Errors have been made, others will be blamed: issue engagement and blame shifting in Prime Minister speeches during the economic crisis in Europe

In this paper we investigate prime ministers’ communication strategies during the most recent economic crisis in Europe. We argue that when electoral risk is high but governments’ policy options are severely limited, prime ministers will use specific communication strategies to mitigate electoral risks. We analyze two such communication strategies – issue engagement and blame shifting – by applying state-of-the-art quantitative text analysis methods on 5553 speeches of prime ministers in 9 EU member states. We find evidence for both strategies. Prime ministers talk about the economy more in response to both high (domestic) unemployment and low (domestic) GDP growth. Furthermore, we find the (domestic) unemployment rate to be the most consistent predictor of blame shifting: as the domestic unemployment rate goes up, this is followed by an increase in blame shifting towards banks, Greece and the Troika.

本研究旨在探讨欧洲近期经济危机期间各国总理的沟通策略。我们提出，在选举风险较高而政府政策选择严重受限的情况下，总理们将采取特定的沟通策略以减轻选举风险。通过对9个欧盟成员国总理的5553篇演讲进行最先进的定量文本分析方法分析，我们研究了两种此类沟通策略——问题参与和责任转移。我们发现，两种策略均存在证据。在应对高（国内）失业率和低（国内）GDP增长时，总理们更多地谈论经济问题。此外，我们发现国内失业率是最一致的责任转移预测指标：随着国内失业率的上升，随之而来的是对银行、希腊和三驾马车的责任转移增加。