Political leaders in EU member states strategically shape how the European Union is presented to domestic audiences: electoral incentives determine whether governments claim credit, share credit with other levels, or leave recognition to the EU.
📡 How leaders’ summit statements were collected and classified
- An original dataset of more than 6,000 classified statements by heads of government was assembled, consisting of leaders’ presentations of EU summit outcomes to national media between 2005 and 2018.
- Statements were coded for how governments framed responsibility and recognition for summit outcomes (for example, claiming credit personally or sharing credit with other levels of government).
📊 What the evidence shows
- 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.
- Governments are more likely to claim credit for issues that are salient to domestic audiences.
- The EU is more often credited for policy issues that citizens care less about, while governments claim credit on electorally salient issues.
🔍 How this challenges conventional wisdom
- The findings challenge the common view that the EU receives little recognition from domestic politicians and that incumbents primarily shift blame onto the EU.
- Instead, strategic credit claiming is conditional on electoral incentives and issue salience, producing a mixed pattern of acknowledgment and appropriation.
⚖️ Why it matters for democratic accountability
- These communication choices affect which political actors receive recognition for policy outcomes and thus shape citizens’ ability to hold the correct level of government accountable in multilevel systems of governance.
