2024/10/15 by Tim Heinkelmann‐Wild, Bernhard Zangl, Berthold Rittberger +1 · 2 voices · 1 citation
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Cybersecurity and Cyber Warfare Studies #Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection #Stalking, Cyberstalking, and Harassment
paper · doi:10.1093/oso/9780192870636.001.0001
openalex publication_date 2024/10/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/07
Abstract Who is held responsible when EU policies fail? Which blame games resonate in the European public? This book challenges the conventional wisdom that the complexity of EU decision-making eschews clarity of responsibility, thereby rendering European blame games untargeted and diffuse. It is argued that the politicization of EU policies triggers a plausibility assessment of blame attributions in the public domain with the effect that European blame games gravitate towards true responsibilities, targeting those political actors involved in enacting a policy that is subsequently considered a policy failure. The book distinguishes three kinds of European blame games: in scapegoat games, supranational EU institutions are held responsible for a policy failure; renegade games occur when individual member state governments are considered the culprits for a failed policy; when responsibility for a policy failure is shared between EU institutions and member states, diffusion games prevail. The book explores three conditions to explain when each of the three European blame games prevails: the type of policy failure, the type of policy making, and the type of policy implementation. To empirically probe these conditions, the book studies the blame games in ten instances of EU policy failures, including EU foreign policy, environmental policy, fiscal stabilization and migration policy.