• DOI:10.1017/S0143814X21000039
• Corpus ID: 202627635

Pass the buck or the buck stops here? The public costs of claiming and deflecting blame in managing crises

@article{Miller2021PassTB,
  title={Pass the buck or the buck stops here? The public costs of claiming and deflecting blame in managing crises},
  author={David R. Miller and Andrew Reeves},
  journal={Journal of Public Policy},
  year={2021},
  volume={42},
  pages={63 - 91}
}

• David R. Miller, Andrew Reeves
• Published 17 May 2021
• Political Science
• Journal of Public Policy

Abstract When things go wrong, and the government may be to blame, the public support enjoyed by elected executives is vulnerable. Because attribution of responsibility is often not straightforward, elected executives can influence citizens’ evaluations of their performance through presentational strategies, or explanatory frames which describe their roles in the management of the crisis. We examine the effectiveness of two ubiquitous presentational strategies: blame claiming, where the executive accepts responsibility, and blame deflecting, where the executive shifts blame to others. Using survey experiments incorporating stylised and real-world stimuli, we find that blame claiming is more effective than blame deflecting at managing public support in the aftermath of crises. In investigating the underlying mechanism, we find that blame claiming creates more favourable views of an executive’s leadership valence. While elected executives are better off avoiding crises, we find that when they occur, “stopping the buck” is a superior strategy to deflecting blame.