Policy Controversies and Political Blame Games

In modern, policy-heavy democracies, blame games about policy controversies are commonplace. Despite their ubiquity, blame games are notoriously difficult to study. This book elevates them to the place they deserve in the study of politics and public policy. Blame games are microcosms of conflictual politics that yield unique insights into democracies under pressure. Based on an original framework and the comparison of fifteen blame games in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and the US, it exposes the institutionalized forms of conflict management that democracies have developed to manage policy controversies. Whether failed infrastructure projects, food scandals, security issues, or flawed policy reforms, democracies manage policy controversies in an idiosyncratic manner. This book is addressed not only to researchers and students interested in political conflict in the fields of political science, public policy, public administration, and political communication, but to everyone concerned about the functioning of democracy in more conflictual times. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

• Develops a new approach for the study of political blame games that yields new insights into political conflict in Western democracies
• Analyses and compares a great variety of policy controversies from failed infrastructure projects to procurement problems to food scandals to security issues to flawed policy reforms
• Contains an innovative comparative research design that allows readers to compare blame games across issue areas and countries and to learn how complex political events can be theoretically captured and compared in a 'context-sensitive' way
• Open Access title