The Blame Game

• In Event: Claiming, Blaming, and Branding

Abstract

It is often asserted that politicians want to claim credit when things go well and deflect blame when outcomes go awry. Scholarly research in this vein typically views the employment of bureaucrats as credible scapegoats – to whom blame is publicly attributed – as key. However, those studying such bureaucratic blame attribution have not fully appreciated a variety of nuances involved for elected officials to both want and be able to blame bureaucrats for policy failures. We highlight these features and their implications by studying a principal-agent model of delegation and scapegoating. Importantly, we identify conditions both where politicians can credibly blame bureaucrats and where they can accept blame. In doing so, our main analytic focus is on how the attribution of blame affects incentives of bureaucrats in choosing risky policies as well as the incentives of politicians in monitoring bureaucrats and overriding policies if necessary. Notably, although politicians may benefit from shifting blame, they need also understand that bureaucrats anticipate this and exert less effort if they are less insulated in future interactions.

Authors

• Emiel Awad, London School of Economics and Political Science

• Varun Karekurve-Ramachandra, University of Rochester

• Lawrence S. Rothenberg, University of Rochester