IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jnlpup/v33y2013i02p229-253_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public sector reform and blame avoidance effects

Author

Listed:
  • Mortensen, Peter B.

Abstract

Blame avoidance has often been claimed to be an important rationale behind changes in the organisation of the public sector, but very few studies have examined whether and how public attribution of responsibility is actually affected by such reforms. For instance, how do changes in the formal allocation of authority affect public attribution of blame when things go wrong? Is the effect immediate or delayed? To advance our understanding of such questions, this paper presents an analysis of blame and credit attribution in more than 1,200 newspaper articles about health-care-related issues in Norway before and after the major Norwegian hospital reform from 2002. The central empirical finding of the article is that central state-level authorities in Norway were attributed less blame in media coverage of health-care problems after the reform than before the reform. The shift is delayed, but substantial and robust to various modifications in model estimations.

Suggested Citation

  • Mortensen, Peter B., 2013. "Public sector reform and blame avoidance effects," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(2), pages 229-253, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jnlpup:v:33:y:2013:i:02:p:229-253_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0143814X13000032/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jnlpup:v:33:y:2013:i:02:p:229-253_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/pup .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.