WHY TRADITIONAL RESPONSES TO BLAME GAMES FAIL: THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT, RITUALS, AND SUB‐BLAME GAMES IN THE FACE OF RAVES GONE WRONG

Following crises and fiascos, a framing contest takes place in which actors have to account for their actions and might get blamed for what went wrong. An inadequate response to blame can lead to resignation or losing a re-election. Currently, the literature on blame games focuses mainly on the policy, agency, and – especially – presentational strategies one can use to respond to blame. Based on our analysis of the blame games following two festival disasters in Germany and the Netherlands, we show that our current understanding of blame games and blame responses needs to be broadened to include context, rituals, and sub-blame games.

[1]  K. Mcgraw.  Managing Blame: An Experimental Test of the Effects of Political Accounts , 1991, American Political Science Review.

[2]  Brian W. Hogwood,et al.  Testing times: Exploring staged responses and the impact of blame management strategies in two examination fiasco cases , 2009 .

[3]  Edward B. Royzman,et al.  Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and Contagion , 2001 .

[4]  K. Mcgraw.  Avoiding Blame: An Experimental Investigation of Political Excuses and Justifications , 1990, British Journal of Political Science.

[5]  P. '. Hart,et al.  Symbols, Rituals and Power: The Lost Dimensions of Crisis Management , 1993 .

[6]  D. Moynihan.  A THEORY OF CULTURE‐SWITCHING: LEADERSHIP AND RED‐TAPE DURING HURRICANE KATRINA , 2012 .

[7]  R. Weaver.  The Politics of Blame Avoidance , 1986, Journal of Public Policy.

[8]  Keith M. Hearit.  Corporate apologia: When an organization speaks in defense of itself , 2004 .

[9]  A. Boin,et al.  Crisis exploitation: political and policy impacts of framing contests , 2009 .

[10]  H. Kunreuther,et al.  A Policy Maker’s Dilemma: Preventing Terrorism or Preventing Blame , 2011 .

[11]  Mayor vs. Police Chief: The Hoek Van Holland Riot , 2012 .

[12]  Øyvind Ihlen,et al.  Defending the Mercedes A-Class: Combining and Changing Crisis-Response Strategies , 2002 .

[13]  Jeffrey L. Courtright,et al.  A social constructionist approach to crisis management: Allegations of sudden acceleration in the Audi 5000 , 2003 .

[14]  Sandra L. Resodihardjo.  Wielding a Double-Edged Sword: The Use of Inquiries at Times of Crisis , 2006 .

[15]  William L. Benoit,et al.  The Tarnished Star , 1999 .

[16]  A. Boin,et al.  Governing after Crisis , 2008 .

[17]  C. Hood.  The Risk Game and the Blame Game * , 2002, Government and Opposition.

[18]  Annika Brändström,et al.  From ‘Normal Incidents’ to Political Crises: Understanding the Selective Politicization of Policy Failures 1 , 2003, Government and Opposition.

[19]  Allan McConnell,et al.  Understanding Policy Success , 2010 .

[20]  Allan McConnell.  Overview: Crisis Management, Influences, Responses and Evaluation , 2003 .

[21]  Patrick T. Brandt,et al.  A Bayesian Poisson Vector Autoregression Model , 2012, Political Analysis.