The lessons of failure
Learning and Blame Avoidance in Public Policy-Making
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6298369 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Howlett (0000-0003-4689-740X, Simon Fraser University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 539-555 |
| Publication date | 2012-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Political Science Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0192-5121 • E-ISSN: 1460-373X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512112453603 |
| OpenAlex | W2169552471 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 156 |
| References cited | 94 |
Recent studies by Hood have underscored the significance of the desire of decision-makers to avoid blame for poor policy initiatives, highlighting the importance to policy-making of learning about how best to avoid policy failure. This article examines several different concepts of policy failure in the literature on the subject, such as policy accidents, errors, mistakes, and anomalies, along with recent work by McConnell and his colleagues on the general types and sources of such failures. The article distinguishes between ‘thin’ (technical-strategic) and ‘thick’ (political-experiential) policy learning and links them to McConnell’s three categories of political, programme, and process failures. The analysis points to the significant and underappreciated roles played by process and political problems in the analysis of policy failure and the need to draw lessons in these areas as well as in more technically oriented programme-related ones if the prospects of policy success are to be enhanced
Blame · Economics · Experiential learning · Policy analysis · Policy learning · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Process (computing · Public economics · Public policy · Public relations · Subject (documents · Work (physics · Computer Science · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Engineering · Law · Policy Transfer and Learning · Psychology · Public Administration · Public Policy and Administration Research · Social Psychology
Performing innocence and integrity
A policy fiasco
A microeconomic perspective on the role of efficiency and equity criteria in designing natural resource policy
Sustainability through institutional failure and decline? Archetypes of productive pathways
Thinking About Failing
Hyper-active Governance
Policy Design and Non-Design
Introduction
Government-Imposed Reorganization and Public Service Turnaround
Impact of depopulated area designation policy on the population and employment in Japanese small and medium-sized cities
Hiding behind the curtain
How lack of legitimacy leads to policy failure
Mechanisms influencing mainstreaming of adaptation in spatial development
Intelligence scandals
Barriers to Converting Applied Social Psychology to Bettering the Human Condition
The Failure to Learn Lessons from Policy Failures in Developing Countries? The Case of Electricity Privatization in Ghana
Crisismanship under the Most Severe Sanctions
Risks of policy failure in direct R&D support
Municipal Responses to Covid-19
Blame-avoiding strategies for a digital scandal
Dominant Language Constellations in Multilingual Repertoires
Conviviality and commoning in urban regeneration. Conflict, empowerment, and legitimacy in Caserta (Italy)
Grassroots circularity in Bologna
The anatomy of failed historical transitions
Negativity trumps source
Rules of Evidence, Efficiency Claims, and Local Government Amalgamation
Muddle and Match
Public policies and health systems in Sahelian Africa
Digital Legitimation and Compensation
Participation rules and policy outcomes in China’s authoritarian-hybrid governance
Penser l’action publique » en contextes africains
Measuring Policy Learning
Kicked cans and poison pills
Assessing Crisis Communication Teamwork Performance during a Terrorist Attack
Towards productive functions? A systematic review of institutional failure, its causes and consequences
Why policies succeed or fail
Designing for Policy Success
During Disaster
How apprehensions impact policy implementation
Blame‐avoidance and fragmented crisis management during the Covid‐19 pandemic in Switzerland
Policy Design and Non-Design
Image and Substance Failures in Regional Organisations
Who Is a Stream? Epistemic Communities, Instrument Constituencies and Advocacy Coalitions in Public Policy-Making
Governing ‘levelling-up’ in the UK
Governance of Defense and Policymaking in C hile
Opposition “strategy mobility” – a dimension still missing in the critical policy mobility literature
Framework or metaphor? Analysing the status of policy learning in the policy sciences
Under the influence
Can Policy Succeed through Inactivity? A Case Study of UK Foreign Policy after the Gulf War
Analysing opposition–government blame games
Once bitten, twice shy
Explaining Policy Success Using the Multiple Streams Framework
Political transition, policy learning and failures to learn
What did the Turkish climate movement learn from a global policy failure? Frame shift after the Copenhagen Climate Summit
Critical juncture, learning and state capacity-in-motion
Wicked problems and creeping crises
Journalists’ Apprehension of Being Politically Correct
Instrument constituencies and public policy-making
Understanding policy integration through an integrative capacity framework
The Turkish state’s responses to existential Covid-19 crisis
Blame avoidance and credit-claiming dynamics in government policy communications
Western Balkans
Redd+ policy design and policy learning
Fiscal Policy Learning from Crisis
Special Issue
Cuando las políticas fallan. Desafíos en la reducción de la desnutrición crónica infantil en el Ecuador
The Struggle for Gender Equality
Failure seems to be the hardest word to say
Whose is this street? Actors and conflicts in the governance of pedestrianisation processes
Why are policy innovations rare and so often negative? Blame avoidance and problem denial in climate change policy-making
Policy failure mobilities
The right to fail? Problematizing failure discourse in international conservation
The Nature of Learning Climate in Public Administration
Going bust two ways? Epistemic communities and the study of urban policy failure
Between public interest and the market
Policy failure or f***up
Policy movement in housing research
Copying Europe? Integration as a Citizenship Requirement in Australia
The intensity of China’s climate change policy from 1992 to 2023
Policy learning from crisis in financial regulation and supervision
Pathways to policy failure
Assessing policy success and failure
Political demand and policy advice
Policy Learning, Policy Failure, and the Mitigation of Policy Risks
No time for nonsense!”
Policy Failure Revisited
Policy Control as a Strategy for Controlling Inherent Vices of Policy-Making
Does Co-Production Lead to the Creation of Public Value? Balancing the Dimensions of Public Value Creation in Urban Mobility Planning
Agonistic failures
Partisan advisers and political policy failure avoidance
Rethinking the ‘open functional’ approach
(Not) just policy success
Policy learning over the legislative process
Policy experimentation and policy learning in Canadian cultural policy
The impact of stakeholder engagement on local policy decision making
The politics of experimental policymaking
The discursive micro-politics of blame avoidance
Utilizing Ostrom’s institutional analysis and development framework toward an understanding of crisis-driven policy
Integrated policy approaches and policy failure
Policy-making and truthiness
Using evidence
Stealth Democracy
Order Without Design
The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis
Success and Failure in Public Governance
Smart Regulation
Policy Analysts in the Bureaucracy
The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning
Understanding Policy Success
What happens when transparency meets blame-avoidance?
Measuring knowledge utilization
Learning From Oversight
Agendas, alternatives, and public policies
The Blame Game
(De)constructing a policy ‘failure’
Negotiating Tensions in Developing Organizational Policy Capacity
Designing Public Policies
Intractable Policy Failure
Can we learn from failure? Examining US experiences with nuclear repository siting
Forum
Selling climate change? The limitations of social marketing as a strategy for climate change public engagement
The paradox of policy analysis
Policy Transfer and Policy Success
State failure’ in theory and practice
The Circuitry of Enlightenment
Reaffirming the Importance of Strategic Use
Does more evidence lead to better policy
Not With A Bang, But A Whimper
Speaking Truth to Power
The Extent and Determinants of the Utilization of University Research in Government Agencies
Towards a Framework for Establishing Policy Success
Not Steering but Drowning
The logic of ?Policy? and successful policies
The lessons of learning
The prediction of political feasibility
Policy Analysts in the Bureaucracy
Rethinking policy capacity in Canada
Policy analytical capacity and evidence‐based policy‐making
The new focus on the policy capacity of the federal government
The formation Of a Canadian privacy policy
Measuring policy learning
"The Science of "Muddling Through
Political Feasibility and Policy Analysis
The Politics of Perception
Analyzing Political Feasibility
Factors Associated With Knowledge Use Among Federal Executives
Agents of Change
The Contextual Burdens of Policy Design1
The Conditions of Effective Public Policy
Government Supply and Government Production Failure
Systematically Pinching Ideas
Policy Success, Policy Failure and Grey Areas In-Between
The Determinants of Program Success and Failure
Market and Non-Market Failures
Policy Learning and Failure
The Politics of Blame Avoidance
The role of knowledge in the policy process
The Policy and Politics of Policy Appraisal
From ‘Normal Incidents’ to Political Crises
The Risk Game and the Blame Game
Latin America
Revisiting Politicization
On the Notion of Political Feasibility
Policy Failure and Policy Change
What Have We Learned About the Causes of Corruption from Ten Years of Cross-National Empirical Research
Promotion Versus Precaution
Bureaucratic Failure and the UK's Lack of Preparedness for Foot and Mouth Disease
Policy Disasters
Glorified Gofers, Policy Experts or Good Generalists
Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State
The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action
When Laws Backfire
The Fate of Policy Analysis in Congressional Decision Making
Creating a policy analysis profession
Social Science Research and Decision-Making
Policy Success and Public Health
The trouble with experts - and why democracies need them
| Unique citing works | 156 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 13 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2026 (13) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 152 |