Credit Claiming in the European Union

Incumbents in multilevel systems are assumed to exploit uncertainty of responsibility by claiming credit and shifting blame, yet little is known about when and how they engage in these rhetorical strategies. This article draws on the example of Europe’s multilevel system of governance to argue that electoral incentives determine governments’ presentation of the European Union (EU) in their domestic public spheres. I use an original dataset of over 6,000 classified statements by heads of government presenting the outcomes of EU summits to their national media between 2005 and 2018 and find that governments both claim credit for themselves and share credit with other levels of government. Governments are more likely to claim credit when domestic Euroskepticism is high and for issues that are salient to domestic audiences. Findings challenge the conventional view that the EU receives little recognition from politicians in domestic public spheres and that governments frequently shift blame onto the EU. Rather, the EU is credited for policy issues citizens care less about, whereas governments claim credit for issues that are electorally salient. Findings have implications for democratic accountability in multilevel systems of governance.