The Political Consequences of Blame Attribution for the Economic Crisis in the 2013 Italian National Election

Abstract

This article describes the events that brought about the dismissal of the Berlusconi government in November 2011 and the appointment of a cabinet led by former EU commissioner Mario Monti, before moving to an analysis of how popular perceptions of the economic and political situation have evolved since that time. Relying on an ITANES five-wave inter-electoral panel study, the article shows the EU's growing importance as a divisive political issue. Blaming the EU or the former Berlusconi government as a source of the economic crisis exerted a significant impact on party choice in the 2013 election, while retrospective sociotropic economic evaluations were conditional in their impact on the structure of blame attribution for the economic crisis.