Multi-level Blame Games – Blame-shifting in the European Union

by Tim Heinkelmann-Wild & Bernhard Zangl

Who blames whom in multi-level blame games? Existing research focuses either on policy-makers’ preferences or their opportunities offered by the institutional structures in which policy-makers operate. As these two strands of literature barely refer to each other, in this paper we develop an integrated theoretical model of blame-shifting in multi-level governance systems and assess it empirically. In line with the first strand, we assume that policy-makers have a preference for shifting blame onto actors on a different level from themselves. In line with the second, we suppose that opportunities for doing so depend on institutional responsibility for policy-making and policy-implementation. We check the plausibility of our integrated model by examining policy-makers’ blame attributions in three cases where European Union migration policies have been contested: border control, asylum, and welfare entitlements. We find that our integrated model does better in explaining blame-shifting in these cases than the isolated models.