Abstract
Theories of blame suggest that the institutional design of public service delivery affects citizens' blame of politicians for service failure, and that delegation or contracting out reducing citizens' blame of politicians. We replicate experimentally James et al.'s blame study to assess whether the findings still apply in the original, Western context, and if the findings can be generalized to East Asia (Hong Kong and South Korea). Our replications (N = 3600) show support for contracting out to the private sector as an effective institutional arrangement for politicians to avoid blame—providing evidence for this hypothesized effect that was not found by the original study in England. Blame shift effects are typically weaker in East Asia as anticipated because of cultural differences. Overall, the findings show that politicians can use cues about delegation to reduce citizens' blame for service failure, but that such strategies vary in their success according to context.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 436-450 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Public Administration Review |
| Volume | 85 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 21 May 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2025 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
This article was presented to the 2023 International Research Society for Public Management Conference in the Panel “Behavioral and Experimental Public Management” and at the Public Management Research Conference 2023.Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.
Funding
This work was supported by the University Grant Committee, Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (CityU no. 11608320); the Hong Kong Scholars Program, Grant/Award Number: 2020-215.