Who gets the blame? How policymakers in the EU shift responsibility when things go wrong

EU membership provides ample opportunities for politicians at the national level to shift blame for unpopular decisions to the EU's institutions, while EU-level actors also have an incentive to blame national politicians when things go wrong. Drawing on a new study, Tim Heinkelmann-Wild explains how these blame-avoidance processes function in practice

Brexit and the tragedy of the Commons: how wedge issues generate detrimental outcomes

The difficulty Theresa May and Boris Johnson had in winning the backing of MPs for their Brexit strategies illustrates the impact that ‘wedge issues’ can have on party politics, write Tim Heinkelmann-Wild and Lisa Kriegmair (Ludwig-Maximilians-University). As issues like Brexit cut across traditional party lines, they are highly likely to create intra-party divisions and make compromises difficult to secure

Indirect Governance at War: Delegation and Orchestration in Rebel Support

Instead of attacking their adversaries directly, states often do so indirectly by supporting rebel groups. While these support relationships vary considerably, existing research lacks a comprehensive account thereof. To explain states’ choice of support, we suggest differentiating between two modes of support relationships according to the control opportunities they offer states over rebels: while delegation enables “hands-on” control, “hands-off” orchestration allows for plausible deniability and does not harm rebels’ local legitimacy. We argue that sponsors prefer orchestration when “hands-on” control can be substituted by goal alignment or competition; and they prefer delegation when the conflict is highly salient. Tests using global data for the period 1975-2009 support the first two expectations. Surprisingly, states’ capabilities also render “hands-off” orchestration more likely. The paper advances the understanding of external rebel support by transferring insights from indirect governance theory to the study of indirect wars and putting it to statistical test

Multilevel blame games: Blame‐shifting in the European Union

Who blames whom in multilevel blame games? Existing research focuses either on policymakers' preferences or their opportunities offered by the institutional structures in which policymakers operate. As these two strands of literature barely refer to each other, in this article we develop an integrated theoretical model of blame‐shifting in multilevel governance systems and assess it empirically. In line with the first strand, we assume that policymakers 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 policymaking and policy implementation. We check the plausibility of our integrated model by examining policymakers' 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

How European integration affects blame games in national politics

When things go wrong, governments frequently attempt to deflect the blame by shifting it onto other actors, such as previous administrations. However, as Tim Heinkelmann-Wild, Lisa Kriegmair and Berthold Rittberger write, European integration has provided governments with additional opportunities for blame avoidance, such as criticising the EU’s institutions or other EU member states. Drawing on a new study, they explain how the integration process has affected national blame games

Governance abhors a vacuum:The afterlives of major international organisations

International organisations have become increasingly contested resulting in worries about their decline and termination. While international organisation termination is indeed a regular event in international relations, this article shows that other institutions carry the legacy of terminated international organisations. We develop the novel concept of international organisation afterlife and suggest indicators to systematically assess it. Our analysis of 26 major terminated international organisations reveals legal-institutional and asset continuity in 21 cases. To further illustrate this point, the article zooms in on the afterlife of the International Institute of Agriculture in the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Refugee Organization in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the Western European Union in the European Union. In these three cases, international organisation afterlife inspired and structured the design of their successor institutions. While specific international organisations might be terminated, international cooperation therefore often lives on in other institutions

The EU Multi-Level System and the Europeanization of Domestic Blame Games

Blame games between governing and opposition parties are a characteristic feature of domestic politics. In the EU, policymaking authority is shared among multiple actors across different levels of governance. How does EU integration affect the dynamics of domestic blame games? Drawing on the literatures on EU politicisation and blame attribution in multi-level governance systems, we derive expectations about the direction and frequency of blame attributions in a Europeanized setting. We argue, first, that differences in the direction and frequency of blame attributions by governing and opposition parties are shaped by their diverging baseline preferences as blame avoiders and blame generators; secondly, we posit that differences in blame attributions across Europeanized policies are shaped by variation in political authority structures, which incentivize certain attributions while constraining others. We hypothesize, inter alia, that blame games are “Europeanized” primarily by governing parties and when policy-implementing authority rests with EU-level actors. We test our theoretical expectations by analysing parliamentary debates on EU asylum system policy and EU border control policy in Austria and Germany

Nicht nur wehrlose Sündenböcke! Schuldvermeidungsstrategien internationaler Organisationen

Wie reagieren internationale Organisationen (IOs) auf Schuldzuweisungen ihrer Mitgliedstaaten? Oftmals werden in der Forschung IOs im Falle von gescheiterten Politiken als gute Sündenböcke für die Schuldzuweisungen ihrer Mitgliedstaaten gesehen, weil sie sich kaum zu Wehr setzen müssen, können oder wollen. Demgegenüber argumentieren wir, dass IO-RepräsentantInnen versuchen, IOs in der Öffentlichkeit nicht als Schuldige für gescheiterte Politiken dastehen zu lassen. IOs sind deshalb keine passiven „blame taker“, sondern aktive „blame avoider“. In manchen Fällen sind sie zwar bereit, die Schuldzuweisungen ihrer Mitgliedstaaten zu ignorieren, doch in anderen Fällen versuchen sie ihre Verantwortung zu verschleiern oder sogar die Mitgliedstaaten zu attackieren. Um dies zu erklären, entwickeln wir eine Theorie der Schuldvermeidung von IOs, gemäß derer die Autorität einer IO bestimmt, welche Schuldvermeidungsstrategie ihre RepräsentantInnen einschlagen. Je nachdem, ob eine IO im betreffenden Politikfeld Autorität intergouvernemental, supranational oder hybrid ausübt, wird sie auf Schuldzuweisungen ihrer Mitgliedstaaten durch Strategien des Ignorierens, Verschleierns oder Attackierens reagieren. Wir demonstrieren die Plausibilität unserer Theorie mithilfe einer Medieninhaltsanalyse der Verantwortungsattributionen der Europäischen Kommission für drei umstrittene EU-Migrationspolitiken. Wir tragen damit zum besseren Verständnis der öffentlichen Schuldvermeidungsstrategien von IOs bei.How do international organizations (IOs) respond to their member states’ blame attributions? Research often depicts IOs as good scapegoats for their member states when IO policies fail because they do not have to and are unable and unwilling to defend themselves. On the contrary, we argue that IO representatives try to prevent IOs from taking the blame for failed policies in public. IOs are thus not passive blame takers, but active blame avoiders. In some cases, they are willing to ignore the attribution of blame by their member states, but in other cases they try to blur their own responsibility or even attack the member states. To explain this, we develop a theory of blame avoidance by IOs according to which the authority of an IO determines which blame avoidance strategy its representatives adopt. Depending on whether the authority an IO exercises is intergovernmental, supranational or hybrid in the respective policy field, it will react to blame attributions from its member states through strategies of ignoring, blurring or attacking. We demonstrate the plausibility of our theory by means of a media content analysis of the European Commission’s responsibility attributions for three contested EU migration policies. We thereby contribute to a better understanding of IOs’ blame avoidance strategies