Markus Hinterleitner is a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University's Watson Institute. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Bern, Switzerland in 2018 and was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley during 2019. He is a leading scholar on political blame avoidance. His articles have been published in journals such as European Journal of Political Research, European Political Science Review, Policy Studies Journal, Journal of European Public Policy, and Journal of Public Policy.

List of figures; List of tables; List of abbreviations; 1. How political systems manage their policy controversies; 2. Blame games in the political sphere; 3. Blame games in the UK; 4. Blame games in Germany; 5. Blame games in Switzerland; 6. Mapping the influence of institutional factors; 7. Mapping the influence of issue characteristics; 8. A typological theory of blame games and their consequences; 9. Blame games and their implications for politics and democracy under pressure; References; Appendix.