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The Risk Game and the Blame Game*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Christopher Hood
Christopher Hood*
Affiliation:
All Souls, University of Oxford and the London School of Economics and Political Science
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Extract

Economists Say There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. The burgeoning ‘risk industry’ – no doubt set for further expansion after the terrorist attacks on US heartlands in 2001 – says there is no such thing as a risk-free lunch. Anthropologists say there is no such thing as a blame-free risk. And political scientists know blame is central to politics.

The growth of the ‘risk industry’, the associated explosion in discussion of safety and hazard issues and the search for better ways of assessing and managing risk, has been much commented on. The BSE issue, highlighted in the UK by the blockbuster sixteen-volume Phillips report in 2000, is taken by Ulrich Beck as emblematic of what he claims to be a ‘risk society’. Michael Power says an age of ‘new risk management’ has dawned in corporate governance, sparked by high-profile business failures and accidents. Much academic and media attention has been paid to risks from food, electric power lines, mobile phones, dangerous people, even dangerous dogs (ostensibly a rather traditional risk, but one that in recent years has been the subject of draconian new regulatory regimes in several countries, including France, Spain and Germany). Such developments in the ‘risk game’ have been described by best-selling sociologists like Beck and Giddens (who make much of their world-historical significance in an era of ‘high modernity’) and by social psychologists interested in what shapes risk perception or ‘amplification’.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , January 2002 , pp. 15 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2002

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Footnotes

*

This article was first presented at a British Academy/Academy of Medical Sciences conference on ‘Risk, Democratic Citizenship and Public Policy’, 7 June 2001 and formed the basis for an inaugural lecture at Oxford on 6 November 2001. I am grateful for helpful comments and advice received on that occasion, and also for comments from Keith Dowding, Bill Durodié, Bob Goodin, Desmond King, Mick Moran, Joseph Nye, Roger Noll, Chris Wlezien and colleagues at the LSE Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation, particularly Tim Besley and Henry Rothstein.

References

1 Private Eye, 1025, 6–18 April 2001, p. 8.

2 This is the term used by Dryzek, J. in his review of Wildavsky, A., But is it True? in Journal of Public Policy, 15:2 (1996), pp. 299–304,CrossRefGoogle Scholar for the various professions and lobby groups (including victim lobbies) that have developed around safety and hazard issues.

3 Douglas, M., Risk and Blame, London, Routledge, 1992 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See http://www.bseinquiry.gov.uk

5 Beck, U., Risk Society, London, Polity, 1992 Google Scholar.

6 M. K. Power, ‘The New Risk Management’, inaugural lecture of P. D. Leake, Professor of Accounting and Director of CARR, December 1999.

7 See Kaspersen, R. ‘The Social Amplification of Risk: Progress in Developing an Integrative Framework’, in Krimsky, S. and Golding, D. (eds), Social Theories of Risk, Westport, Conn., Praeger, 1992 Google Scholar.

8 See Ellis, R. J., Presidential Lighning Rods, Lawrence, Kansas, University of Kansas Press, 1994 Google Scholar.

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10 See Austin, J. L., ‘A Plea for Excuses’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 57 (1956), pp. 1–30;CrossRefGoogle Scholar McGraw, K. M., ‘Avoiding Blame: An Experimental Investigation of Political Excuses and Justifications’, British Journal of Political Science, 20 (1990), pp. 119–42;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and M. Bovens, P. t’Hart, S. Dekker and G. Verheuvel, ‘The Politics of Blame Avoidance: Defensive Tactics in a Dutch Crime-Fighting Fiasco’, in H. Anheier (ed.), When Things Go Wrong, Thousand Oaks, Sage, 1999, ch. 8.

11 Twight, C., ‘From Claiming Credit to Avoiding Blame: The Evolution of Congressional Strategy for Asbestos Management’, Journal of Public Policy, 11:2 (1991), pp. 153–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Such ideas go back at least to the work of Herring, P., Presidential Leadership, New York, Farrar & Rinehart, 1940 Google Scholar and Laski, H., The American Presidency, New York, Harper & Bros, 1940 Google Scholar. More recent scholars in this tradition include Fiorina, M., ‘Legislative Choice of Regulatory Forms: Legal Process or Administrative Process?’, Public Choice, 39:1 (1982), pp. 33–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Legislator Uncertainty, Legislator Control and the Delegation of Legislative Power’, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 2:1 (1986), pp. 133–51, R. F. Fenno, Home Style, Boston, Little, Brown, 1978 and R. J. Ellis, Presidential Lightning Rods, op. cit.

13 A variant is Horn’s transaction-costs analysis of how legislators deal with ‘uncertainty costs’ in the way they craft institutional arrangements over contingencies that are hard to foresee. Horn, M., The Political Economy of Public Aministration, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Machiavelli, N., The Prince , Bull, tr. G., Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1961, p. 106 Google Scholar.

15 C. Twight, ‘From Claiming Credit to Avoiding Blame’, op. cit.

16 This argument is an informational variant of Wilson’s account of how polity is shaped by diffusion or concentration of its costs and benefits. Wilson, J. Q., ‘The Politics of Regulation’, in Wilson, J. Q. (ed.), The Politics of Regulation , New York, Basic Books, 1980, pp. 357–74Google Scholar.

17 Weaver, R. K.: ‘The Politics of Blame Avoidance’, Journal of Public Policy, 6:4 (1986), pp. 371–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Automatic Government, Washington, DC, Brookings, 1988.

18 R. K. Weaver, Automatic Government, p. 375.

19 An idea going back at least to Bentham; for a contemporary formulation see Lau, R. R., ‘Two Explanations for Negativity Effects in Political Behavior’, American Journal of Political Science, 29:1 (1985), pp. 119–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 R. K. Weaver, Automatic Government, p. 21.

21 See Anderson, R., ‘A Framework for Strategy’, Risk and Regulation, supplement to LSE Magazine, 12 1999, p. 11 Google ScholarPubMed; P. Tritton, ‘Risk Industry Sees Knowledge Future’, Risk and Regulation, ibid., p. 15; and ICAEW, Internal Control: Guidance for Directors on the Combined Code, London, Institute for Chartered Accounts in England and Wales, 1999.

22 C. Twight, ‘From Claiming Credit to Avoiding Blame’, op. cit.

23 R. K. Weaver, in ‘The Politics of Blame’, op. cit., p. 390, claims that it ‘is by no means a uniquely American phenomenon’.

24 See Hood, C., Rothstein, H. and Baldwin, R., The Government of Risk, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 R. J. Ellis, Presidential Lightning Rods, op. cit.

26 Some like Ellis, ibid., p. 148, see mass blaming or approval of politicians as shaped by elite attitudes.

27 See Anderson, C. J., Blaming the Government, New York, Sharpe, Armonk, 1995 Google Scholar, and Powell, G. B. and Whitten, G. D., ‘A Cross-national Analysis of Economic Voting: Taking Account of the Political Context’, American Journal of Political Science, 37:2 (1993), pp. 391–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 The highest point of Clinton’s personal approval poll ratings during his entire presidential term came in the middle of his impeachment in 1998. See Frank Newport (Gallup editor-in-chief), ‘Clinton’s Job Approval Legacy, 4 January 2001, http://www.gallup.com/poll/fromtheed/ed/0101.asp

29 See Rothacher, A., The Japanese Power Elite, New York, St Martin’s Press, 1993 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 See ‘Eighty Per Cent Say Railtrack Should Take Blame for Crisis’ (Prof. Anthony King) http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr001115c.asp. A subsequent MORI poll found slightly higher levels of blame attributed to the Labour government (24% of respondents). See http://www.mori.com/polls/2000/t001212.shtml though an ICM/BBC poll in December 2000 showed even lower levels of blame for government (see http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/reviews/2000/bbc-railways-poll-dec-2000.htm)

31 Provided adverse effects of the type in question are not too frequent.

32 In the railway poll just mentioned, 42% of respondents held the previous Conservative government ‘greatly to blame’, suggesting that if the crisis had occurred when the Conservatives (who had privatized the rail network in 1995) held government, the blame assignment by voters would have been different, with blame at least shared between politicians and delegatees rather than shifted from the first to the second.

33 As in the Chinese tradition of blaming the emperor for natural disasters. (See Hsieh, P. S., The Government of China 1664–1911, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1925)Google Scholar.

34 See J. Wolfers, ‘Are Voters Rational? Evidence from Gubernatorial Elections’, Department of Economics, Harvard University. (http://www.economics.harvard.ecu/~jwolfers). For a contrary case see Abney, F. G. and Hill, L. B., ‘Natural Disasters as a Political Variable: the Effect of a Hurricane on an Urban Election’, American Political Science Review, 60:4 (1966), pp. 974–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 A UK case of blame reversion occurred over fuel price rises in the autumn of 2000, against a background of OPEC production limits and rising world market prices of oil. In an ICM poll at that time, 63% of respondents said they blamed the UK government most for recent fuel price rises (against much lower figures for OPEC and oil companies). See http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/reviews/2000;guardian-poll-sept-2000.htm.

36 R. K. Weaver, ‘The Politics of Blame Avoidance’, op. cit., p. 392.

37 H. Laski, The American Presidency, op. cit.

38 See Ridley, F. F. and Doig, A. (eds), Sleaze , Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995 Google Scholar.

39 For example, whether blame outcomes have no clear relationship with formal institutional arrangements, whether ‘tef lon’ qualities are achievable only if delegation is used sparingly or in some other appropriate way, or whether the relationship between blame and delegation is a product of the particular personality and individual skills of each politican.

40 It is logically possible that delegators might want to delegate credit but not blame and delegatees might accept blame but not credit, but those possibilities are not explored here.

41 After all, appointees by definition do not face re-election and in some circumstances public blame may even be turned into an asset. But that can apply to politicians too.

42 See R. J. Ellis, Presidential Lightning Rods, op. cit., pp. 3, 156 and passim.

43 For an analysis of two bargaining actors seeking to send signals to a third party, see Groseclose, T. and McCarty, N., ‘The Politics of Blame: Bargaining Before an Audience’, American Journal of Political Science, 45:1 (2001), pp. 100–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 For instance, if voters lay part or all of the blame for failure on politicians rather than on private operators, for what is perceived as a botched or ill-judged privatization. That seems to have happened over drinking-water safety after water privatization in England and Wales in 1989. (See Hood, Rothstein and Baldwin, The Government of Risk, op. cit., p. 97, fn. 15.) Something similar happened to public blame for airline accidents in the USA after airline deregulation (even though the incidence of airline accidents was falling).

45 Gregory, R., ‘A New Zealand Tragedy: Problems of Political Responsibility’, Governance, 11:2 (1998), pp. 231–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Barker, A., ‘Political Responsibility for UK Prison Security — Ministers Escape Again’, Public Administration, 76 (1998), pp. 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 See Hood, C., ‘Individualized Contracts for To p Public Servants: Copying Business, Path-Dependent Political Re-engineering — or Trobriand Cricket?’, Governance, 11:4 (1998), pp. 443–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Even the literature on independent central banks suggests that politicians can influence policy choices by such institutions (see Bernhard, W. T., ‘A Political Explanation of Variations in Central Bank Independence’, American Political Science Review, 92:2 (1998), pp. 311–27).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Adams, J., Risk, London, UCL Press, 1995 Google ScholarPubMed.

50 The politicians’ dilemma over blame shifting to experts — starkly revealed by BSE — is that the more the experts are chosen from only one school of thought the greater is the chance that they will reach unanimous conclusions (making it easier to shift blame for judgemental failure to them). But the more politicians select experts along such lines, the more likely it is that the experts’ conclusions or recommendations will be contested by other experts, leading to blame-sharing between politicians and groups of experts rather than blame shift.

51 See Hood, Rothstein and Baldwin, The Government of Risk, p. 129, fn 12.

52 A newly-elected Labour government was anxious to avoid the blame that had attached to some ministers in the previous Conservative government who had made rash pronouncements about the safety of beef and therefore moved to implement the ban. But public opinion turned sharply against the ban as soon as it was introduced, and bone-in beef ‘martyrs’ emerged to create political difficulties over law enforcement. See Hood, Rothstein and Baldwin, The Government of Risk, p. 101, fn. 19.

53 See M. Bovens, et al., ‘The Politics of Blame Avoidance’, op. cit.

54 See Hood, Rothstein and Baldwin, The Government of Risk, pp. 147–70.

55 Dixon, N., On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, London, Jonathan Cape, 1976 Google Scholar; and Thompson, M., Ellis, R. and Wildavsky, A., Cultural Theory, Boulder, Colo., Westview Press, 1990 Google Scholar.

56 Hood, C. and Rothstein, H., ‘Risk Regulation under Pressure: Problem Solving or Blame Shifting?’, Administration and Society, 33:1 (2001), pp. 21–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Ibid.

58 For example, Breyer, S., Breaking the Vicious Cycle , Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1993 Google Scholar.

59 For example, Behn, R. D., Rethinking Democratic Accountability , Washington, DC, Brookings, 2001 Google Scholar.

60 NERA (National Economic Research Associates), Safety Regulations and Standards for European Railways, London, NERA, 2000.

61 For instance, insurance companies covering potential losses by public authorities often want to inhibit those authorities from disclosing information that might be construed as ‘admitting fault’. See Sagan, S., The Limits of Safety , Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1993, ch. 3Google Scholar.

62 Wiener, J. B., ‘Managing the Iatrogenic Risks of Risk Management’, Risk: Health Safety and Environment, 9:1 (1998), pp. 39–82.Google Scholar

63 ‘The care of providing for his enjoyments ought to be left almost entirely to each individual; the principal function of government being to protect him from sufferings.’ J. Bentham, Principles of the Civil Code, in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. by J. Bowring, New York, Russell & Russell, 1962, vol. 1, p. 301.