribution in society, as well as the associated epistemic and institutional processes all seen as a natural complement of the notion of polycentricity.

Identity as a causal power

We propose a critical realist-informed conception of entrepreneurial identity – the personal power to create a new venture. Although most people have the power to become an entrepreneur, not everyone can, or is motivated to, realize that potential. Other countervailing powers – personal, material and social – can constrain, or discourage, action. Utilizing a stratified, emergent ontology, we contextualize entrepreneurial identity within three analytical orders – natural, practical and social. We distinguish personal identity, the set of concerns in the three orders that motivate action, from social identity, the roles we commit to in society. While entrepreneurial identity is a type of social identity, the underlying concerns that motivate commitment to an entrepreneurial role cannot be reduced to social interaction alone. The concept of internal conversation is used to theorize the connection of entrepreneurial motivation, context and behaviour. We draw on qualitative data from three UK-based disabled entrepreneurs to demonstrate the value of our framework.