Blaming Europe?: Responsibility Without Accountability in the European Union

ISBN-13: 9780199665686 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 208 str.

Sara B. Hobolt; James Tilley

Opis

A key component of democratic accountability is that citizens understand 'who is to blame'. Nonetheless, little is known about how citizens attribute responsibility in the European Union or how those perceptions of responsibility matter. This book presents the first comprehensive account of how citizens assign blame to the EU, how politicians and the media attempt to shift blame and finally, how it matters for electoral democracy. Based on rich and unique data sources, Blaming Europe? sheds light on all three aspects of responsibility in the EU. First, it shows that while institutional differences between countries shape citizen judgements of EU responsibility, those judgements are also highly determined by pre-existing attitudes towards the EU. Second, it demonstrates that neither politicians nor the media assign much blame to the EU. Third, it establishes that regardless of whether voters are capable of accurately assigning responsibility, they are not able to hold their EU representatives to account via the ballot box in European elections due to the lack of an identifiable 'European government' to reward or punish. As a consequence, when citizens hold the EU responsible for poor performance, but are unable to sanction an EU incumbent, they lose trust in the EU as a whole instead. In conclusion, it argues that this 'accountability deficit' has significant implications for the future of the European Union.

Recenzje

Does multilevel governance blur political responsibility? In Blaming Europe? Responsibility without accountability in the European Union, Sara Hobolt and James Tilley argue that citizens form judgments on the basis of information and bias. If information is poor, citizens fall back on prior EU views which color perceptions. Using a wealth of evidence they demonstrate how policy-specific information is scarce in the EU, and this deprives Europe of a transparently responsible government. The upshot is a paradox: ambiguity protects the EU from getting punished at the ballot box, but exposes it to eroding trust in EU institutions. This is a truly brilliant book that gets to the heart of EU politics in clear and compelling language and opens up new lines of inquiry concerning political responsibility in multilevel systems.

O autorze

Sara Hobolt is Sutherland Chair in European Institutions at the European Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Previously, she has held posts at the University of Oxford and the University of Michigan. She has published extensively on European Union politics, public opinion, and elections. Her book Europe in Question: Referendums on European Integration (Oxford University Press, 2009) was awarded the Best Book prize by the European Union Studies Association in 2010. James Tilley is a university lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. He was previously a post-doctoral fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford and Trinity College Dublin. His research is mainly in the fields of public opinion and electoral behaviour, and he has published widely on topics including European Parliament elections, support for the EU, the attribution of responsibility, and the social bases of voting behaviour.