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Public sector reform and blame avoidance effects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2013

Peter B. Mortensen
Peter B. Mortensen*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark E-mail: peter@ps.au.dk
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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.

Keywords

blame avoidancenew public managementreform

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Public Policy , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , August 2013 , pp. 229 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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