The Covid-19 pandemic was a stress test to democracies. LEGITIMULT investigates the political legitimacy of governments’ crisis responses in the context of multi-level political decision-making systems. Work package 3 focuses on the role of democratic participation and the rule of law in a politically legitimate crisis governance. The second deliverable of work package 3 outlines the research design of five empirical studies that investigate the rule of law and democratic participation in the context of multilevel governance. Each of the five studies focuses on a crucial aspect of a legitimate crisis governance. These are the following aspects: 1) the declaration of a state of emergency; 2) parliamentary oversight; 3) judicial oversight; 4) the limitation of electoral participation; and 5) the role and nature of expert advice bodies. In order to study these five aspects of legitimate crisis governance, we develop a set of hypotheses addressing each of these five aspects of legitimate crisis governance. In addition, we present lists of indicators that allow measure the respective aspect of legitimate crisis governance. The research outline concludes with a discussion of the next task of work package 3.