How to blame and make a difference: perceived responsibility and policy consequences in two Swedish pro-migrant campaign
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How to blame and make a difference: perceived responsibility and policy consequences in two Swedish pro‑migrant campaigns Livia Johannesson1 · Noomi Weinryb2 Accepted: 20 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In this paper, we explore the assumption that blame-attribution can be an effective rhetorical strategy for non-elite interest groups who want power holders to be attentive to their demands. Through a qualitative analysis of two pro-migrant campaigns led by grassroot activists in Sweden, one taking place in 2005 and the other in 2017, we offer a nuanced empirical examination of non-elite initiated blame-games. We show how perceived responsibility influences these blame-games, and explore which policy consequences might emanate from them. We demonstrate that blame-making, under certain conditions, can be a successful strategy to gain policy influence, but that this strategy is conditioned by the complexity and transparency of the institutional arrangements of accountability within the policy sector. The focus on non-elite blame-making in order to change policies enables us to contribute to the theoretical discussion on the relationship between anticipatory and reactive forms of blame-avoidance behaviours, and to discuss the democratic implications of blame-games in both shorter and longer time perspectives. One implication of this study is that successful non-elite blame-making at one point in time actually can lower the chances of successful blame-making in the future. Keywords Blame-avoidance behaviour · Migrant activism · Migrant regularization programmes · Asylum systems · Policy consequences · Perceived responsibility · Accountability
Introduction Blame is an important rhetorical weapon in modern political life. There is a widely held assumption that elected politicians, office holders, and front-line bureaucrats will care more about avoiding personal blame than gaining credit for their decisions, because * Livia Johannesson [email protected] 1
Stockholm Center for Organizational Research (Score), Stockholm University, SE‑106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
2
Academy of Public Administration, School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Huddinge, Stockholm County, Sweden
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Policy Sciences
being blamed for causing harm can lead to severe reputational loss, which may imply a loss of legitimacy, position, benefits and future career options (Weaver 1986; Hood 2011; Leong and Howlett 2017). To publicly blame power holders for causing harm of some kind can therefore be an effective strategy for contenders of status quo. Yet, the growing literature on blame in political life has mainly focused on power holders’ blame-avoidance behaviour (Brändström and Kuipers 2003; Hood 2011; Resodihardjo et al. 2016; Hansson 2018b; Hinterleitner and Sager 2017, 2020), leaving the blamegenerating side of political blame-games—the strategies, considerations and objectives of the blame-makers—unexplored. The aim of this paper is to investigate the rationale behind non-elite groups
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