Comparing blunders in government |
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| Authors: | WILL JENNINGS MARTIN LODGE MATT RYAN |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Southampton, UK;2. Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK |
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| Abstract: | Much attention has been paid to government ‘blunders’ and ‘policy disasters’. National political and administrative systems have been frequently blamed for being disproportionately prone to generating mishaps. However, little systematic evidence exists on the record of failures of policies and major public projects in other political systems. Based on a comparative perspective on blunders in government, this article suggests that constitutional features do not play a prominent role. In order to establish this finding, this article (a) develops theory‐driven expectations as to the factors that are said to encourage blunders, (b) devises a systematic framework for the assessment of policy processes and outcomes, and (c) uses fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis to identify sets of causal conditions associated with particular outcomes (i.e., blunders). The article applies this novel approach to a set of particular policy domains, finding that constitutional features are not a contributory factor to blunders in contrast to instrument choice, administrative capacity and hyper‐excited politics. |
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| Keywords: | government blunder policy fiasco fsQCA large projects |
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