Abstract
Abstract
Most accounts of blame games focus on ministers and civil servants. However, the advent of ministerial advisors means that there is now a new player in the game. This chapter theorizes this institutional innovation by (a) positioning ministerial advisors as institutional ‘translators’ between blame-makers and blame-takers; (b) connecting advisors’ roles to three major blame- avoidance strategies (presentational, policy, and agency); and (c) assessing the impact of advisors’ role on three characteristics of good governance (sharpening policy debate, focusing accountability, and enhancing transparency). The core contention is that in the contemporary executive ménage à trois, the dynamics and outcomes of attempts to either claim credit or avoid blame cannot fully be understood without recourse to the agency of ministerial advisors.
Publisher
Oxford University PressOxford
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