EU Blame Shifting after Brexit: Evidence from Parliamentary Speeches

Disintegration episodes such as Brexit represent a major exogenous shock for the process of European integration. Do they lead parties to alter their strategies and blame shifting behaviour toward the EU? This article argues that pro-European mainstream parties and Eurosceptic challenger parties reverse their usual strategies after Brexit and significantly decrease blame shifting toward the EU, as the UK's negative experience reveals new information about the desirability of EU membership. I use a combination of automated and hand-coded methods to identify and analyse 2,223 Brexit statements in the parliaments of five member states between 2013 and 2018. I show how in the aftermath of the Brexit vote the strategies of issue entrepreneurship and issue avoidance usually employed by challenger and mainstream parties are indeed reversed. Challenger parties avoid Brexit, blame the EU less, and significantly moderate their Euroscepticism; by contrast, mainstream parties emphasise Brexit and significantly increase their pro-Europeanism. Results show that party conflict on European integration and blame shifting toward the EU is not static but dynamic and responds to outside circumstances and events. They also show that the advantage of issue ownership can be quickly and dramatically reversed when exogenous shocks lead to large changes in public opinion.