Governing elites under pressure: Blame avoidance strategies and welfare state retrenchment

2019 ◽  
pp. 109-122
Author(s):  
Markus Hinterleitner ◽  
Fritz Sager
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Avoidance Strategies ◽  
Blame Avoidance

Avoiding Blame: An Experimental Investigation of Political Excuses and Justifications

1990 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen M. McGraw
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Investigation ◽  
Systematic Research ◽  
Public Official ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Avoidance Strategies ◽  
Blame Avoidance

Success and even survival in politics frequently depends on the ability of politicians and public officials to extricate themselves from various types of predicaments. Indeed, politicians are particularly adept at extricating themselves, with a wide range of explanations at their disposal to avoid blame for unpopular actions and decisions. However, there has been little systematic research on the effectiveness of various political blame-avoidance strategies. This Note has two purposes. First, a typology of blame-avoidance strategies, or accounts, is developed. Second, the results of an experiment examine the effectiveness of these various accounts in enhancing evaluations of a hypothetical public official are reported.

Anticipative strategies of blame avoidance in government

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sten Hansson
Keyword(s):  
Public Communication ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Government Communication ◽  
Avoidance Strategies ◽  
Blame Avoidance ◽  
Communication Practices ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Professional Guidelines

Abstract Public communication practices of executive governments are often criticised by journalists, politicians, scholars, and other commentators. Therefore, government communication professionals routinely adopt various blame avoidance strategies, some of which are meant to ‘stop blame before it starts’ or to reduce their exposure to potential blame attacks. The linguistic aspects of such anticipative strategies are yet to be studied by discourse analysts. I contribute towards filling this gap by showing how written professional guidelines for government communicators could be interpreted as complex discursive devices of anticipative blame avoidance. I outline historically and institutionally situated issues of blame that inform the occupational habitus of government communicators in the UK. I bring examples from their propriety guidelines to illustrate how the use of certain discursive strategies limits the possible perceived blameworthiness of individual officeholders. I conclude by explicating the discursive underpinnings of two common operational blame avoidance strategies in government: ‘protocolisation’ and ‘herding’.

Blame Avoidance Strategies of Multiple Administrative Agencies During Policy Failure: A Case Study of Taiwan’s 2014 Waste Oil Scandal

2020 ◽  
pp. 009539972095314
Author(s):  
Hongwung Wang ◽  
Yi-Ching Tsai
Keyword(s):  
Waste Oil ◽  
Policy Failure ◽  
Administrative Agencies ◽  
Avoidance Strategies ◽  
Blame Avoidance ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Policy Failures

This study examines the blame avoidance (BA) strategies that may be adopted after policy failures of multiple agencies. A classification of agencies is proposed based on two factors: the amount of actual responsibility that an agency is obliged for, and the extent of an agency’s perceived responsibility. Agencies can thus be classified into four types, which may have different tactical goals and specific BA strategies that contradict other agencies’ goals, thereby leading to a complicated interaction between them. The results show that one of the three related agencies do not adopt suggested BA strategy and therefore fails to avoid blame.

scholarly journals Risky Business? Welfare State Reforms and Government Support in Britain and Denmark

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seonghui Lee ◽  
Carsten Jensen ◽  
Christoph Arndt ◽  
Georg Wenzelburger
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Statistical Tests ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Negativity Bias ◽  
Blame Avoidance ◽  
Simple Question ◽  
Avoidance Strategy ◽  
The Many ◽  
Risky Business

Are welfare state reforms electorally dangerous for governments? Political scientists have only recently begun to study this seemingly simple question, and existing work still suffers from two shortcomings. First, it has never tested the reform–vote link with data on actual legislative decisions for enough points in time to allow robust statistical tests. Secondly, it has failed to take into account the many expansionary reforms that have occurred in recent decades. Expansions often happen in the same years as cutbacks. By focusing only on cutbacks, estimates of the effects of reforms on government popularity become biased. This article addresses both shortcomings. The results show that voters punish governments for cutbacks, but also reward them for expansions, making so-called compensation, a viable blame-avoidance strategy. The study also finds that the size of punishments and rewards is roughly the same, suggesting that voters’ well-documented negativity bias does not directly translate into electoral behavior.

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