Who’s to Blame?

Author(s)
Carolina Plescia, Sylvia Kritzinger, Jae-Jae Spoon
Abstract

This article examines a neglected but fundamental facet of electoral accountability: responsibility attribution under grand coalition governments. Contrary to much of the existing literature that focuses on retrospective voting, this article focuses on responsibility attribution testing the effect of perceived performance of the government and partisan attachments for parties in grand coalition governments. Novel survey questions on responsibility attribution from Austria and Germany show that when the lines of responsibility are blurred, partisanship functions as an important heuristic for all voters including supporters of opposition parties. These findings have important implications for our understanding of electoral accountability and political representation in grand coalition governments.

Organisation(s)
Department of Government
External organisation(s)
University of Pittsburgh
Journal
European Journal of Political Research
Volume
61
Pages
660-677
No. of pages
18
ISSN
0304-4130
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12478
Publication date
09-2021
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
506014 Comparative politics
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Sociology and Political Science
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/9bbbd7d6-aac8-42e1-96ba-c21c5ca1fc21