Abstract
This chapter explores discretion from a blame-avoidance perspective, focusing on the idea that there is a trade-off between discretion—defined as the ability or duty to exercise judgement—and blame avoidance. It argues that the idea of such a trade-off is plausible up to a point, but that it is limited in at least two ways. One is that there are some half-way houses between discretion and blame avoidance (including pooling of discretion to share blame, partial or apparent delegation to diffuse or transfer blame and the validation of discretion by others), though half-way houses of that kind are likely to be precarious and unstable. The other is that any trade-off between discretion and blame avoidance is liable to break down, particularly in times of crisis, to the point where officeholders come to incur blame for failing to exercise discretion.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Chadwick (1854: 190) saw too many public officeholders as following the fatalistic maxim: ‘Fungi officio taliter qualiter; numquam male loqui de superioribus; sinere insanum mundum vadere quo vult […]’ (‘Perform your duties tolerably, or so-so; never speak ill of superiors; allow the mad world to go where it wants […]’).
- 2.
However, the organization continued to be funded up to the early 1980s by interest on deposits placed with it by private banks and is said to have continued to enjoy a degree of independence from the government in its regulatory capacity (Reid 1988: 205–6).
- 3.
And those monetary decisions may themselves be framed or indeed pre-empted by the fiscal decisions or non-decisions made by elected politicians.
- 4.
Franklin’s utterance of this famous dictum is disputed by historians and the saying is anyway traceable to much earlier sources.
- 5.
Nevertheless the NAO chose to accept this role, and indeed in 2006 also accepted another role that might be interpreted as having ‘blame shield’ characteristics, namely that of ‘sleaze czar’ (as the role was dubbed) or, more precisely, independent adviser on ministerial conflicts of interest (Hencke 2006).
References
Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. New York: Penguin.
Bentham, J. (1843). The works of Jeremy Bentham (published under the superintendence of his executor, John Bowring, Vol. 6). Edinburgh: William Tait.
Blancheton, B. (2016). Central Bank independence in a historical perspective: Myth, lessons and a new model. Economic Modelling, 52(Part A), 101–107.
Budd, A. (1999). Learning from the wise people. The Manchester School, supplement 1999 1463–6786, 36–48.
Chadwick, E. (1854). Papers relating to the reorganization of the civil service. London: HMSO.
Clarke, K. (2016). Kind of blue: A political memoir. London: Pan Macmillan.
Crozier, M. (1964). The bureaucratic phenomenon. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Dunleavy, P.J. (1991). Democracy, bureaucracy and public choice: Economic explanations in Political Science. New York: Harvester-Wheatsheaf.
Ferguson, K.E. (1984). The feminist case against bureaucracy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Fiorina, M. (1982). Legislative choice of regulatory reform: Legal process or administrative process? Public Choice, 39(1), 33–66.
Fiorina, M. (1986). Legislator uncertainty, legislator control and the delegation of legislative power. Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 2(1), 133–151.
Gusterson, H. (2016). Drone: Remote control warfare. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hall, C., Scott, C. & Hood, C. (2000). Telecommunications regulation: Culture, chaos and interdependence inside the regulatory process. London: Routledge.
Halliday, J. (2012, 19 December). Pollard Report: George Entwistle ‘did not read emails’ about Jimmy Savile. The Guardian. Retrieved July, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/dec/19/pollard-report-george-entwistle-jimmy-savile.
Hencke, D. (2006, 24 March). Blair names audit chief as anti-sleaze adviser. The Guardian. Retrieved August, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/mar/24/uk.labour.
Hood, C. (2011). The blame game: Spin, bureaucracy and self-preservation in government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hood, C. & Himaz, R. (2017). A century of fiscal squeeze politics: A hundred years of austerity, politics and bureaucracy in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hood, C. & Mackenzie, W. (1975). Appendix III: The problem of classifying institutions. In D. Hague, W. Mackenzie & A. Barker (Eds), Public policy and private interests: The institutions of compromise (pp. 409–423). London: Macmillan.
Hood, C., Scott, C., James, O., Jones, G.W. & Travers, T. (1999). Regulation inside government: Waste-watchers, quality police and sleaze-busters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hood, C., Rothstein, H. & Baldwin, R. (2001). The government of risk: Understanding risk regulation regimes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hood, C., Heald, D. & Himaz, R. (Eds) (2014). When the party’s over: The politics of fiscal squeeze in perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy.
Hume, L.J. (1981). Bentham and bureaucracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kaffash, J. (2010, 17 May). Mixed reaction to Office of Budget responsibility. Public Finance. Retrieved August, 2017, from http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2010/05/mixed-reaction-office-budget-responsibility.
Kaufman, H. (1960). The forest ranger: A study of administrative behaviour. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
King, D. & Peters, B.G. (1994). The United States. Ch 9 in C. Hood, C. & B.G. Peters (Eds), Rewards at the top: A comparative study of high public office (pp. 146–165). London: Sage.
Lindblom, C. (1965). The intelligence of democracy: Decision-making through mutual adjustment. New York: Free Press.
Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-level bureaucracy. Dilemmas of the individual in public service. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Mayer, J. (2005). Outsourcing torture. New Yorker. Magazine, February 2005.
Meier, K.J. & Rutherford, A. (2017). The politics of African-American education: Representation, partisanship and educational equity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moynihan, D.P. (1969). Maximum feasible misunderstanding: Community action in the war on poverty. New York: Collier Macmillan.
OECD (2010). Making reform happen: Lessons from OECD countries. Paris: OECD.
Pierson, P. (1994). Dismantling the welfare state: Reagan, Thatcher and the politics of retrenchment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pifer, A. (1967). The quasi nongovernmental organization (Reprinted from the 1967 Annual report of the Carnegie Corporation). New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Posner, P. (2016). Portfolio budgeting: A new strategy for budgeting. Statement for hearing before the Committee on the Budget, US Senate. Retrieved August, 2017, from https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/senate-budget-test-april%2D%2D%2D%2Dfinal-Posner.pdf.
Power, M. (1994). The audit explosion. London: Demos.
Power, M. (1997). The audit society: Rituals of verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Prasser, S. (1985). Public inquiries in Australia: An overview. Australian Journal of Public Administration, XL(1), 1–15.
Reid, M. (1988). All-change at the City. London: Macmillan.
Resodihardjo, S. (2009). Crisis and change in British and Dutch prison services: Understanding crisis-Reform processes. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Rhodes, G. (1975). Committees of inquiry. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Rose, R. (1990). Inheritance before choice in public policy. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2(3), 263–291.
Rose, R. & Davies, P. (1994). Inheritance in public policy: Change without choice in Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Rose, R. & Karran, T. (1987). Taxation by political inertia. London: Allen and Unwin.
Silberman, B.S. (1993). Cages of reason: The rise of the rational state in France, Japan, the United States and Great Britain. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Sulitzeanu-Kenan, R. (2007). Scything the grass: Agenda setting consequences of appointing public inquiries in the UK. A longitudinal analysis. Policy and Politics, 35(4), 629–650.
Weaver, K. (1986). The politics of blame avoidance. Journal of Public Policy, 6(4), 371–398.
Weaver, R.K. (1988). Automatic government: The politics of indexation. Washington, DC: Brookings.
Wildavsky, A. (1964). The politics of the budgetary process. Boston: Little, Brown.
Williamson, P. (1984). ‘A Bankers’ Ramp’? Financiers and the British political crisis of August 1931. English Historical Review, 99(393), 770–806.
Wiseman, E. (2017, 8 June). ‘Disgusting’: Outrage as parking wardens issue £130 fines to cars caught up in London Bridge attack. The Telegraph. Retrieved July, 2017, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/news/traffic-wardens-issue-terror-tickets-motorists-whose-cars-stranded/.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hood, C. (2020). Discretion and Blame Avoidance. In: Evans, T., Hupe, P. (eds) Discretion and the Quest for Controlled Freedom. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19566-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19566-3_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-19565-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-19566-3
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)