Blame Shifting and Credit Claiming – Comparing Strategies of Communicative Self-Legitimation in the Eurozone Crisis Debate

The recent Eurozone crisis has transformed into a dramatic crisis of democratic legitimacy that affects both domestic actors and European Union institutions. The withdrawal of public support, increasing demands for accountability and a growing public attention put political actors under intensive legitimation pressure that has to be dealt with. In times of crisis, effective performance is an unreliable source of legitimacy. Given that, top-down strategies of communicative self-legitimation, such as blame shifting and credit claiming (Weaver 1986), gain importance. The self-portrait of actors in the attribution context is likely to influence their perceived legitimacy in the public. In this sense, the public sphere turns into a central arena for legitimacy contestation. Understanding politics as a discursive struggle between actors over public support we test in how far different degrees of legitimation pressure can explain the communication behavior of core political institutions (European Union institutions, IMF, national governments) during the crisis. Moreover, we test in how far strategies of self-legitimation change among actors and in how far these are affected by attention cycles throughout the course of the crisis. This paper draws on fresh empirical data on patterns of attributing responsibility in the Eurozone Crisis debate in Greek and German newspapers as well as Reuters news reports. The data stems from a collaborative Greek-German research project (GGCRISI) applying Discursive Actor Attribution Analysis, a sophisticated quantitative content analysis which combines insights from claims analysis, frame analysis and attribution analysis. The analysis of more than 6000 responsibility attributions for the period between 2009 and 2012 allows approaching discursive strategies of self-legitimation via a detailed analysis of public communication patterns. First results from this research indicate that higher levels of legitimation pressure translate into higher levels of public sphere activity and to a higher share of blame shifting in the public sphere.