This chapter examines how institutional factors and issue characteristics interact to produce consequences for the policies at the root of blame games and for the politicians involved. It reveals that blame games can be important sources of policy change. However, whether politicians are likely to address or even solve policy problems during blame games depends on the configuration of institutional factors in a political system. Some political systems allow for the establishment of a problem-solving attitude among the actors involved, other political systems exhibit blame games that produce a very punitive atmosphere where it is likely that the politicians involved will face consequences. Still, other political systems feature blame games that usually lead to nothing.

This chapter examines and compares the cases situated in the Swiss political system. The Swiss blame game style is characterized by rather unaggressive interparty conflict that spares the politically responsible executive from a large share of the blame. This conflict form is significantly different from the government–opposition conflict that characterizes parliamentary systems. Because opponents cannot usually bring incumbents to resign, they concentrate on achieving their policy goals and, for this purpose, attempt to forge ‘pressure majorities’ in parliament. A pressure majority consists of several parties that acknowledge the need for policy change in response to a controversy. Successfully forging a pressure majority greatly increases the likelihood that the collective executive government will act in the interest of opponents. Due to its collective and nonpartisan nature, the Swiss government is eager to signal its cooperation with as many parties as possible, thus making it very sensitive to the parliamentary majority’s stance during a blame game. Interparty conflict creates a comfortable situation for political incumbents.

This chapter examines and compares the cases situated in the German political system. The chapter reveals that the German political system exhibits much more heated, and oftentimes more consequential, blame games than the UK political system. Extensive conventions of resignation and opportunities to retrieve salient information about a controversy by appointing an inquiry commission are powerful tools for opponents to hold political incumbents accountable and to force them into heated blame game interactions. Blamed incumbents must actively engage in blame management and may be forced to act in the interest of opponents. However, political incumbents also benefit from institutional factors. An active and loyal governing majority and fragmentation among opponents are assets. Whether the overall institutional configuration is more favorable to opponents or to incumbents largely depends on the degree of government involvement in a policy controversy.

This chapter defines blame games as ‘microcosms of conflictual politics’ that are distinct from routine political processes. It then describes the blame-generating strategies used by opponents and the blame-management strategies used by incumbents during blame games. This chapter also answers the question of why it is particularly important to study blame games triggered by policy controversies. The chapter continues by introducing the theoretical framework used to explain blame game interactions and their consequences. The guiding idea behind the theoretical framework is that it is only possible to understand blame games by considering the institutional factors that characterize the political system in which blame games occur (the ‘political terrain’) and the issue characteristics at their roots, which determine the public’s reaction to a blame game (the ‘audience’). The framework strikes a balance between zooming in on the content of political conflict and securing comparability across controversy types.

This chapter examines the cases situated in the UK political system. Blame games in the UK political system do not often produce much more than hot air. The reason for this surprising outcome are institutional factors that render it difficult for opponents to reach their reputational and policy goals. Ministers, who are usually only briefly in office and are not personally responsible for a controversy, constitute very strong blame shields for the government of the day since, in the absence of personal wrongdoings, they cannot be brought to resign. The ‘administration bias’, injected by forms of agencification and reinforced by the work of parliamentary committees, ensures that the ministerial blame shield is often not even checked for its resilience during a blame game because media attention and opponent attacks overwhelmingly focus on administrative actors and entities. Incumbents can thus remain rather passive during a blame game, tolerate occasional criticism from the governing majority, and develop strong incentives to leave a policy controversy unaddressed.

This chapter examines and compares the effects of issue characteristics on the nine blame games examined in Chapters 3-5 and consults three additional test cases in the USA in order to corroborate and refine the findings. The chapter demonstrates how issue characteristics – namely the salience of a policy controversy and its proximity to average publics – influence the content of blame game interactions. Issue characteristics influence how political opponents signal the severity of a policy controversy to the public, how they can try to put incumbents under pressure, and how incumbents seek to manage blame for the controversy. This chapter clarifies what is meant by blame games being played out in front of an ‘audience’, and it shows how politicians work with issue characteristics to pull the audience onto their side.

The first chapter introduces blame games as distinct political events characterized by a conflictual style of politics that is different from routine politics. It conceptualizes blame games as litmus tests that allow the understanding of how political systems change and function when they switch into ‘conflict mode’. This chapter then provides a glimpse of the institutionalized forms of conflict management that Western democracies have developed to deal with policy controversies. It goes on to argue that blame games are context-sensitive political events that require a comprehensive but parsimonious framework to study them across institutional and issue contexts. The chapter concludes with a chapter overview and a short presentation of the strategy of inquiry and data used.

This chapter analyzes and compares the effects of institutional factors on blame game interactions. This chapter reveals how institutional factors – ranging from hard-wired formal institutions to conventions and policy characteristics – provide political incumbents with blame shields and political opponents with blame gateways, thereby channeling their behavior in certain directions. Institutions determine the routinized ways in which democratic political systems manage, or ‘digest’, their policy conflicts.