In the aftermath of financial crisis 2007/2009, a wide array of financial sector policies to prevent future crisis are discussed on the national and supranational level. This reform process is accompanied by a public discourse about responsibilities: who is to blame for failures in financial sector: the banks, the financial supervision institutions, the financial minister or the reckless use of subprime mortgages? In delegating unpopular policy domains to independent regulatory agencies (IRAs), politicians retain the option of blame-shifting. The existence of an agency offers the politicians a possibility to reject their responsibility for political failures. However, in a context of crisis, the strategy of shifting blame to an IRA may no longer be appropriate. Instead, accepting responsibility for a failure offers a possibility to increase popularity and getting re-elected. Political authorities have an incentive to picture themselves as a leader; policies will be declared as a matter of urgency and as a governmental affair that cannot be left to the IRA. From the blamed authority’s perspective, a crisis creates a moment of catharsis: if failures occur, giving account to the public is an opportunity to increase popularity and to remedy the authorities’ decrease in legitimacy. The paper aims to define this pattern of the responses to redress legitimacy. It analyzes who makes use of this moment of catharsis and how it is arranged. In a comparative case study analysis of the IRAs in the financial sector in Great Britain (Financial Services Authority) and Switzerland (Finanzmarktaufsicht FINMA), the blaming of political institutions during the recent financial crisis is under scrutiny. Based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis (two newspapers per country, 590 articles) the paper analyzes the behaviour of IRAs and core executives and if the strategy of blame-shifting is an option in a crisis situation or if credit claiming is the order of the day.
