Accepted for publication in Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis

In this paper, I take stock of and review the comparative literature on blame avoidance strategies in social policy reform to identify the conditions under which blame avoidance strategies are necessary (or not). This helps to solve the seemingly contradictory findings that blame avoidance strategies may not (always) be necessary while they are often employed. Moreover, I propose that experimental designs help to establish the effect of blame avoidance strategies and present an approach for assessing systematically the employment and success of blame avoidance strategies. Hereby, I outline a research agenda for comparative theory development. Key words: Welfare state retrenchment; blame avoidance strategies; strategic communication; credit-claiming retrenchment; comparative social policy analysis