How and when do citizens, media, and politicians actually blame Europe? This is the key question raised in Sara Hobolt and James Tilley’s excellent book, which offers the most systematic and comprehensive account of the attribution of political responsibility in the EU to date. Building on a combination of data sources, including political expert survey data, public opinion polls, media surveys, experimental data, and surveys of statements of heads of governments, Blaming Europe: Responsibility Without Accountability in the European Union is empirically rich. The book effectively shows that political responsibility in the EU is complicated not just because of lack of a clear government at the EU level, but also because citizens lack information and have prejudices about the EU. Blaming Europe is neatly organized in four pedagogical parts: the first part outlining the approach, the second analyzing citizen’s perceptions, the third focuses on media coverage and politicians’ statements, and the fourth discusses the consequences of the way in which Europe is and is not blamed.

Chapter 1 argues for why we need a comprehensive approach to responsibility attribution in the EU. Chapter 2 develops the theoretical framework and research design, which combines institutionalism with political psychology, including both the political context and the individual voter’s perceptions to understand how people assign political responsibility. In Chapter 3, the book turns to when citizens get it right, i.e. when they are able to assess which policy areas the EU is responsible for and which areas are national competences. Hobolt and Tilley show that in four selected areas—interest rates, immigration, economy, and healthcare—citizens are generally well-equipped to navigate and also able to adjust to changing contexts, such as the financial and economic crisis. Interestingly, Hobolt and Tilley show that voters from non-Eurozone countries are aware that their government is less affected by EU measures than those within the Eurozone. In other words, differentiated integration is reflected in the way in which citizens blame Europe. Less surprisingly, the more politically knowledgeable people are, the more they tend to evaluate the EU’s responsibility in similar ways as experts. Indeed, the benchmark for judging when “citizens get it right” is an expert survey, based on a survey of 117 EU experts. This could merit further discussion. What if the experts are wrong about EU competences?

Chapter 4 looks at how partisanship affects individual perceptions of EU responsibility. Hobolt and Tilley draw on the idea of attributional group biases, translating the partisan argument from the national to the EU level, dividing people into EU supporters and opponents. Based on the cross-national data, they show that people who do not like the EU and think the economy has gone worse, blame the EU more than do people with similar views about the EU but who think the economy has improved. The reverse is also true. EU enthusiasts are more willing to credit for economic success and less willing to blame it for economic failure. This also goes for healthcare and immigration, with interest rates being the exception where perceptual screens had no effects. Why this is interpreted as a sign that people have a better sense of what Hobolt and Tilley call “objective reality” when it comes to interest rates than other policies is not clear. Interestingly, it also appears that as circumstances change (i.e. with the financial and economic crisis), citizens’ perceptual biases are strengthened. This raises the question of what causes what? It is simply because people became more Eurosceptic following the Euro Crisis? To address this question, the authors conduct a set of large-scale experiments in the UK, which demonstrate that EU opponents attribute more responsibility to the EU when faced with negative rather than positive performance information, and EU enthusiasts attribute more responsibility to the EU when given positive rather than negative performance information. This, they conclude, means that EU support combined with perceptions of performance, rather than more “objective” evaluations and attribution of responsibility, shapes how responsibility is allocated to the EU. This also merits further discussion: Can we imagine that Euroskepticism is self-reinforcing over time? If so, what would that mean for the difference between voters in the South and North of Europe?

Chapter 5 analyses data from media outlets in all EU countries and shows that while there is generally a lot of coverage of the EU, it is mostly about the horse-race and less about policy and EU responsibility, this is particularly true for television coverage. Chapter 6 examines how media affects peoples’ perceptions, linking coded news coverage of the 2009 European Parliament election campaign with surveys, and shows that TV makes people more likely to blame or credit the EU, while policy-rich newspapers make people more knowledgeable and able to judge who is responsible.

Chapter 7 examines over 200 speeches and statements made by leaders in the UK, Germany and Ireland over the course of the financial and economic crisis, and interestingly demonstrates that the scapegoat metaphor is misleading: Politicians rarely blame the EU. Instead, they use the EU to make their responsibilities and decisions appear as opaque as possible—which is perhaps even more problematic than just blaming Europe.

Chapter 8 explores the consequences of the responsibility evaluations and show that voters cannot use European Parliament elections to sanction their political leaders' performance and responsibility, because “it is close to impossible for voters to identify which parties to reward and punish at the European elections.” Hobolt and Tilley suggest that because people cannot sanction those in power, it leads to lower trust in the EU institutions more broadly.

In Chapter 9, Hobolt and Tilley discuss how to improve the EU’s accountability. Arguing that it is difficult to improve institutional clarity, they suggest a direct election of the Commission President, which would improve the possibility to sanction policy-makers. Moreover, the campaign between candidates would generate more media coverage, though the authors acknowledge the risks of fragmentation due to weak European parties. Finally, they discuss whether the lack of pan-European solidarity and identity affect accountability. They conclude, somewhat problematically, that, “unless people start to care not only about what the EU institutions can do for them and their nation, but also what these institutions can do for Europe as a whole, there seems little prospect of democratic accountability becoming reality at the European level across the EU.” Is this really necessary? An obvious sequel to this book ought to include experiments of how a direct election of a Commission president would affect our attribution of responsibility to the EU.

A few remarks on omissions: First, as mentioned previously, the expert benchmarks require more discussion. Second, while voter surveys generally cover all member states, the experiments and analyses of speeches are from a select group of countries, which could have important consequences for the findings. Third, it would be useful with data from the most recent European elections in 2014, making it possible to evaluate the possible effects of the Euro Crisis more generally. Fourth, choosing to focus only on the European Parliament as the institution through which voters hold the EU accountable is limited, given that voters are also represented through their national governments in the Council of Ministers and European Council. This is all the more true in light of the Euro Crisis, which has strengthened the role of (some) governments in Eurozone governance. Overall, however, Blaming Europe is exceptionally clear, methodologically sound, balanced, and accessible given its complex subject matter. It is a must-read for all students and scholars interested in the EU and its democratic challenges.