Responsiveness and Responsibility in the Euro Crisis

Explaining Governments' Blame Avoidance Strategies Under EU Conditionality
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-3-031-84472-0
Verlag: Springer Nature Switzerland

Buch, Englisch, 186 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 241 mm, Gewicht: 475 g

Reihe: Contributions to Political Science

Conditionality has become a popular instrument for achieving policy change in the European Union (EU). EU conditionality in the Euro crisis epitomises the responsiveness-responsibility dilemma that comes with increasing supranational influence on national policymaking: governments find it increasingly difficult to responsively address the needs of their citizens and simultaneously fulfil their obligations vis-à-vis supranational institutions. Blame avoidance strategies are a way to mitigate this problem, as they help governments shape public perceptions about who is to be held accountable for unpopular policies. During the Euro crisis, despite it being an easy target, governments facing EU conditionality did not indiscriminately shift blame to the EU. Instead, they drew on a variety of blame avoidance strategies. This book aims to shed light on this observed variation in governments’ strategy choices during the Euro crisis. To do so, it investigates the constraints that EU conditionality imposes on governments’ use of blame avoidance strategies and how governments chose specific strategies from the remaining blame avoidance toolkit.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kriegmair, Lisa

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Zentralregierung
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction.- 2. Explaining governments' blame avoidance strategies under EU conditionality.- 3. Research Design.- 4. Blame avoidance strategies in Ireland – Three cases of reforms.- 5. Blame avoidance strategies in Portugal – Two cases of reforms.- 6. Comparing blame avoidance strategies and alternative explanations.- 7. Conclusion.

Über Autor(innen)

Lisa Kriegmair worked as a researcher at the University of Munich (LMU) from 2017 to 2023, where she finished her PhD dissertation in 2023. Her research interests include European Integration, Europeanisation as well as the processes of responsibility and blame attribution. Her work has been published in prominent journals such as West European Politics, the and the. Her book “European Blame Games: Where does the Buck stop?” (with Tim Heinkelmann-Wild, Berthold Rittberger, Bernhard Zangl) was published by Oxford University Press in 2024. She currently works as a project coordinator for european and international affairs for the City of Munich (Germany).