Policy failures, blame games and changes to policy practice

Abstract

Studies examining the policy implications of elite polarisation usually concentrate on policy formulation and change, but neglect the impact of polarisation on the day-to-day application of policies. Applying the method of causal process tracing to the Swiss “Carlos” case, a blame game triggered by the reporting about an expensive therapy setting for a youth offender, this article exposes and explains a hitherto neglected, but highly important, mechanism between political elites engaging in blame generation and changes in policy practice. A policy’s distance and visibility to mass publics, as well as the incentives and resources of elites to engage in blame generation, explain the dynamics within blame games, which, in turn, effect organisational and behavioural changes that help institutionalise a more politicised policy practice. Politicised policy practice can make an important difference to policy target populations, as well as damage output legitimacy and undermine democracy.

Explaining through causal mechanisms: resilience and governance of social–ecological systems

“…Recently various studies within the political sciences have successfully adopted this in their the process tracing approach to study complex social-political systems and explain through generative mechanisms. A recent example is provided by Hinterleitner [54] who investigates a contentious case on how a political blame game around an expensive therapy setting for a youth offender in Switzerland produced elite polarisation. Another example is the research by Adams [55], who hypothesizes how the mechanism of decentralization influences various outcomes, including interjurisdictional competition and the accommodation of heterogeneous preferences.…”

The politics of blame avoidance in complex delegation structures: the public transport crisis in Berlin

“…Those studies could also systematically compare politicians' and other actors' response times to public allegations in different institutional contexts. Moreover, future studies could also investigate the potential trade-off between the effectiveness of institutional configurations in terms of blame avoidance for executive politicians and their effectiveness in terms of service delivery (Hood 2002, Hinterleitner 2017.…”

“…Although there is reason to believe that policy-makers are guided by a range of alternative motivations, blame avoidance provides a parsimonious explanation of many phenomena in executive politics. Hood (2011) offered the most systematic account of blame avoidance in executive politics and distinguishes three types of blame avoidance strategies: presentational strategies, involving the use of arguments and other methods of diverting attention from the blame takers (see also Hood 2002, Hood et al 2009, Hood, Jennings, and Copeland 2016; agency strategies, working through the apportioning of responsibility for the exercise of public tasks among various organizations (Mortensen 2013(Mortensen , 2016; and policy strategies, characterized by the selection of policy alternatives or decision routines and procedures that will minimize the attribution of agency to would-be blame takers (Hinterleitner 2017).…”

“…The use of blame management strategies by office holders is a widely used analytical lens in the study of executive politics (Weaver 1986, McGraw 1990, Bovens et al 1999, Hood 2002, 2011, Brändström and Kuipers 2003, Moynihan 2012, Mortensen 2013, Hinterleitner 2017, Hinterleitner and Sager 2017. While these studies show that avoiding blame is an important driver of political executives' behaviour, few studies have systematically explored the role of institutional contexts in shaping political executives' blame management strategies (Mortensen 2012, 2016, Hinterleitner and Sager 2015, Resodihardjo et al 2016.…”

Salami tactics and the implementation of large-scale public projects

“…Moreover, the article demonstrates that these framing contests can influence the trajectories of such projects. To obtain a more detailed understanding of these framing contests and their implications for the fate of policy projects, future research should explore the use of other blame management strategies (Hinterleitner 2018;Hood 2011;Mortensen 2016;Boin et al 2010) during the implementation of these projects. A concrete example of the latter is the creation of so called 'fuzzy' governance structures (Bache et al 2015), which are often found in the organisation of complex projects and which are sometimes said to facilitate the diffusion and deflection of blame.…”