Who is to blame? Blame avoidance in multilevel governance systems during crises

Crises in modern societies are increasingly managed through multilevel governance systems that entails cooperation across a wide range of organisations and institutions. Increasingly scholars have considered the implications multilevel governance systems have on accountability processes and blame dynamics. Existing studies have investigated this relationship principally within the context of routine policy failures but rendered comparatively unexplored how these dynamics play out within context of crises. To address this gap this thesis analysed blame dynamics in the context of the Swedish senior care sector during the COIVD 19 pandemic. Through a quantitative content analysis on printed newspaper articles, the study analysed public blame attributions and the blame management strategies of key actors. The findings shows that when actors in multilevel governance systems are subjected to public scrutiny during a crisis, they primarily shift blame for shortcomings onto other actors in the system. Additionally, the findings show that while the public attributed blame to multiple actors the central government was the most frequently blame actor. Thus, the findings indicate that multilevel governance systems do not relinquish the central government from being held responsible for shortcoming in a crisis.