I love these kinds of shortcuts in grammar. So, you could say something like:
"The negotiations failed because of politics.", but that isn't quite right.
It's just missing that little something. "The negotiations failed because politics." kind of conveys the message in a more of a cynical tone: "The negotiations failed because of politics, and you know what politics are like." So you have this kind of idiom going, sort of. Another way interpret this is kind of a contextual fill-the-blanks: "The negotiations failed because politics." (is always causing things to fail) There is also a kind of dismissive attitude it can be used for: "I didn't like the movie because reasons" (you should know them, and if you don't I really don't want to get into it with you). This has a kind of flip side as well: "I put bacon on my ice-cream because bacon" (is freaking awesome, everybody knows bacon is freaking awesome). Ah, I love over-analysing because beer.