The present invention is designed to provide a radio communication system, a user terminal and a radio communication method that make it possible to monitor communication quality adequately even when a new radio resource structure is employed. A radio communication system is provided, which transmits downlink control information from a radio base station to a user terminal by using an enhanced downlink control channel that is frequency-division-multiplexed with a downlink shared data channel, and which also monitors downlink quality based on the received quality of downlink reference signals that are transmitted from the radio base station to the user terminal, and, in this radio communication system, the user terminal determines radio link failures by comparing the received quality of the downlink reference signals transmitted from the radio base station, against one or both of first criteria, which are constituted of two thresholds that correspond to predetermined block error rates of a downlink control channel, and second criteria, which are constituted of two thresholds that are different from the two thresholds of the first criteria.