Techniques are described by which a network management system (NMS) is configured to provide identification of root cause failure through the detection of network scope failures. For example, the NMS comprises one or more processors; and a memory comprising instructions that when executed by the one or more processors cause the one or more processors to: generate a hierarchical attribution graph comprising attributes representing different network scopes at different hierarchical levels; receive network event data, wherein the network event data is indicative of operational behavior of the network, including one or more of successful events or one or more failure events associated with one or more client devices; and apply a machine learning model to the network event data and to a particular network scope in the hierarchical attribution graph to detect whether the particular network scope has failure.