ABSTRACT
Responsibility drives the structure of credit and blame. Credit and blame cannot be assigned if citizens do not perceive governments to bear responsibility for political and economic performance. The previous chapters have assumed that citizens hold incumbents responsible for the state of the economy and that different political parties (or executives in the French case) have reputations for being able to deal with different aspects of economic performance. The main question that has been asked is this: Do citizens in West European democracies actually hold incumbents accountable for the way the economy performs?
